The secret to getting new patrons is spelled “F-U-N”

03 Feb, 2014 | Tags: bar schedules, bar scheduling, bar scheduling software, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling programs, Employee Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Scheduling Software, restaurant schedules, restaurant scheduling, restaurant scheduling software, Scheduling Software, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, workforce schedule, Workforce Scheduling

Your restaurant is unique, with a style all its own. You’ve worked hard to create an atmosphere that welcomes patrons to spend some time eating good food, relaxing at the bar with a martini or glass of wine, and enjoying the company of friends.

But you’re well aware that your restaurant is not the only game in town. You vie for patrons with many other establishments in your general area. And while you have a large number of loyal locals, you need to attract new patrons from other areas of town who want to do more than just eat and run—but to eat, drink, and hang out for the evening. This is the best way to ensure your restaurant’s long-term success.

So what do you do to attract more patrons? How about turning part of your bar area into a game area? You can place ads in the local newspapers and online, and hang a funky sign in the doorway that proclaims, “Game Room,” with a hand pointing to the new game zone. While the older crowd might have little interest in pool, younger folks will be delighted to spend their money on pool, darts, cocktails and appetizers—and you’ll be happy with your new patrons and profitable venture.

You can expand on the “fun” theme by adding activities like trivia nights, comedians, musicians and other “bar” games such as darts. Trivia nights are sweeping the nation and bringing large crowds to bars. Many patrons will remember happy days in college, when their on-site bar sponsored a weekly darts league. They’ll fondly reminisce about the Thursday nights they spent with dozens of students and friends, vying for the top spot on the leader board. Like many restaurants, pubs, and bars, your games atmosphere has the potential for huge success—not only in terms of bringing in new clientele, but also in significantly boosting bar revenue.

At the end of the day, you’ll benefit not only from excellent earnings, but also dozens of new and frequent patrons looking for good food, good drinks, and a good time. So the moral of the story is, “To get patrons to spend more time—and money—at your establishment, you don’t have to spend a lot of money—just spend it on things that spell F-U-N.”

Don’t forget that What Time Do I Work.com scheduling software can assign duties and tasks to your staff to ensure that all patrons receive excellent customer service and that you bar is adequately staffed at all times. You can try it out free for 30 days!

How can Scheduling Software Reduce Employee Labor Costs?

31 Dec, 2013 | Tags: bar scheduling software, conflict free schedules, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling programs, Employee Scheduling Software, Employees Schedules, hospital schedules, hospital scheduling software, hotel scheduling software, job schedule, Job Scheduling Software, Medical Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, online scheduling program, restaurant schedules, Retail Scheduling, Scheduling staff members, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, What Time do I Work, Work Scheduler, workscheduling

As a business owner, you want your organization to thrive. An important part of ongoing success is tracking every aspect of operations—from facilities management to supplies ordering. You must also keep track of costs—including labor costs, which many analysts claim is your highest expense.

To control labor costs, you must understand who works when for how many hours at what rate. Gathering this type of insight requires careful:

Planning
Scheduling
Analysis
Reporting

But here’s the problem—finding the time to complete all these necessary tasks, when there are so many other things on your list of things to do.

If these business analytics seem beyond your reach, then maybe it’s time to consider something new—such as an online-work schedule solution that not only helps you create accurate work schedules quickly and easily, but also shows you at glance:

Employee pay rates
Weekly costs per employee
Overtime warnings

Rather than spend time performing in-depth manual analysis with paper and pen, online scheduling software from What Time Do I Work automates the entire process and creates a real-time 360-degree view of your labor costs. Offering point-and-click simplicity, What Time Do I Work is a comprehensive yet easy-to-use online scheduling solution that enables you to:

Enter employee information, including names, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, and requested time off
Create a new schedule by simply moving time slots to the appropriate names on your schedule template
Immediately correct mistakes, if you happen to select a name for a time slot that the employee requested off; simply move the time slot to a different name
See real-time labor hours, labor costs, and overtime hours; this information automatically updates directly on the schedule
Improve profits and boost your organization’s success

To discover for yourself just how much time and money you can save by using our web scheduling software, you can test drive it for free. There’s no obligation, and no credit card is required to sign up. For complete information on our web scheduling software, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/

How do you create a Time-off Policy

17 Dec, 2013 | Tags: bar scheduling software, conflict free schedules, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Schedules, Employee Scheduling, employee scheduling programs, Employee Scheduling Software, hospital scheduling software, hotel scheduling software, job schedule, Job scheduling, Job Scheduling Software, Medical Scheduling, Medical Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, online scheduling program, restaurant schedules, restaurant scheduling software, Retail Scheduling, Scheduling Software, Scheduling tools, Staff Scheduling, Staff Scheduling Software, What Time do I Work, Whattimedoiwork.com, Work Scheduling, Workforce Scheduling

For many companies, managing vacation and time-off requests is a constant challenge. You need to maintain adequate business coverage and support while understanding that your employees have times when they need to take time off. The outcome of not having a formal policy in place about when and how to submit requests results in employees asking for time off by:

Talking to you in the hallway or your office
Calling you on the phone
Sending you an email
Scribbling the days and dates on a piece of paper and dropping it on your desk
Taping a note to your office door

These types of requests are not only hard to deal with on the fly, becasue of the no boundaries on “acceptable ways to request time off,” but you are also tasked with trying to keep track of who requested what time off. And if you have two employees requesting the same days off, who gets first dibs?

