In this example, we demonstrate how to use Business Fusion's Schedule Manager to set up a schedule that can serve any number of employees for either a single store, or multiple stores chainwide.

To begin, login to Business Fusion and access Schedule Manager (Figure 1 below):

Figure 1 (Accessing Schedule Manager)

Next, no matter if we're setting up a single or multiple stores, we need to create a Store Identity or Type using Data Structures. Navigate to Data Structures > Store Type and select 'Add New Store Type', and you should see a screen similar to the one in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 (Defining a store or stores)

Fill in your store's pertinent information and Submit. You will now see the message "The Add Store operation was completed successfully." Now that our store type has been created, we can use over and over for future schedules that will be created for this particular store. We can modify or remove this store's data at anytime.

Now we need to define this store's employees, or at least those employees that are going to appear on our Schedule. To do this, select 'Manage Employees' from the options menu, and choose 'Add a New Employee Type', and you will get the screen shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3 (Creating Employees)

Fill in the employee's appropriate information and Submit. The e-mail is important to provide, incase you would like to have this new schedule e-mailed to the employee. Repeat this step to create additional employees that are member's of this store and/or will appear on the schedule. You can edit or remove the data for any employee at anytime. Notice the store number is in a drop-menu list. This way, you can easily assign employees to different stores if needed within your company.

Now it's time to define our new schedule. Select 'New Schedule' from the options menu, and you should see a screen similiar to the one in Figure 4 below.

Figure 4 (Defining a new schedule)

Fill in the appropriate account information and Submit. The week number value is the current week of the year that the schedule is being created for. In this example, it would be week 43. Some companies like to record their last year sales and their current sales goal for this particular week, and do some calculations that appear on the schedule. Schedule Manager does support these options and provide the necessary calculations if needed.

Submit the new schedule definition and then choose 'Prepare Schedule' from the options menu. This will allow us to define hours for each employee we want to appear in the schedule (Figure 5 below).

Figure 5 (Defining scheduled hours for employees)

Define each employee's hours and lunch time in minutes. The Coded Hours column is for defining hours that aren't actually worked for employees such as for holidays. Some companies like to keep track of it on their schedules also.

Now that we've defined our schedule we can view the schedule by selecting 'Generate Schedule'. If we want to change any hours, all we have to do is select 'Edit Schedule' and make any changes to any employee we wish. We can even remove employees from the schedule anytime. Once we make a modification, the changes are reflected immediately, allowing us alot of flexibility and saving us time. Figure 6 shows the generated schedule from this example.

Figure 6 (Viewing a Schedule)

That's it. Making a schedule with Schedule Manager is easy. Modifying any part of it is just as easy.

E-mail us your feedback or questions