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Scheduling software

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TommyTwoTone

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Hi all!

I have been doing our scheduling on and off for about 3 years…
Although I use excel and a scheduling document made by big Dave, I have yet to find a good piece of scheduling software that can take what I want to put on a schedule, turn it into a graph to show overlap and at the same time give me projected labor cost…

Does anybody have a document or software that does this???

Thanks guys and gals
 
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We used to use the online scheduling service offered by schedulefly. It did all the things you mentioned and added features that allow employees to view their schedule online and make trades.

Online Restaurant Employee Scheduling Software at Schedulefly

We stopped using it because less than half of our staff ever logged onto the thing and only about 1 in 10 used in with any regularity. Now we’re back to posting a printout of the excel schedule.

The cells in Excel can be formatted for time and with a bit of work it’s possible to sum and divide hours. Maybe the graph feature could show you overlap as well.
 
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Thanks for the replies,

I guess what we are looking for is a mix between excel and access, in access you can put in a certain string of numbers and then access those numbers in any one of a million different reports. This makes viewing what data you want easy.

However with Excel you can actually see where you are putting the data Ie staff hours, where you are scheduling them. however we are loosing tons of labor money to unnecessary overlap.

I am going to look at schedule fly, but if someone had an excell document that they use, that already covers these areas and can make scheduling easier i would appreciate it.

Thanks
 
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ScheduleFly looks pretty cool - and similar to another scheduling service, HotSchedules. I am also considering going with an option like this, not only to make scheduling easier, available to all staff via text and e-mail, but also looking into using my POS system’s labor management module to be sure that employees aren’t clocking in/out outside of their scheduled time. (HotSchedules will supposedly integrate with the POS system to transfer the schedule into the module automatically)

Has anyone had any experience with HotSchedules, and are there any preferences of one over the other?

Mahalo!
 
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Honestly for the price, Schedule fly doesn’t seem to bad… however I am having a heck of a time getting my “virtual” tour. It seems like a one man show. however the hotschedule seems sweet, but more money for what could be the same price. I am wondering if schedule fly will give a layout of the daily schedule and be able to show overlap, that’s where I think we are loosing our butts.

Hot schedule you were saying will integrate with the pos and show if and where staff are overlapping on shifts???
 
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TommyTwoTone:
I am wondering if schedule fly will give a layout of the daily schedule and be able to show overlap
Click to expand...
Yes, Schedulefly does that. The thing that isn’t so hot about Schedulefly is that every time you put in a new shift or make a change, the page that displays the schedule has to reload. My G.M. spent more time waiting for reloads than actually scheduling.

I’m going to take a look at the Hot Schedule and see if the schedule-making portion is programmed in Java or something where the process of scheduling would be quicker. There’s also a site called ShiftHound, but I could never get them to set up my free trial - I guess they are already too busy fighting off new customers in this booming economy.
 
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😃 Beta announcement
Code: 
It's been a long road, but we've made it! PopSchedules is officially in beta! How much time do you spend dealing with missed shifts, employees calling in for their schedule, or trying to keep shift trades straight? We've been there, and we know in a hectic restaurant environment good communication is key for running a lean, profitable business. 

Automated labor projections, SMS text schedule distribution, employee availability management, and online employee shift trades are just a few of the features worth checking out. With our easy click-and-drag schedule builder and host of convenience based features, we're working to make everyone's life easier, from the management to the employees.
We’re looking for restaurant partners to provide feedback and help grow our product into the best online restaurant employee scheduling tool around. Try out PopSchedules for free and watch your employee turnover and labor costs shrink.

Signup today at http://www.popschedules.com/registration.php.
 
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This Does!

Beta announcement
Code: 
It's been a long road, but we've made it! PopSchedules is officially in beta! How much time do you spend dealing with missed shifts, employees calling in for their schedule, or trying to keep shift trades straight? We've been there, and we know in a hectic restaurant environment good communication is key for running a lean, profitable business. 

Automated labor projections, SMS text schedule distribution, employee availability management, and online employee shift trades are just a few of the features worth checking out. With our easy click-and-drag schedule builder and host of convenience based features, we're working to make everyone's life easier, from the management to the employees.
We’re looking for restaurant partners to provide feedback and help grow our product into the best online restaurant employee scheduling tool around. Try out PopSchedules for free and watch your employee turnover and labor costs shrink.

Signup today at http://www.popschedules.com/registration.php.
 
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txcoz71:
With our easy click-and-drag schedule builder
Click to expand...
Of course, none of the video examples show this feature.

And what’s with these places and their tiered pricing structures based on groups of like 10 employees? Is a dozen more people viewing an online schedule really that much of a bandwidth gobbler?
 
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Hi all,

Thought we’d throw in our $0.02 in this scheduling discussion - and toot our own horn a bit.

We’ve got a similar scheduling system to both ScheduleFly and HotSchedules, but with a few twists and turns. We do online scheduling, but then we also provide PDF (and Excel) reports of just about everything in the software.