There are many different options and ways to create policies, but the most common in the service and health industries is to create a “time-off bank.” Here’s how the bank works. Let’s say each employee is allowed 160 hours off each year, which equates to 20 work days. The bank includes time off for:

Holidays
Vacation
Sick days
Personal days

You can’t always give all your employees all of the holidays off, so they can use their banked time to request vacations or personal/sick days off. Each employee is responsible for scheduling the days he or she wants off from work, using a single prescribed method, within the needs of the business. You can require that requests are submitted for planned time off within 2 weeks of the date, and that they must submit requests on special forms that are filed away for you to refer to when creating upcoming schedules

This plan offers many benefits to employees. They can:

Ensure that their time off request will not be forgotten
Assume responsibility for their own time off; they make their own choices, and they need to abide by them. For example, some employees might prefer a day off for religious holidays, rather than the Fourth of July.
Draw from their time-off bank for emergencies, such as caring for a sick child. Remember, the bank is for all time off—holidays, vacation, sick days, and personal days.

The plan also offers many benefits to you. You will:

Spend significantly less time managing time-off requests; all requests will come to you through the standard form submitted in the “time-off request box”
Create more accurate schedules that require fewer changes, as you no longer have to try to remember who asked for what time off?
Empower your employees by letting them make more choices about how they spend their time away from work
Create a more positive working atmosphere at your company

All of these ways are great, but they are still time consuming, especially when going through all the requests each time you make the schedule. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way for the requests to be waiting for you right on the schedule? How about knowing when each request was submitted so that you can grant requests in a first come first serve method? The solution is available today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com and there are many other benefits far beyond tracking time-off requests and auto-populating them right into the schedule.

Automatic alerts to scheduling conflicts and overtime hours
Calculation of Labor costs as the schedule is created
Posting of the Schedule online allowing employees easy access without picking up the phone
Communications sent to your entire staff as soon as a new schedule is posted.

We are so sure that our software will solve your scheduling needs that we offer the first 30 days at no charge, with no obligation.

Learn more here.

What are the benefits of Online Employee Scheduling Software vs. the Traditional Methods?

05 Dec, 2013 | Tags: bar scheduling software, conflict free schedules, Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, employee schedule template, Employee Scheduling, Employee Scheduling Software, hospital schedules, How do I create Conflict free schedules, job schedule, Job Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, online schedule, Online Scheduling, restaurant schedules, restaurant scheduling software, Schedule, schedule program, Schedules, Scheduling, scheduling best practices, Scheduling Programs, Scheduling Software, Scheduling tools, Staff Scheduling, staff scheduling softrware, web based scheduling software, Web Scheduling Software, What is the best online scheduling software, Why do I need Online scheduling software, Work Scheduler, Work Scheduling, Workforce Scheduling

Mr. Kennedy owns a midsize company called Kennedy Linens2Go, which supplies linens to hospitality businesses in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. The company operates a fleet of trucks that picks up dirty linens and drops off clean ones on a regularly scheduled basis. The principle staff members at Kennedy Linens2Go include truck drivers and linen washers.

During the majority of the year, scheduling the drivers and washers is a relatively quick and easy task. Workers have their preferred hours and shifts, and there are relatively few requests for time off. But in the summertime, workers want time off for vacations at the beach, to travel, and to spend time with their kids. Then during the holidays, people request time off to shop and attend special functions and spend time with friends and family. During these times of the year, Mr. Kennedy spends many hours each week preparing the weekly employee work schedules.

For Mr. Kennedy, creating an employee schedule for a typical pre-holiday week means:

Accepting time-off requests from the staff via the phone, in his office, notes left on his desk or passing by in the hallway
Creating a schedule based upon what Mr. Kennedy thought were all the requests
Getting three last-minute requests from workers who forgot that Monday was the day to submit time-off requests
Throwing away the original schedule and starting over again
Finishing the second schedule, only to find that he forgot to include two part-time drivers
Starting again on schedule number three
Finally posting the schedule in the employee lunch room only to have one employee complain that they cannot work their scheduled shift after half of the employees have already seen the weekly schedule
Once again he must start over for draft 4, and then contact all his employees to inform them that a new schedule is available

After two months of pre-holiday scheduling frustration, Mr. Kennedy needs some time off himself.

Rather than a vacation, Mr. Kennedy needs a new way to create weekly employee schedules. He needs a method that is quick and easy during every week of the year, even during the holidays. He also needs a much more efficient way to notify his employees of newly posted shifts and to avoid spending hours on the phone giving each of his employees their upcoming schedule, when they are not working. He needs to stop working in his business and start spending time on his business.

