Company Blog - ShiftPlanning.com

2 months ago Allena Rouse 1 Comments

Tips & Tricks: Online TimeClock Settings

While most users are familiar fith the flexibility we bring as it relates to scheduling, not as many are acquainted with our TimeClock-related features and options. Clocking is often a vital part of a company's workforce management and reporting, and procedures vary greatly from one organization to the next. In ShiftPlanning, users can set up specifications for their timeclock environment by accessing 'settings' in the admin tab of the application.

Check out the TimeClock settings below:

Time Clock Module is on
The timeclock module is an optional section of the ShiftPlanning software. If your organization does not use ShiftPlanning for clocking, you can hide all timeclock related features by un-checking this option.
Employees must use webcam when they clock in & out
The webcam aspect of ShiftPlanning gives managers the option to prevent buddy clocking into our virtual time and attendance solution. If this option is selected, mangagers will have the option to view the biometric timestamps left by their staff during punch times.
Employees can import Time Sheets
ShiftPlanning allows for timesheet imports which are specifically helpful for users with physical timekeeping hardward. The uploads allow for the schedulers to import third party information for comparison with scheduling data. Managers have the ability to restrict staff from likewise uploading timesheets.
Employees can manually add time clocks
While staff members can clock in via terminals or by clicking the "clock in" and "clock out" buttons on this virtual timeclock, time sheets can also be entered manually by completing the necessary fields. This is particularly useful for users who collect timesheet information after the fact (i.e, those with contractors)
Lock time-clocking to specified locations
ShiftPlanning offers 'clock locations' which allow managers to record clocking at particular locales based on ip address. This option allows managers to restrict clocking to these locations to encourage good clock behavior.
Round time clock totals
This option related to time clock related reports and especially comes in handy with payroll reporting.
Round Clock In times up/Round Clock Out times down
The two options above allow for managers to push clock time to the nearest hour, 15min etc. based on the setting options. For example, if an indivdual clocks-in at 9:07am, the manager can force the time to 9am even.
Only allow time clocks within X of the start/end of a shift
This option is particularly helpful for those organizations who have more strict attendance rules. It will restrict extra late or extra early staff members from clocking until the appropriate time.

Are there any additional TimeClock-related settings that you'd like to see in the application? Are you currently using the timeclock module? Let us know at info@shiftplanning.com.

Happy Scheduling!

2 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Case Study Spotlight: Iowa State University Bookstore

ShiftPlanning will be profiling our users as part of our "case study spotlight" series. If you'd like to have your business covered, please complete the questionnaire here and send to allena@shiftplanning.com. Completed case studies will be granted a free one month credit to their account. Please send any questions to info@shiftplanning.com

The University Book Store has been part of the Iowa state community for over 130 years! The Book Store is an integral part of the university and requires over 130 full-time and part time staff to keep operations running smoothly. Many of the staff-members are part of the student community and due to their studies and extracurricular activities, scheduling for the Book Store is an academic-worthy challenge.

Prior to ShiftPlanning, the Iowa State University Book Store was using another software for scheduling that required them to print schedules. Given the constantly changing nature of student-based scheduling, that solution was not very environmentally friendly. The rigid structure of the previous software didn't bode to well with the managers either.

ShiftPlanning’s user friendly interface made it easier than ever for the book store staff to manage the variable student schedules. While the previous solution required printed schedules, as a web-based staff scheduling application, ShiftPlanning is available at anytime via internet connected devices like pcs, tablets, and smartphones which are all more popular options for student populations. The managers found the new scheduler in ShiftPlanning to be a good match for the book store's scheduling needs and have benefited from the flexibility of the platform.

The best support I've seen for a software / technology company. - Lisa Goeres, Iowa State University Book Store

The ShiftPlanning team is equally as enthused to work with the team at the Iowa State University book store.

You can see the full case study at shiftplanning.com/universitybookstore.

Happy Scheduling!

2 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Case Study Series: Trees Organic Coffee

Vancouver-based 'Trees Organic Coffee' has 4 locations, each with an ever-changing amount of visitor traffic. As a service organization, the coffee house realized the importance of having the right amount of staff the right amount of time. Given the variable volume, coffee shop scheduling can often be quite a hassle.

Before Shiftplanning the managers were using paper and excel for scheduling, which was time consuming and laborious. With its easy-to-use scheduling and staff notification features, ShiftPlanning was able to help streamline the daily operations of the coffee shop as well as help the staff prepare for traffic fluxes.

