New mobile / iPhone friendly employee schedule viewer

Make it easy for your employees to stay up to date with their scheduled work times with the new mobile / iPhone friendly employee schedule viewer. In the bottom section of the Edit Employee Schedule form, the link for the employee can be found:

For now, you will need to copy and paste the link and send it to the employee. We are evaluating enchantments to automate the passing out of the view links to employees.

Some items to keep in mind:
- The link displays all schedules the employee appears on. Schedules for a given employee are searched for based on the employee's SchedulerID, not the employee's name.
- Employees can only view schedules that have been published. Once you have finished editing a schedule, publish it so employees can view it on both the employee schedule viewer and the group web link you can add to your web site.
- If a view code has been entered, employees will need to enter it to access their schedules.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

New Add Employee Select List

Up until now, the Add Employee button could only add a new, blank employee to a schedule. A newly added feature places a drop list including all the employees from the active schedules next to the Add Employee button. Picking one of the employees and pressing Add Employee will add the chosen employee and copy in the employee's properties and schedule. To determine which schedule and properties to copy in, the active schedules are searched, and the instance of the employee that was most recently updated is used to copy the schedule and properties from. Note that if the new employee box was checked, the box is unchecked when copying to the new schedule--the thought being an employee can only be new for one pay period. The New Employee option at the top of the list will add a new blank employee to the schedule much like the Add Employee button did before the the new drop list was added.


To make it easier to edit schedules, a new red X has been added to each day of the week in the Edit Employee Schedule window. Clicking this icon will clear all the selections for that day. Remember you still need to press the Save Edits button after using this new clear selections icon.



Note:
When using the Add Employee drop list, you may see the same employee multiple times. The cause of this is two fold: instead of using the Copy link to make a copy of a schedule when moving to the next pay period, and making any needed changes to the copy, a new schedule was created and the Add Employee button was used to add new blank employees to build out the new schedule; or when an employee had fallen off a schedule, the only option was to use the Add Employee button to add them back on the schedule they reappeared on. These two practices caused an employee to be duplicated in the drop down list because each time the Add Employee button was pressed, a new employee with a unique Scheduler ID was created, but the same name was reused when adding the new employee.

If this explanation is confusing, don't worry. As long as an employee's schedule and properties are checked over and accurate, there is not much harm in these duplicate entries. The main point to note is that when rolling to the next pay period, use the Copy link to copy the base schedule and then make any needed changes to the copy (update header, start and end dates, etc.). Over time the old schedules with the duplicate entries will fall off and the employee drop list will automatically clean itself of the duplicate employees.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

Edit Employee Schedule Enhancements

Near the bottom of the Edit Employee Schedule form, you will see three new items:


This employee apprears on the following other schedules
This is a list of the schedules that this employee is present on with a link icon that will take you right to that employee on that schedule. This is handy for tasks like making sure when an employee has left the company, you have removed them from all the future schedules.

Employee Last Updated
Displays the time this employee was last updated.

Employee's SchedulerID
This is an ID number the scheduler uses to identify employees across schedules. In general you will not need to worry about this ID, but it is displayed here as a convenience in the event it is needed to troubleshoot a problem.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

Reduce Employer Liability With Sign-Off Sheets

Latest press release for schedule-my-employees.com:

Reduce Employer Liability With Sign-Off Sheets: "Companies fear employee lawsuits more than any other legal threat. New hire and pay period sign-off sheets can help a company's defense in the face of an employee lawsuit. New features in schedule-my-employees.com make creating sign-off sheets easy."

Reduce Employer Liability With Sign-Off Sheets

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

Local Keyword Generator Gets New Features

From time to time we take on marketing projects. We have developed some special tools to help in these efforts. One of these tools is the Local Keyword Generator. This tool makes it easy to create localized keyword lists for use in Internet advertising systems like Google AdWords.

We needed the ability to target all the states in the USA so we added some new features:

• Include all USA State Names in Locations
• Include all USA State Abbreviations in Locations
• Check box to scrub " [ ] from entered keyword & permutator lists
• Fixed a bug that prevented the zip code removal feature from operating

Anyone that has tried to create or maintain a localized keyword list by hand should immediately fall in love with the Local Keyword Generator.

Ability to Change Start Day Added

If you want the start day of a schedule to be Sunday, or any other day, simply go to the Days and Dates section of the Schedule Properties and select the Start Day, and press the Save Properties button. Below is the drop down to look for:


This feature was requested, so we know at least one user will find it useful.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

Unpaid Break/Lunch Functionality Added

schedule-my-employees.com has been updated to allow unpaid time to be inserted into shift segments. Below is an example of a work day where the employee starts at 8AM, the shift ends at 5PM, and they have a 1 hour unpaid lunch(click image to see blocked areas):



When employees view their schedule, the shift will display with a -60 to indicate the 60 minutes of unpaid break/lunch:



When calculating hours and pay, the employee would get credit for 8 hours of work in the above example.

Hope this new feature comes in handy for scheduling employees that do not have a set break time.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

New Employee and Pay Period Sign Off Sheets Added

While owning a business has many rewards, the exposure to liability created by having employees is not one of them. While an employer can never completely eliminate the risks involved with having employees, there are a number of practices that can help limit the exposure:
- Maintain an employee handbook
- Keep on file a sign off sheet recording the receipt of the handbook
- Request employees sign off receipt of all owed wages and that they were injury free upon receiving each paycheck

To make it easy to incorporate the above practices into the regular routine of managing employees, schedule-my-employees.com has added some new features. Notice the 'Employee Sign-off Sheet' link now present on the manager view of a schedule:


Clicking on the 'Employee Sign-off Sheet' link will create a sign-off sheet combining a Work Period Sign-Off Affirmation and a signature line for each employee on the schedule. If any employees on the schedule have the New Employee box checked, a separate New Employee sign-off sheet will also be created. Before using this new feature, you will need to enter a Work Period Sign-Off Affirmation and a New Employee Sign-Off Affirmation located in the Scheduler Properties area. We provide some simple examples of affirmations you can consider, but we encourage you to consult with legal counsel or your insurance providers so you can draft affirmations best suited to your line of business.

For companies that do not have an employee handbook, there is a link to a book and CD published by Nolo below the affirmation edit boxes. If you decide to purchase the book, please do so directly after clicking the link as we will receive a small commission for referring you to Nolo. For your convenience, we have copied the link here:
Create Your Own Employee Handbook - A Legal & Practical Guide

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

Added New Employee Fields to Scheduler

In preparation for some new human resource orientated features we have been working on, three new fields have been added to the edit employee form. The new fields are: Legal Name, Employee ID, and a New Employee check box used to indicate the employee has just joined the company.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com

Added New Date Pickers to Scheduler

In preparation for some new human resource orientated features we have been working on, each schedule now has a start date and end date picker to positively identify the range of dates a schedule is intended for.

It is best to use the date pickers instead of including the date range in the header, which has been recommend up to this point. This is because dates entered with the date pickers will be automatically included in the subject line of broadcasted schedules and other important places.

If you have any problems using the new date pickers, please leave a comment here so we can look into the the issue.

Happy Scheduling,

schedule-my-employees.com