MrSchedule.com Blog

A long awaited update to MrSchedule.com.

We have been all about hitting a particular labor percentage target since our inception. Recently it has come to our attention that many groups are using sales per man hour ($/mh) when making schedules. After some consultation with our programmers, we have determined that our system suites $/mh very well.

We are in the process of testing the $/mh solution with a new group. Early testing indicates that our system suites the needs of restaurants using $/mh very well.

We hope to update our site with a full version of the new scheduling system in the very near future.

If you are interested in testing the new format, please contact our sales dept at 1-800-793-5120, and we can get an account set up for you, and begin testing.

Best of luck,
Rick

We have received some questions regarding how to deal with managers who don’t count as labor when they run a shift but do count against labor when they aren’t running the shift.
In these cases I will refer you to the article “Split Shifts”.

You should create this employee as two employees in MrSchedule.com. For the purposes of this article, we will call this manager “John”.

There are a couple of possible situations for John.

Situation 1.

John runs the shift on Sunday 3p-1 and Monday 3p-1. The remainder of the week, John has a set shift that he works. John works 11-7p Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Situation 2.

John runs the shift an Sunday 3p-1 and Monday 3p-1. The remainder of the week, John acts as a regular employee and has no set shift. John is available each day the remainder of the week from 10 - 10pm and does not work any overtime.

Let’s set up John for situation 1.

The first John will be the manager who does not count against labor for the Sunday and Monday.
1. Create an employee John Smith, with username John1.
2. Fill out all of his information per normal.
3. For availabilities, set him up as available on Sunday and Monday from 3p-1.
4. Set his daily max for each of the two days to 10hrs.
5. Set his weekly max to 20 hrs.
6. Select the Salary Mgr checkbox so that he will not count against labor.

Next we set up John as a hourly manager who does count against labor for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
1. Create an employee John Smith, with username John2.
2. Fill out all of his information per normal.
3. For availabilities, set him up as available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11-7p.
4. Set his daily max for each of the three days to 8hrs.
5. Set his weekly max to 24 hrs.
6. Select the Hourly Mgr checkbox so that he will count against labor.

Finally, navigate to the postitions icon, and click on the Manager Shifts tab. You should find John1 listed under salary managers, and John2 listed under hourly managers. In the Salary section, enter John’s shifts for Sunday and Monday (3p-1). In the hourly section endter John’s shifts for Thursday, Friday and Saturday (11-7p).

John is now setup for situation 1. He will be scheduled for the specific shifts that you want him to be scheduled, and will be scheduled 4 hours of overtime each week this schedule is followed.

Let’s set up John for situation 2.

The first John will be the manager who does not count against labor for the Sunday and Monday.
1. Create an employee John Smith, with username John1.
2. Fill out all of his information per normal.
3. For availabilities, set him up as available on Sunday and Monday from 3p-1.
4. Set his daily max for each of the two days to 10hrs.
5. Set his weekly max to 20 hrs.
6. Select the Salary Mgr checkbox so that he will not count against labor.

Next we set up John as a hourly manager who does count against labor, and has no set shift for the remainder of the week.
1. Create an employee John Smith, with username John2.
2. Fill out all of his information per normal.
3. For availabilities, set him up as available on Tuesday -  Saturday from 10-10p.
4. Set his daily max for each of the five days.  (This can be set to whatever you like.  John has 20 hours left of a 40 hour weekly availability left for the week.  He could work a few hours per day for several days to achieve his limit, or he could work 10 hours per day on two days, giving him three days off per week.)
5. Set his weekly max to 20 hrs.
6. Select the employee checkbox so that he will count against labor.

Finally, navigate to the postitions icon, and click on the Manager Shifts tab. You should find John1 listed under salary managers.  In the Salary section, enter John’s shifts for Sunday and Monday (3p-1).

John is now setup for situation 2.   He will be scheduled for the specific shifts that you want him to be scheduled on Sunday and Monday.  MrSchedule.com’s scheduling will determine when he can be best used the remainder of the week based on his availabilties, hour caps, and skill levels compared to other available employees.  Assuming that since John is a manager two days per week, he should achieve his 40 hours combined max per week.  If you find that John is receiving overtime that he shouldn’t, please check that his weekly maximum totals as an employee plus his weekly hours scheduled as a manager do not exceed 40 hours.  

