“What’s your favorite TimeForge report, and what makes it essential?” That’s the question I asked for this week’s blog post. Our team works with customers every day to solve their labor challenges, so I knew they’d have valuable advice.
Below are their answers. These are the reports they identified as bringing the most value and saving customers the most money (and time!) on labor.
Daily Schedule Cheat Sheet (Audrey)
“There are a ton of TimeForge reports that make life easier when running a business, but my favorite is the Daily Cheat Sheet,” said Audrey, our COO. “It’s a simple one-sheet shift list with a custom split time that groups morning and afternoon folks in columns.
If you run it before everyone clocks in, it shows their shifts as planned labor. If you run it mid-day, it shows both the scheduled shifts and the worked shifts (and totals/variance).
It also lists sales predictions (hourly) and has room for actual figures (if you print it in the morning, you can write them in, or if you print it throughout the day, TimeForge will plug in the sales numbers as they come in from the POS).
At the bottom of the cheat sheet are totals for each shift section (am/pm), with an area that calculates your planned sales-to-labor numbers and your actual sales-to-labor numbers.”
The Cheat Sheet means that managers can keep an eye on both detailed and summarized labor throughout the day, anticipate changes due to sales volumes, and have a physical hand-off with notes for the next shift manager.
The TimeForge manager app and the web platform can get this data too, but having a printed, hardcopy document to keep on you around the store can be remarkably helpful for keeping communication robust.
If you want something more customized, there’s also the Report Builder! The Report Builder allows you to build any custom report in just a few clicks.
Overtime Report by Employee (Mike)
“If I had to pick a favorite TimeForge report, it would probably be the Overtime Report by Employee,” said Mike, our Implementations Specialist. “It’s my #1 report to show to new customers, as it’s really simple, yet powerful.
When running it for the current week, it will show all current attendance, the employee’s future scheduled hours, and estimated total hours.
If that total is greater than 40, or higher than the employee’s maximum hours (Part Timers), it’ll list that record in red to make it easy to identify employees who are at risk of hitting Full-Time status or overtime.
Most folks will schedule this report to come to them daily for the last few days of the work week.”
Sales Analysis Graphs (Erik)
“My absolute favorite is the Sales Analysis Graphs for those that use forecasting,” said Erik, our Co-Founder. “The report gives the numerically-inclined a ton of data to schedule departments by customer demand.”
Practically speaking, it’s incredibly useful for seeing how your manager projections and actual sales stack up next to TimeForge’s forecasting engine. And best of all, the report is available on your smartphone using the Manager Mobile app.
Erik also mentioned the Coverage with Breaks report, which provides a Gantt-style chart of the schedule with breaks by shift.
Schedule vs Attendance Report (Daniel)
“My favorite TimeForge report is Schedule vs Attendance, because it shows the difference between what you planned with your schedule and how employees actually worked. This helps managers identify areas for improvement.”
When you search for Schedule vs. Attendance, you’ll notice several options to choose from, depending on your preference.
You can look at Department Summary, view by Employee, by Position, or even narrow it down to only Employees with PTO.
Attendance Audit CSV Report (Diego)
Diego also identified the Daily Cheat Sheet and Sales Analysis as essential reports. Since those were already mentioned, I asked him to pick something new – something our customers wouldn’t have heard about yet.
“My new favorite TimeForge report is one we recently deployed. It’s the Attendance Audit CSV report,” said Diego, our Support Team Lead. “This report can help you find any attendance entries that were edited by a manager during a specified time range.
Since it’s a CSV, managers can easily filter out results and look into any entries they may have questions about. It’s a good tool to use to keep both managers accountable and informed about their employees’ pay.”
Since this is a VERY new report, it may not be in everyone’s report list by default. Just give us a call or shoot us an email if you don’t see it in your account, and we’ll load it up for you so you can give it a whirl.
What’s your favorite TimeForge report?
Drop us a line and let us know. We’d love to hear your opinion on which reports work best for you and your business!
You can also learn how to mark a report as a favorite inside of TimeForge. This will keep the report at the top of your lists for easy retrieval.
To browse all of our reporting how-to guides, click here.