As a web-based employee scheduling solution, ShiftPlanning is available at anytime via internet connected devices such as pcs, netbooks, tablets, and phones. The managers found this to be a great benefit:

Having the ability for staff to check their schedule from anywhere, as well as reminder notifications means less of the excuse "I didn't realize I was scheduled to work today."
- Chris Hannah, Trees Organic Coffee

The ShiftPlanning team is happy to be of help to the hard working team at Trees Organic Coffee keep the tradition of great coffee alive in the Vancouver area.

You can see the full case study at shiftplanning.com/treesorganiccoffee.

Happy Scheduling!

2 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Tips & Tricks: 5 Smart Ways to Make Use of "Skills"

As a workforce management solution, ShiftPlanning gives managers the tools they need to add, edit, and organize staff. One key organizational tool in ShiftPlanning is the 'skills' feature. Skills serve as filters within our employee scheduling application and are quite flexible in definition. Managers can add skills under "Manage Skills" in the tab staff. (Staff are assigned via "fast assignment)

Below you'll find 5 ways that ShiftPlanning users are making the best use of 'skills':

1. Skills as 'Skills' & Certifications
As a scheduler, it is likely that your shifts may require a very specific skillset at times. In ShiftPlanning, it's simple to identify available staff who meet one or multiple criteria. Skills can allow you to specify employee qualities such as: Spanish Fluent, Excel Expert, or Project Management
Along the same lines as above, skills can be added to specify certain employee certifications and/or course and training completion such as: CPR, PMP, or even in-house training (i.e, "intro to company")
2. Skills as Positions
In ShiftPlanning, Locations represent the highest level of organization with skills as a tertiary level. The most common structure in our system is for positions to be analagous to actual positions such as chef, dishwasher, and waiter and for location to represent an actual location such as "Main St." However, some organization need extra level of organizations. For example where location would remain "Main St", Positions = depts, and skills take the place of positions.
3. Skills as Seniority
In some scheduling situaions, it is important to give scheduling preference to more senior staff. Skills can help schedulers manage this task with titles such as: Level 1, Level 2, etc
Another example of skills being used for seniority (and as a position as well) would be where there are different levels within a position. For example, within a "customer service" position there may exist: 'associate', 'manager', and 'team lead'
4. Skills as Employment Type
In ShiftPlanning, skills serve as a filter within reports, including payroll specific reports. Often times, finance staff will need to segment staff into different payroll-related types. Skills can be used to tackle this need with titles such as: Salary & Hourly, Full-Time & Part-Time, or Employee & contractor
5. Skills as 'Tasks'
Skills can be used as part of task management as well. Want to get a view of the schedules of your store 'closers'? What about looks at the clock-in times of your 'openers'? These are just some of the ways skills can be helpful as tasks.

Is your organization making use of skills? If so, how? Do you have any suggestions for how we make skills more useful in the application? If so, please let us know at info@shiftplanning.com.

Happy Scheduling!

2 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Tips & Tricks: Staff Management (Active, Disabled, Deleted)

Staff turnover is the nature of many businesses. Given the high time and financial costs of turnover, it is important that managers' workforce management environment seamlessly handle the situation, making sure not add to the headache.

ShiftPlanning allows managers to easily add new staff to their accounts. Furthermore, our disable feature allows schedulers to simply mark certain staff members as inactive while keeping relevant information available for accurate reporting.

Now, schedulers can find a new feature in the application: delete employees. So, How is 'delete' different from 'disabled'?

De-activate disables employee login and moves the staff member to the de-activated list. De-activated staff member can be re-enabled and all information is maintained within the application (staff profile, reporting history, etc.). 'Disable' is a good option for seasonal businesses, student workers, or those that need to report retro-actively.
Delete also disables login, but allows their email address to be free for re-use. Moreover, 'deleted' staff are not able to be visualised within the application. 'Delete' is more of a final action.

What other improvements would you like to see in the staff tab? Please let us know at info@shiftplanning.com.

Happy Scheduling!

2 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Case Study Spotlight: New Orleans Aviation Board (MSY)

The customer service team at Louis Armstrong New Orleans Ariport (MSY) has at least 5 locations that are managed from 5AM to 9PM daily assisting close to 700 passengers every day. MSY Airport takes customer service quite seriously and was recently ranked 4th in travel experience of the 47 busiest United States.

With a fast growing team, the manager of the service operation knew that it would be important to use software to aid in schedule management & creation. With its flexibility and ease-of-use, ShiftPlanning has allowed the manager to scale the operation and add staff and volunteers without adding scheduling man-hours ensuring that he could continue his focus on superior client care.

After working with the site for only a few minutes, I knew this was going to make my job much easier.
- Reed Barnes, New Orleans Aviation Board

The ShiftPlanning team is happy to be of help to the hard working customer team and contribute to keeping MSY passengers satisfied and well serviced.