You should also note that you need to ensure that you do not create an availability for John 2 that overlaps with his manager shift.  As good as John is, if John1 and John2 are scheduled at the same time, John will find that he is short an employee.

I hope that this help resolve any issues that you have with splitting a manger who at times does not count against labor but at other times does count against labor.

As always, you are welcome to contact customer support at support@MrSchedule.com for further information about your particular situations.

Have a Great day.

Rick

With MrSchedule.com, your employees can check their schedules, submit time-off requests and communicate using the dedicated employee portal!

It’s easy to setup and can help reduce phone calls from employees who are just checking to see if they work or not - calls that always seem to come at the busiest times…  This valuable built-in resource saves time and allows your managers to focus a little more on the restaurant and the customers.

Smart scheduling begins with YOU…
Promoting the MrSchedule.com Employee Portal is simple.  Once logged in, managers can click the Employees icon in the toolbar and then click the Employee Participation link in the submenu.  There, you will find instructions and resources outlining three simple steps to success.

It’s more than just checking schedules…

Form to submit/track requests.

One of the jewels of the Employee Portal is the time-off request system.  For many restaurants, time-off requests translate to scraps of paper taped to a door or tacked to a bulletin board.  What happens to those slips of paper is anyones guess.  With our system, the request is logged and its status is always visible to the employee (there is also a history for managers).  Managers have the option to approve or reject the request.  Once the request is approved, the system will not forget it.  The employee will not be scheduled on the approved date.  Time off requests can be made for any future date…  Could be next week or next year - it makes no difference!

Best of Luck,
Rick

How much time are your managers spending creating schedules?

Are your managers performing all of the calculations required to make accurate schedules or are they just guessing?

Do you lose employees who say that they didn’t think they were supposed to work, because they had asked for that day off?
(Maybe the scrap of paper they left on the office desk just got lost)

Do you find employees receiving unauthorized overtime?

Are you sure that your managers are keeping in mind Minor Employee Limitations when scheduling?

Do your managment teams consistently achieve you labor goals? (Which daypart has to suffer to achieve those goals?)

What would happen if your schedule system could project your specific sales trends?

What would happen if you could complete a week’s schedules in a half-hour?

What would happen if you didn’t have dozens of time off requests lying around your offices that could get lost or magically dissappear?

Would you save time? Would you save money?

Of course you would! 

Fortunately, it is now possible to do everything I just mentioned, and a whole lot more, with MrSchedule.com - the online scheduling service from Benson Research, Inc.

We didn’t just create a tool to help you format your schedules and make them look pretty.  Instead, we analyzed schedules from the ground up, we interviewed the top schedule designers.  We studied them from every angle until we could create fantastic schedules again and again.  We took all we had learned and transformed it into more than 78,000 lines of code.

Our computers use this code to duplicate the tasks their human counterparts spent hours performing and automated the tasks into a process which now takes seconds!

MrSchedule.com doesn’t just make pretty schedules… Our systems makes completed schedules for you!  Using the concept of Computer Assisted Scheduling, the system monitors sales trends, then automatically schedules shifts according to the labor percentage specified by you for your restaurants.

Employees are ranked based on their skills to ensure that your strongest team members are allocated appropriately along each of your schedules.

Your employees can submit time-off requests to the system. Once your managers review and approve each request they will automatically be accounted for. It doesn’t matter if the request is two weeks, two months, or two years in the future… Once approved, MrSchedule will not schedule that employee for the approved time-off, and will find the next most qualified available person to replace them!

One of the core goals of MrSchedule.com is to greatly reduce the amount of time that your scheduling manager spends on the creation process. By automating the tedious, repetitive mathematical calculations, human error is virtually eliminated and the focus of the manager begins to shift away repetative mathmatical calulations towards building the individual skills of the employees.

The benefit is two-fold;

With MrSchedule.com the manager has more time to build that well-round work force…
A well-rounded work force helps the system create better schedules…

Your restaurant benefits…

From a well trained staff, scheduled to work to best serve your guests when they are in the restaurant.

Your managment teams are not frustrated by having to find the hours previously required each week to make schedules.