Scheduling Employees 2000

Scheduling Employees 2000 is widely used in restaurants and other businesses. The application is designed for managers to schedule personnel resources while monitoring the time and wages as the scheduling process progresses. Daily activities may be detailed by assigning Daytypes.
If your operation is 24 hours a day you may have a cutoff that is not at midnight. Starting with this version, you can specify the hours between which you wish to accumulate totals.
A graph will display the time and wage distribution for a 24 hours period for each hour and the number of employees scheduled for every 15 Minutes. You may specify the hours to use for the scheduling and statistical totals.
The scheduling function needs a Department with Employees to begin scheduling. Schedules are for a one week at the time.
The application is divided in two parts:

1.  The opening screen. It contains functions related to the application, Departments and  Employees.
2.  The Editors perform the scheduling and schedule printing functions.
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The Graph will show the Employee, time and currency distribution for a 24 Hour period with the option to print these statistics.


Frequently Asked Questions

Q - What do I need to start scheduling the employees in my department?
A
- When you first install the program the "Example Department" is a department all set to explore the application. To start scheduling your employees, you need to set up a new Department and enter Employees to that new Department.
Use menu item "Departments", then select "Add new Department" and fill in the form.
After saving the Department information, select "Employees" to add new employees to the new department.
Now when you click on the "Schedule employees" button the Editor will appear ready for you to start scheduling
.

Q
- My work week starts on a Monday, the Editor now show Sunday, how can I change it?
A
- On the opening screen, select "Departments" and "Change Department settings".
Set the new first day of the week and save.

Q - I run a 24 hour business and my cutoff is at 3am, can I get my totals and Editor hours to reflect that?
A
- On the opening screen, select "Departments" and "Change Department settings".
You can now select your cutoff hour between midnight and 8 am.

Q - I finished last week 's schedule. This week, the schedule is almost the same. How can I copy the entire week and just make changes.
A
- In the Editor, show the week you wish to copy.
On the menu, select "Schedules" then "Save current week as…"
The calendar will now show.
Click on any day in this week and the Editor will show the current week ready for the changes.

Q - Can I copy just one day?  I just finished the schedule for Tuesday. The next day Wednesday is almost the same with some minor changes.
A
- To copy Tuesday into Wednesday, click Wednesday in the Editor.
To copy to Wednesday, Wednesday cannot have any schedules in it.
Now click on menu item "Copy" and select "Tuesday".

Q - Sometimes I want to do the scheduling at home, not at work.
A
- In order to take your current schedules to another location, you need to take the database there.
The database contains all the departments, employees and schedules. The database file name is "SEW.MDB".
On the opening screen, select "File" on the menu and click "Backup database".  Give the file a relevant name. The file extension will automatically be ".BAK". Save the file to a Flash drive in your USB port and take it home.  When home, do a "Restore database" and browse for the file you named in the Flash drive.  You will be asked to overwrite the current database, answer "Yes" and re-start the program. Employees and schedules are now the same as the ones at home. 

Q
- I have three store locations (Departments). Some Employees are shared by all the stores. How can I check to make sure these Employees are not assigned to one or more locations at the same time since the Main Editor shows only one Department?
A
- Interdepartmental Schedule Conflicts can be viewed by selecting "Employee" and "Check Interdepartmental Schedule Conflicts". A limited function of the Main Editor will show you the Employee's schedule for all the Departments in which the Employee was entered. You can make any schedule adjustments needed. Note: The employee ID must match in each department.

Q
- Employee are requesting days off, sometimes months ahead.
A -
In the Main Editor, right click on the employee name, in the Week Editor, click on the button. On the year calendar, select or de-select the days off requested and save.
In both Editors, those days will now be marked in red and you are blocked from doing any scheduling.

Q - We do not call our people Employees can I change the word Employees?
A
- In the Department screen, change the name "Employee" to Associate or any other name.

Equipment needed

You will need;

· An IBM or compatible PC
· One fixed(hard) disk.
· Microsoft Windows/95 second edition or later.
· A mouse or pointing device must be attached.
· A Super VGA Monitor or higher display.
· A WINDOWS compatible printer to print reports and schedules.

About Dates

Dates entered in the Employee record, conform to the International setting in the Windows Control Panel.

