Upgrades – June 2017

Shift Agent Upgrade - June 26, 2017

Upgrades include:

  1. Pay Rates Feature
  2. Productivity Bar
  3. Updates to the User Interface

ATTN:  The recent upgrade to Shift Agent’s pay rate system effects every store where:

  • You use the pay rates to track labor expense
  • You may have used position specific pay rates or training wages
  • There might be more than one pay rate per employee

Upgrades June 2017 – Shift Agent from Shift Agent on Vimeo.

The Pay Rates Upgrade

  • Now, only Admins can see actual pay rates.
  • Managers CAN NOT see actual pay rates and they can use an Avg Labor Cost for one hour that you set.
  • In this update, we took great care to make sure that the previous pay rates were accurately reflected in the new system.

Before:

  • You had to specify the pay rate for every employee in every position any time you gave someone a raise.
  • It was the normal practice to have position specific pay rates.

Now:

  • You do NOT have to update pay rates in every position, and you can just update the base rate for an employee.  (hooray!)
  • The Base Rate is a default pay rate for each employee in Shift Agent.
  • An employee base rate is always used to calculate the cost of a shift, unless you provide an exception that would apply in a given situation.
  • Exceptions are either:
    • Training Rates:  Rates used when the Training flag is applied to a position for a specific employee.  When the training flag is turned off in the position, the training wage is not used in that position.  For example, if you hire a new employee and they will get paid $10.00/hr when they are done training but they are paid $9.00 while they are training, you can set the Training Base Rate as an exception.
    • Position Specific exception:  You can select a position and make a pay rate specific to that position for an employee.
      • You will ONLY want to do this if the position should override every employee’s base rate.
  • Position pay rates should only be set when the position should be paid the same amount no matter who is working it.  (ie. Wait staff who receive tips)
  • Pay Rate Exceptions are now added to employees in the pay rate management area, and it is not required to add/remove pay rates from positions.

In order to make the best use of the new pay rate system:

  1. Please navigate to the Employees area and click on the Pay Rates tab at the top.
  2. Go through each of your employees and check their new Base Rate to be sure it is accurate.
  3. Add/remove any pay rate exceptions that need to be updated.
    1. Exceptions can range from:
      1. special training base rate
      2. position-specific pay rate
      3. position training pay rate
  4. If employees in your store are always paid the same individual rate no matter where they work in the store, you can hit the MULTI-REMOVE EXCEPTIONS button at the top.

Heads Up on Position Pay Rates

We have removed all of the default position pay rates in your store.  You can actually go and re-add them if you need to, but this should be done with the knowledge that the position default pay rate WILL create an exception for every employee that overrides their base rate.  The default pay rates for a position are now used to automatically create an exception for an employee who is added to that position.

Productivity Calculator

There is now a new metric in the Guide Bar for Productivity.  To use this feature, make sure that you fill out the Set Projections area for the week using at least Gross Revenue and Labor Hours projections.  This will calculate your daily productivity and allow you to display it on the guide bar on the scheduling page.

Updates to the Look and Feel of the App

You will notice a lot of changes to the look and feel of the app now that will be reflected in employee profiles, the store profile, and many of the major feature pages as well. You may need to take a second glance to find where something is now, but our hope is that the information is presented in a more organized and user friendly way.