But, we have a few things that make us a bit more unique … we can do our own Time / Attendance Tracking (in case you don’t have a POS), so we can enforce your schedule (and stop staff from riding the clock). No tiered pricing (priced by the staff you have … and starting at $1 per employee / month), and we’re more than a 1-man shop.

One more thing - we’re actually what PMQ is using in-house to track hours … they’ve been using us for quite a while! (We have a small ad in the back of PMQ magazine).

If you have any questions, want a demo, or need clarifications, please let me know.

–
Anthony Presley
http://www.timeforge.com
 
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Hey folks, Wil Brawley from Schedulefly here. A few quick comments…
  • We have a easy bar graph view of the schedule and you can view your forecasted labor costs (alone or as a % of your sales forecast) as you are building your schedule.
  • Brad, the page doesn’t reload any longer each time you add somebody to a shift. That was no good so we fixed that and you can add people fast as heck now. We’d love you to run another Free Trial any time.
  • We’re not a 1-man show. We’re a 3-man show 😃 We purposely made Schedulefly simple, intuitive, and flexible, so we wouldn’t have to have a bunch of people to provide customer support. We don’t have many customer support requests, and new customers rarely need any training. We also don’t have sales people. You can learn more about the three of us and our philosophies on the About Us link on our site.
There are a bunch of good options out there - I encourage you to knock around the various web sites and figure out which is the best fit for your restaurant. www.schedulefly.com
 
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wilbrawley:
Brad, the page doesn’t reload any longer each time you add somebody to a shift. That was no good so we fixed that and you can add people fast as heck now.
Click to expand...
I talked to my G.M. about this fix. He said he loved everything else about the site. I’ll call you soon and give Schedulefly another try - or if you still have our previous setup on file/backed up, you can email me fresh login information, we’ll update the employees and get back to it.
 
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Seems like I joined in on the convo alittle too late here, but…

Fendza - Employee Scheduling gets my vote. It’s still in private beta with a few companies, but should be a definite consideration. You can sign up to get an email when we launch; or email me james (@) fendza.com; and say you came from the PMQ community and I’ll hook you up with a free account when we launch soon…
  • James F.
 
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Okay, we’re back with Schedulefly. The scheduling component looks to be much improved as it updates as you go without requiring the page to reload. We’re going to get our employee database updated and go live again next week (Little 500 this week in Bloomington).

I’ll let you guys know how it works in real-world use after a few weeks.
 
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@BRAD Sounds good, I hope it works well for you; will be awaiting to hear how you like it. Please check your PM.

Fendza is doing a revision on the beta, so we’re going to re-open the invites again in about 5 weeks.

To all PMQ members, I am offering a free lifetime account for any beta users. This account will last after the final version is launched as well. So… definitely take advantage to get great software for free; to everybody else (outside PMQ) after launch, it’s a monthly plan. Just shoot me an email james(@)fendza.com, and I’ll jot you on the list. Right now, we have a bunch of retail and grocery stores listed, would love to get restaurants on board.

Thanks,
  • James F.
 
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I ran into the same problem and needed something easy and efficient to use (Excel just wasn’t cutting it). I’ve been scheduling with the program Shiftboard for about a year now and have been very pleased with all the things I can do and control-including that overlap problem. I like the fact that I can text or email an entire group if something about their shift changes. I also use the program to run the labor reports that I need, but anyone can run just about any other report that you could think of. I highly recommend Shiftboard and definitely think its work checking out. Good luck!
 
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I know that I am little slow for joining in on this discussion. However, what I have to add is still very relevant.

The product that I would like to recommend is Time Tracker by Asgard. I know that it does not have 100 million reports as requested; but Time Tracker is probably the scheduling software product with the closest number of reports. I would also like add that the database is ODBC compliant so if you are handy with a Report Writer then you can design and control your own reports.

There are a great many employee scheduling programs available. They all have their own approaches to scheduling and are of a reasonable quality. Depending on how your organization operates; they will do some things very well and some things poorly. It will matter greatly on how the product suits your specific requirements. The only way to ensure that the product is what you are really looking for is to try it out. Create schedules, project them well into the future, print reports and call for support. No matter what product you purchase; you are going to have to learn about the product at sometime. It is better to learn before buying; rather than after.

Asgard Systems Inc. will allow you to work with their scheduling programs for free. If you elect to purchase it, they will send you a CD so you can install the licensed version. All of your previously entered schedules will still be active in your licensed installation. It is worth investigating. You can learn more about their scheduling software at http://www.asgardsystems.com.

scheduling software
 
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Check out http://www.bizimply.com. We are an Irish based startup and our solution combines scheduling, hr and time and attendance on to one cloud based platform.

We built Bizimply because we believe that restaurant and retail managers should always be out on the shop floor driving sales, but unfortunately they are all too often stuck in the back office under a mountain of paperwork.

We also just launched our new Timestation iPad App. The iPad is wall-mounted in your location, you download an app and it is immediately synced to your existing Bizimply account to give you a live feed of clock-in information. When the team arrives, they simply punch in and ‘say cheese’ – as the app captures an image of them. The app works online or offline.
 
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