You can see the full case study at shiftplanning.com/aviationboard.

Happy Scheduling!

3 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

What's New In ShiftPlanning?

The ShiftPlanning team is proud to be a TopTenReviews GOLD Award winner for 2012. We're most thankful of our users. You have helped us to shape the product and make it as functional and easy-to-use as it is today. Last night, we had the chance to release a few more user requested features:

Drag & Drop Shifts Across Employees

We have an exciting update. We've been making the scheduler's drag/drop capabilities more robust over the past few releases, and one of the more requested Drag/Drop features was the ability to move shifts between employees. This helps users save time in navigating the employee scheduler and switching the shifts from one employee to another without having to spend time accessing the 'shift edit' window and changing checkboxes.

Before:
Drag & Drop:
After:

Publish Button Now Hides If Draft/Publish Mode is OFF

The 'Publish' button gives managers control over when the schedule is available for viewing to their staff. However, some users prefer that their schedule always be live. Now if in admin settings the option "Use the Draft/Publish schedule method" is unchecked, the 'Publish' Button will disappear from the scheduler.

With Publish Option:
Without Publish Option:

Recurring Shifts Extended

Previously, shifts could be set to repeat for up to a year. That limit has been increased to three years. Additionally, the date selection can now be made by year for quicker navigation.

Saved Shift Length in Visual View

Now, the default shift length in visual view is 8hrs. However if you create a shift of a certain length, the scheduler will hold state for subsequent shifts.

If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas for the application, please feel free to let us know at info@shiftplanning.com

Happy Scheduling!

3 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Case Study Spotlight: Geek Squad

The Geek Squad is North America's largest and most recognizable tech support company. Geek Squad agents provide in-store, in-home, and remote support.

Before ShiftPlanning, the organization's default scheduling tool was Outlook Calendar. Schedulers had to manage appointments & shifts for staff members in locations across the country. Keeping shift trades and staff communications organized and up-to-date was a major hassle.

Using ShiftPlanning as their employee scheduling tool has enabled them to view their entire department schedule in realtime, sync and access employee schedules from mobile platforms, and manage shift swaps easily and efficiently. ShiftPlanning has helped to ease the load of managers and allowed staff members to take a more active role in scheduling processes.

In the words of, Geek Squad 'Covert Agent' Josh Ussery, ShiftPlanning has offered “Huge improvements over our previous system.”

You can see the full case study at shiftplanning.com/geeksquad.

Happy Scheduling!

3 months ago Allena Rouse 3 Comments

Coming to ShiftPlanning: Internationalization

ShiftPlanning is a global team and we're dedicated to making our platform as accessible as possible. Over the next few months, we'll be rolling out features related to making the application more easy-to-use for globally distributed teams as well as those based internationally.

Date Formats

We've recently added the ability to adjust date format in the admin settings section of the application. Date formatting is quite dynamic across locations around the globe. Though each 'date format' displays the day, month, and year, presentation order and separators vary greatly even within the same country and/or region. Flexible date formatting was often requested by our users and we're glad to have the new addition.

Multi-Timezone Handling

One of our most popular feature requests related to globalization is around muti-region timezone handling (clients wish to assign varied time zones to locations or to positions). There will be key updates in this area in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

Multi-Lingual Platform

In the near future, our work schedule application will be available in many world languages. We also look forward to extending native language support to our international userbase.

Are there any languages that you'd like to see ShiftPlanning in? How would you like to see timezones supported in the applications. If you have any comment or concerns in this area, feel free to reach out to us at info@shiftplanning.com.

Happy Scheduling!

3 months ago Allena Rouse 0 Comments

Case Study Spotlight: Kovac's Grocery

Kovac's is a successful multi-location Missouri area grocer that has been family owned and operated since 1941. Before ShiftPlanning, the store was doing their employee scheduling the traditional way: with paper, pen, and a lot of white-out. This was quite inconvenient as their staff count tallies at around 90 and employee scheduling is needed at a number retail locations. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that most employees were students with very unpredicatable and dynamic availability.

ShiftPlanning's edit/publish features as well as conflict management system make it easy to say goodbye to white-out

Since ShiftPlanning, staff scheduling has become much easier for their retail stores. The staff have responded positively to moving the schedule online and are far more likely to keep track of their shifts. The ShiftPlanning team is glad to hear about the success Kovac's has had with the software and grateful to help the Kovac's team continue to serve the St. Joesph, Missouri community.

Today's staff enjoy being always 'connected.'

You can see the full case study at shiftplanning.com/kovacs.

Happy Scheduling!