· Year = YY or YYYY
· Date April 2, YYYY can be entered in any of these formats…
· 2 apr YY  2-Apr-YY  apr 2, YYYY. If the year is omitted, the current system year is inserted.
· If the international setting is MM-DD-YYYY then 4-2-YY or 4-2-YYYY will do the same.
· If there is an error in the date format, a message will alert you.
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Days of the week and Month of the Year are shown in their current regional language settings.

Employee

By selecting Employees on the menu, you can....

· Add and Change Employee information.
· Delete an Employee.
· Transfer Employees between Departments if you have more than one Department.
· Print selected Employee information.
· Show upcoming Birthday and Anniversaries

Employee input screen

Not all the employee information needs to be filled in but the last name of the employee is a must.

Active and Inactive employees

Sometimes employees do not work for an extended period but are expected to return to work in the future.
By marking the Inactive button, the employee will not appear in the editors and schedules but are included in the statistics between dates. If you need information between dates then it is recommended that you mark the employee as Inactive rather then deleting the employee from the database.

Entering employee availability

Mark to time that the employee is NOT available for work.

Printing Employee information

On the first screen under menu item "Reports", you can print information about the department employees. At your option you can specify the information you want to print by selecting the fields.

Dual Assignments

For Employees that consistently have dual assignments, (Cook in the morning and Cashiers in the afternoon), you may consider entering them twice, than schedule them after a sort on Employee ID to prevent overlapping time schedules.

Passwords

This password will restrict your access to one Department only.  If you loose your Password, only the General Manager can reinstate your access by assigning you a new one.  If you are authorized to change your Password, change it on a regular basis.  

Passwords must be between 5 to 12 characters in length.

Password protection(Big boss)

Passwords, once entered will restrict access to the database that contains Department, Employee and Schedule Information .
There are two levels of password access:

· General Manager password(Big boss)
· Department Managers passwords (2)
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The first password to enter will set the General Manager's password. The General Manager may enter up to two passwords per Department, and give them to the Department Managers as a temporary password. Optionally, these passwords can then be changed by the Department Manager. By entering a Department Manager password, that manager has access to only that department.
The General Manager will retain access to all departments. If the General Manager makes his/her password a blank, the password function is bypassed until a new password is entered. The General Manager may hide access to Salaries and Wages from one or both Department Managers.
A password must be between 5 and 12 characters in length.

Productivity feature

Some businesses are measured on productivity. You may select three options to monitor, Sales, Transactions and Labor %. In a restaurant, Transactions would be Meals and Sales would be the Sales forecast. By clicking on "Productivity" on the bottom of the screen, the daily Transaction and Sales figures may be entered. Wages time and/or Salary time may be included. The Labor % is the percentage that the labor cost is of the Sales.

As the scheduling progresses, the ratios and Labor % will be displayed on the bottom of the screen, by day and by week. When printing the 7 day schedule report (Including HTML), you may elect to show the weekly productivity totals and statistics for each day.

Note 1.... If you elect to include the salaries in the Labor percentage, the daily salaries are calculated as the weekly salary divided by the number of days for which a Sales forecast is in place.
Note 2..... If a password is used that is not authorized to see financial information, the Labor percentages will not be shown.

Database backup

Its always a good idea to have copies of the database backed up just in case the current data is destroyed. If you install to a new system or you may be making schedules at home and need to take them to work to print or change, the Backup and Restore function will do that. The menu is on the opening screen under "File". The latest media to back database files are the Flash drives. These modules plug into the USB ports, hold a large amount of data and are easy to transport. When you back up your database, give the backup file a relevant name like a date. The file extension will automatically be added (.BAK). If for some reason you database becomes corrupt, do a "Restore database" and select the backed up file on your Flash drive.

Options

Under Options on the opening screen, you may enter the conditions under which to warn the scheduler that overtime is scheduled. The initial settings are set "Off".
When the daily or weekly hours exceed the settings, the background cells in the Editors that display the totals will be colored red.
Select the editor starting hour so the majority of the employee scheduled will be displayed to the screen without having to scroll. This function is overridden when the statistic hours in the department screen are other than from Midnight to Midnight.

· To flag daily hours over 8, set daily at 8 and  weekly at 168.
· For weekly hours over 40, set weekly at 40 and daily at 24.
· To flag both daily over 8 and  weekly over 40, set daily at 8 and weekly at 40.
·
Options on this screen effect all departments.