Luckily the perfect solution is available today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com. By offering, simple, flexible, realistic, easy-to-use online employee scheduling software, WhatTimeDoIWork.com enables Mr. Kennedy to store all his employees’ names, departments, skillsets, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, and requested time off in one online location. With point-and-click simplicity, Mr. Kennedy can create an employee schedule in minutes. And because all time-off and shift requests are stored in the software, Mr. Kennedy receives an alert when a scheduling conflict appears—such as trying to schedule a part-time driver on a day when she doesn’t work. Schedule changes are just as easy—Mr. Kennedy can simply cut-and-paste a time slot to a new name. Even better, all new schedules and changes are distributed to all staff members via email or smart phone, and remain accessible online to the entire staff 24×7. No more calling his entire staff not only when a new schedule is posted, but if there are any updates to the schedule.

Mr. Kennedy will find numerous benefits from online scheduling software:

No more keeping notes of when employees want time off
Ability to manage/update/change a schedule at any time
No-shows are reduced; schedules are always available to the entire staff, so they all know their shifts
No more paper schedules are required
Employees can find their own replacements to cover in an emergency—removing Mr. Kennedy from the equation
Automatic alerts of overtime hours or scheduling conflicts while creating the original employee schedule, which will cut down labor costs
View labor dollars as the schedule is created
Remind employees of upcoming shifts to eliminate no shows

To sign up for online employee scheduling software, Mr. Kennedy can simply visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/free-trial/. He can discover for himself how much time, effort, and frustration he’ll save by moving his employee work schedules online.

Try it out today with our 30 day no obligation free trial. And when we say free we mean free:

No credit card is necessary to try the software
No service contracts or hidden fees
No downloads required

How to Schedule Efficiently In the Cloud

14 Nov, 2013 | Tags: Employee Schedule, Employee schedule calendar, Employee Scheduling, Employee Scheduling Software, Employees Schedules, job schedule, Job Scheduling Software, online employee scheduling software, Online Restaurant Scheduling Software, online schedule, Online Scheduler, Online Scheduling, online scheduling program, restaurant schedules, Retail Scheduling, Schedule, Scheduling Software, Scheduling staff members, Staff Scheduling Software, Web Scheduling Software, What Time do I Work, Whattimedoiwork.com, Work Scheduler, Work Scheduling, Workforce Scheduling, workscheduling

When you look to the future and see yourself repeating the same manual scheduling process, every single week, from now until who knows when, how do you feel? Frustrated? Overwhelmed? Exhausted? Bored? Or perhaps a combination of all four.

Let’s consider that the “same old thing” is creating your restaurant’s weekly staff schedule. Every week, you:

Pull out a new schedule sheet or spreadsheet
Gather together this week’s requests for time off and preferred shifts
Get prepared for requests to come in after you complete the schedule
Plug in names to time slots
Take a break and drink some coffee
Return to your office, review the schedule for accuracy, and correct any mistakes
Tentatively post the schedule on a wall somewhere

Now let’s consider a new future—one where creating the weekly staff schedule is a fast, easy, and stress-free task. In this new future, there is no paper, no pencil, no spreadsheet, and no haphazardly received requests for time off and shift changes. No more need for a calculator to avoid overtime shifts. This new world also includes virtually instantaneous changes to schedules to accommodate illness or emergencies, with automatic real time communication to all employees about updated schedules that are available. Even more, this brave new world of job scheduling reduces no-shows because your workers are better informed about when they work (and can set up alerts to remind them of upcoming shifts).

Let’s consider that the “same old thing” is creating your restaurant’s weekly staff schedule. Every week, you:

Pull out a new schedule sheet or spreadsheet
Gather together this week’s requests for time off and preferred shifts
Get prepared for requests to come in after you complete the schedule
Plug in names to time slots
Take a break and drink some coffee
Return to your office, review the schedule for accuracy, and correct any mistakes
Tentatively post the schedule on a wall somewhere

If the new future sounds like the right future for you, you can get it now by choosing our online employee scheduling software. Our unique program has advanced features yet easy-to-use. Some of the great time and money saving features include:

Build new schedules based on saved versions of past schedules
Speed up the scheduling process with all the needed employee information—name, contact information, preferred shifts, time off requests, departments, pay rates, hire dates—in one central location
Create conflict-free schedules; if you make a mistake, such as try to schedule an employee in a time slot he requested off, the software alerts you immediately
Store all schedules and employee information in the cloud, where it remains available 24×7 from anywhere
Eliminate random phone calls and other ways that employees request time off
Free up time in your own schedule for more important activities—like running your business
Significantly improve employee communications because workers:
- Can see when there are open shifts, and offer to pick up extra hours when they want
- Receive each week’s schedule and all schedule changes on their smart phone or email
- Can find their own replacements without having to bother you

No matter what your industry, What Time Do I Work’s Online Scheduling Software has the solution to your scheduling needs. Discover for yourself just how much time and energy you can save by using our employee scheduling software. Sign up today for your no obligation 30 day Free Trial at https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/free-trial/.