Gurkan: TimeForge Budgeting Tools Part I

By Gurkan Ozfidan, TimeForge Developer
You need to make your schedule for tomorrow, and you want to make your schedule so that you are not short staff or over staff, you may know or estimate how much sales or number of visits could be for tomorrow. TimeForge could store those values for you as Gross Sales or Number of Visits in sales categories.  You can store your sales category values in department level i.e. Bar, Tables, Kitchen or in location level as well. And you can set these sales categories so that can be compared to schedule hours, cost of shifts, or number of shifts.
You may have several positions for the schedule you need for tomorrow i.e Manager, Cook, Waiter. You want to schedule your staff based on their positions and have enough number of staffs or number of hours for each position. The fact that you may have estimated sales or how many visits can be for tomorrow, you may need X number of Managers, Y number of Cooks and Z number of Waiters with a certain ratio to estimated sales or number of visits for each position. TimeForge can store those ratios or threshold values for each position per sales categories to be able to calculate how many hours or number of shifts you may need or cost of shifts to keep your schedule under the limited-budget. This threshold values can be stored within different date ranges as well.Date ranges could be weekdays, weekend, or seasonal periods for months.
Now that we have estimated sales or number of visits for tomorrow and a threshold value for each position within certain date ranges, as you make your schedule for tomorrow, TimeForge could show you how many shifts, number of hours, and cost of shifts per position you have scheduled, and compares to one of the metrics you have set to. Numbers per position will be calculated based on estimated sales or visits with the position ratio. The calculated numbers are colored in green if scheduled value is less than or equal to, or red if it is greater than. Green means you can still add some shifts for that position, and red means, you may have scheduled more than you may need based on sales number and threshold value for that position.
At this point, as you make your schedule, TimeForge could show you how many hours you have scheduled, cost of shifts or number of shifts per position you have. Calculated number compares to one of the schedule metrics which could be hour, shift, or cost. It is colored green or red to help if current scheduled positions are under or over the limited-budget. TimeForge will calculate the number based on sales and position ratios. One day, you may have very high and next day very low sales or number of visits. And you may want to make sure that you have scheduled not less than X and or not more than Y number of hours/cost.
You may want to limit so that you scheduled at least X, and or at most Y number of hours/cost for the positions. TimeForge could help you to limit by setting min and max values per position, and with a single check box, min and max limits can turn on and off. Based on your setting, TimeForge will consider those min and max limits to be included during budget calculation.
TimeForge has several budgeting options, and here we have covered one of the options that TimeForge provides to our clients.
Stay tuned for Part II… coming soon!