Main Editor

To switch from the main Editor to the Employee week Editor, click the mouse on the Employee's name on the left of the screen. To become familiar with the application, the Example Department is created with fictitious names for Employees and a Schedule based on the date of installation. When updating the program with newer versions, your database with Employees and Schedules will be safe and altered.
The Example Department represents a restaurant with Servers, Cashiers and Cooks. Take a look at the screens, edit times in the Editor, sort based on start and stop times (F2 and F3). Currency for Salaried employees, is only shown as a total in the individual Editor and Schedule Reports. No adjustments are made for overtime, the currency totals are strictly time scheduled multiplied by the hourly rate. Totals are highlighted with a red background if the totals exceed the overtime settings under "Options".

· All schedules are maintained in memory until saved.
· You can Sort the employee listing order from the Menu.
· F2 and F3, will sort employees by Start and Stop time.

Set Employee's "Days off"

To prevent scheduling on dates that the employee is not available for work (Vacation days etc.) you are able to mark a calendar.

In the Main Editor, right click on the employee's name.
In the Week Editor there is a button on the bottom of the screen to click that contains the name you chose for blocking days off .

The calendar for the current year will appear. Mark or unmark the dates you wish to change and Save.
In both Editors where you normally schedule, the area will be colored in Red and make it impossible to accidental draw time bars..

Interdepartmental Schedule Conflicts

If you have more than one Department with employees, you may share some employees between two or more Departments
By using this feature, you can make sure that shared employees have no scheduling conflicts.
To activate this feature, click on "Employee" and "Check Interdepartmental Schedule Conflicts" on the menu of the first screen.

Example:

If you have multiple Departments, like three store locations and you have "Floaters" that are assigned to different locations, you want to check for conflicts.
The "Check Interdepartmental Schedule Conflicts" is only available if:

1, You have more than one Department installed.
2, When the Password feature is not used.
3, When the Password feature is used by the "Big Boss".

Make sure that shared employees are active and have the same Employee name and Employee ID in each Department they share.
If you still have the "Example Department" installed, you may wish to delete it.
Since features like "First day of the week" and "Week of the year" are set for each Department, showing multiple Departments will assume the setting in the "Current Department" on the first screen.

Flagging overtime

Under "Options" on the opening screen, you may enter the conditions under which to warn the scheduler that overtime is scheduled.

Assignment column

On the main Editor to the right of the employee name is a multi use column that can be set from the bottom of the screen with options such as Week wages or Daily hours.

Flagging Under-age Employees

Most governments, place limitations on the number of hours and the time of day that employees are allowed to work if the employee is below a lawful age. Under "Options" on the opening screen, you may set the employee age. In the employee's weekly Editor, a warning flag will advise the scheduler if the currently displayed employee is below that age, based on the current system date and the date of birth in the Employee Record.

Navigating in the Editor


To navigate between weeks, you can make use of the buttons above.
If you wish to see a particular week, click on Load and a calendar will appear from which you can select a date.

Employee statistics between dates

If you have a need to have the accumulated time scheduled between two dates,  click "Reports" on the first screen.
The information will show on the screen first, a copy can be printed.  Information for Wages and Salaries are shown separate and is broken down by the days of the week.

Week numbers

For our customers in Europe, it is important that weeks in a year have a number. Each week can have a unique number. The question is where does the first week of a new year begin. Based on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) a week starts on a Monday and ends with Sunday. The first week of the year starts as soon as 4 days in a week are in the new year.
Scheduling employees 2000 gives you flexibility to set the first day of the week and a criteria for setting the first week of the year. The selection is set under the options in the Department screen. If you do not want to use the feature, you can turn it off. The week numbers are shown on the day of the week label bottom-right.

Making a new Time bar

Start and stop times are entered by pointing the mouse at an editor line, pressing the left button and holding it down while dragging the mouse from left to right or right to left.

Move a Time bar

Pointing to the Time bar away from either end and while holding down the left button, will allow movement from left to right. Any conflict or override with existing bar will be resolved automatically.

To move a Time bar past the end of the current day example:
Example: To enter time from 11 pm on day one, to 3 am on day two.

· Enter 4 hours in day one from 6 pm to 10 pm.
· Point the mouse to the first hour and  move the beginning of the bar to 11 pm.
· The remaining time will now appear in next day.
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Changing a Time bar

Pointing the mouse to the beginning or the end of a bar will allow stretching or decreasing the bar size while you press down the left mouse button.

Deleting a Time bar

A double click anywhere on the bar will delete a Time bar.    For deleting a line of  Time bars, press the right mouse button and select "Cut", Time bar

Copying a line of bars

To copy a Time bar point at that line and pressing the right mouse button and select "Copy".   Now point to the line to "Paste" the lines copied (This must be a line without bars) and press the  left button on "Paste". The line is now copied.

Copying a day of schedules

To copy a day of schedules to another day, go to the target day that has no schedule. Select "Copy" on the menu and select the day you wish to copy.

Copying a week's schedule

To copy an entire week's schedule, select "Schedules" and "Save current week as.." on the menu. When the calendar appears, select any date in the week you wish to save too. The desired week is now ready to be edited and saved.  You should only forward copy a week of schedules.

Loading a schedule

When the main editor first appears, the schedule for the current week is shown. You can also load a past or future week's schedule by selecting menu item Load week schedule. A calendar will be shown with the first day of the any week marked in red. Select any date within the week you wish to work with. You can change the month and year on the bottom of the calendar.

Time bar

· The Time bar is a thick line representing a start time on the left and a stop time on the right.
· The color of the Time bar is set in the Employee record.
· You can have up to 7 Start and Stops each day and up to 34 Starts and Stops each week.
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To move a Time bar past the end of the current day example:
Example: To enter time from 11 pm on day one, to 3 am on day two.

· Enter 4 hours in day one from 6 pm to 10 pm.
· Point the mouse to the first hour and  move the beginning of the bar to 11 pm.
· The remaining time will now appear in next day.

Setting up a Shift

When you click on a line of bars with the right mouse button, you will have the option to save this line as a shift.   This way, rather than entering a day's schedule by dragging the mouse, you can point to a blank line that has no Time bars and select the shift you wish to enter.
Up to 10 shifts may be stored.

Department daily memo

A department daily memo can be entered for each day.  You can add reminders to any day. There is no limit on the size of the memo. The memo form is opened by clicking on the label next to the day name that has the "+" sign.  If the label is marked in red,  the day has a memo attached to it.  On the 7 Day Schedule report,  you can print these memos as an option at the end of the schedules.

Headcount feature

The Headcount feature shows the number of people scheduled between hours.  It has always been available on the Linegraph screen. You can turn the feature on or off.  The reason the Headcount feature was added is because same managers are measured on Headcount based on sales per hour. The count shows up on top of the screen between the hours of the day. The Headcount number may not be a whole number.  The count of .25 means that one employee is scheduled for 15 minutes.  

Daytypes

Daytypes are one or two character codes that represents an activity for a day.

Example Daytypes are;

PH for Phone duty
MA
for Main store
S
for Sick day
BD
for Bathroom cleaning Duty

Do not use Daytypes to schedule vacations, use the "Day off" function.
These codes are entered to the right of the multi use column next to the employee name in both Editors. You can select, add, change or delete a Daytype. As an option, they will be shown in the printed schedules.
If you click on the cell (So the cell has the focus) you can insert a selected Daytype from menu item "Daytype".
The character W cannot be used as part of any Daytype.
The maximum number of Daytypes is 50 .

Department

By selecting Departments on the menu, you can:

· Set up a new Department.
· Change the name of the Department
· Delete a Department
· Set the hours that collect the statistics for each day.
· Set the first day of the week.
· Set the current Department (If there are more than one).
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To do any scheduling, you must have at least one Department with Employees in it.

Employee availability for work

The Employee non availability is entered with the mouse, the same as in the Editors. By doing this, the Employee availability is now visible on demand in the Editors graphically by clicking on Availability on the bottom of the Editor screens.
You can copy a line of Time bars by pointing to it and pressing the Right mouse button.
Point to the location to copy to and press right again.

Time and Wages Graph

By clicking on the Line graph button in the Editor, the Time and Wages distribution will be shown.

· This graph will show your "Headcount" for each 15 minute period during the day.
· It will also show the total wages for each hour.
· Initially, all assignments will be displayed.  
· By clicking on  assignment, the graph will show more detail.
· You may elect to see more then just one assignment.
· Each 15 Minute period is represented with a graph line.
· The first quarter of each hour is represented by a Red line.
· The second quarter by a White line.
· The third quarter by a Blue line
· The fourth quarter of by a Yellow line.
·
Salaried Employee are excluded from any currency calculations, only hourly Employees are reflected in the currency totals, time includes all Employees.
To identify peaks and valleys, click on Show white.  
A report with the 15 Minutes statistics and hourly Headcount will print when you click on Print or Print preview.

Bar chart

The Bar chart displays the 24 hour period starting with the current day.  You can selectively show the start and stop times by multiple assignments.

The Bar chart may be printed from the Main Editor under menu item Print schedules.  You also have the option to print the Bar chart for the entire week and sort each day by start or stop time before printing.
Unless specified, the report will print as many days as possible on each sheet, saving paper.

Employee's Birthdays and Anniversaries

You can list upcoming Birthday and Anniversaries of employees for a specified number of days. For this option to work, the Employee hiring date and date of birth must be filled in.
Select "Employees" and "Birthdays and Anniversaries" on the Menu of the opening screen.

Print schedules

The printed schedule has work start and stop times between midnight and midnight 24 hours later.  Totals are printed if requested, these totals reflect the totals between the 24 hour period that you selected in the Department screen.
Starting at version 1.9, all reports have a "Print preview" option. You can adjust fonts, orientation etc.
By right and left clicking the mouse button, the image will be shown larger and smaller.
From the bottom menu, you can also look at each page to be printed.

The smaller the Font size, the more names will print on a single page! The printer must have enough memory. The print-order is the same as the schedule displayed on the screen. As an option you may print Time and or Currency totals as  part of the output. With the exception of the Bar Chart report, daily times and currencies are for shifts and include any time and wages past midnight. The Bar Chart report time is for the 24 hours period shown.

The daily totals for some Employees may be off slightly if partial hours are worked, causing rounding errors. Time and currency totals do not include any break times that were set up in the Editor. No adjustments are made for Overtime, the currency totals are strictly time scheduled, multiplied by the hourly rate.
Some businesses want the last stop time flexible and have the option to dismiss employees earlier or later then the planned schedule. Before printing, "The last stop time of the day" will allow you to print the text to replace the last stop time for each day.

Note:
From the opening screen, you can print a seven day schedule where selected department are included. If a Password is used, only the "Big boss" will have access to that report. Since different departments may have their own options such as first day of the week, options settings from the current department are used.

HTML files

HTML files are files that you can publish on the Internet. For reports that can be exported to HTML (.HTM) files, the "HTML Review" and "HTML Save" buttons will be shown. In the translation to HTML files, some formatting is changed but what you saved as an HTML file is fairly close to what the HTML preview shows.

Setting up a Network

The database (Sew.mdb) that contains Department, Employees and Scheduling information is by default in the same folder as the program and transparent to the user.
With more systems connected to networks however you can access the (Sew.mdb) database on a server in a remote location.
The database (Sew.mdb) must be in a folder, not in a Root Directory.

Select "File" and "Network path" on the first screen.
Select the alternate path to the database. If the path is valid the path will show in green.
If you do not want the user on this system to have access to the database for Backup, Restore etc. you can make the menu choices unavailable.
The database path will show on the first screen.
You can set the workstation authorization to restrict scheduling and to Hide Salaries and Wages.  Password authorization overrides restriction set up for the Network.

Sometimes, you may have many workstations making inquiries to the database as "Read only".  In that case most customers will have a "Mirror" database (sew.mdb) in a separate folder on the server and restrict the workstations from making changes to schedules.

Important note:   If you mark "Make path or authorization changes", you must delete file "NetworkPath.Dat" to make Network options available as choices again.

Program License Agreement  

A "Single registration".
A single registration allows one install on one system or workstation.
Exception: If a you have this program installed at work and take the database home to do scheduling, only a single registration is needed.

A "Site license".
A site license covers a single organization in one mailing address (building complex). If you buy a site license, you may use the program in an unlimited number of your company's computers within this area. Site license is very cost-effective if you have more then two computers.  Any external installs need an additional single registration.

Conditional use
Read the following terms and conditions before using the program. By using or accepting this program, you indicate that you accept the terms and conditions set forth bellow.
Guia International Corp. provides this program and licenses its use. You assume responsibility for the selection of these programs to achieve your intended results, and for the installation, use and results obtained from the programs.

Limited warranty
The programs are provided without warranty either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event, will Guia International Corp. be liable to you for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other lost incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use such programs even if Guia International Corp. or any of its agents or dealers had been advised of the possibility of such damages. You acknowledge that you have read this agreement, understand it and agree to be bound by its terms and conditions.

05-17-07