At 7shifts, our mission is to make your restaurant a happier, more efficient workplace.
The way we do that is by creating software that restaurants of all shapes and sizes can use to quickly schedule staff, streamline communication, and reduce labor costs. The better our software, the better your restaurant’s operational productivity.
Welcome to the 7shifts 2018 feature special, where we break down our biggest releases of the year and celebrate cost reduction and time savings in restaurants all around the world. These releases are the top 7shifts gifts to restaurateurs to better manage their employee schedules, calculate and forecast sales and labor costs and improve their restaurant operations to save them time and money.
Table of Contents
7shifts App Updates
1. Overtime alerts and custom breaks
In 2018, we made sure that restaurant owners and managers can get (and stay) labor compliant with Overtime Alerts and Custom Breaks. With new or enhanced labor regulations appearing in many jurisdictions this year, restaurant owners needed to be compliant for their staff—fast.
7shifts added the functionality to take the stress out of labor cost control and compliance with:
- Overtime Alerts that notify managers and admins when an employee is in (or about to be in) overtime hours while you are creating your schedules or while on-shift.
- Custom Breaks & Break Enforcement that helps managers ensure proper break times for staff, and give employees the downtime they need to stay sharp.
Learn more about Overtime Alerts and Custom Breaks →
2. Custom station naming
In April, we gave the gift of customization through station naming—a feature that’s been long requested by 7shifts users! Custom station naming changes the game for managers and owners, who could wave goodbye to “Stations 1” and “Station 2,” and say hello to “Patio,” “Lounge” and more when creating and assigning roles to staff!
7shifts introduced Custom Station Naming to ensure that:
- Employees knew where they worked in the restaurant they were working and what their duties were
- Managers and admins could know they’re covered across all stations within their locations
- Communication is clear and streamlined for the entire workplace
Learn more about Custom Station Naming →
3. Schedule day view
Managers that love day-to-day breakdowns were gifted the Day View on the Scheduler page, allowing them to dive into each day of the week to ensure they’re covered and make updates to scheduled shifts.
Managers and admins can get a quick visual representation of their shift coverage for the day that includes scheduled staff, sales and variances.
4. Manager log book updates
In 2018, we further enhanced our Manager Log Book to help managers and operators keep better tabs on their day-to-day operations and ensure that management teams have all the important data they need to do their jobs well, at their fingertips.
The improvements we made included:
- The addition of data from your 7shifts Dashboard including total sales, labor, labor percentage, and weather.
- The addition of Shift Feedback, which we’ll dive more into further below!
Learn more about Manager Log Book →
5. Enterprise dashboard
In August, 7shifts introduced the ultimate dashboard in above-store reporting for restaurant leaders and executives to help track their entire enterprise restaurant operations in real time with Enterprise Dashboard. Identifying opportunities and increasing labor profitability has never been easier!
The enterprise dashboard gave executives the gift of:
- Organization oversight to monitor all restaurant locations at a glance. Execs can track their entire operation in real time for each location and get aggregate organization performance on sales and labor in one place.
- Instant visibility into the metrics that matter. The enterprise dashboard gives executives the oversight they need to monitor individual and brand-wide health and profitability by tracking sales, labor percentage, sales per labor hour, overtime and more.
- Actionable insights. View per-location or aggregate variances from projected values for sales and labor targets. Easily sort between location performance to identify areas of the business that require your attention, and dive into the details to review the account performance.
Learn more about the Enterprise Dashboard →
6. Scheduler enhancements
Scheduling staff should be easy. Over 2018, we made some major improvements to the most important part of 7shifts, the scheduler, to ensure that it's easier than ever to create and publish restaurant staff schedules. These enhancements include:
- The Schedule Header cleanup. We’ve simplified the information in the header of the schedule to make it easier to see both what day of the month it is, and get a weather forecast for that day. We've also made it easier to access the Day View so managers can quickly check on shift coverage as they build their schedule.
- The Publish button relocated and refurbished. The publish button got a more prominent placement at the top of the schedule and was enhanced with notification options allowing restaurant managers and owners to publish schedules without alerting staff. We also made the publish button 'smart' so users can instantly see whether the schedule they've created has been published yet.
- Revamped Weekly Budget Tool. This year we've revamped one of the most important parts of 7shifts—the weekly budget tool. By moving it from the top of the schedule to the bottom, and making it sticky, restaurateurs will always see their labor calculated as their schedule is built-out. With the new placement, we also changed the look to make it more apparent when users are above or below the labor targets they've set for your restaurant.
- Add new employees to the schedule on the fly. Employees can now be added directly from the schedule, allowing managers to add new team members to the schedule without having to navigate away from your schedule itself.
Learn more about the Weekly Budget Tool →
7. Reports redesign
The gift of more digestible data was given to 7shifts users through the Reports page updates in the fall of 2018. This update makes it easy to find the reports restaurant managers want, run them, and ensure they’re getting the data they want.
For managers, data was made more digestible and accessible through Reports page updates that worked to improve the overall user experience for when managers go hunting for their data. These customization updates to the Report page are a sneak peek into UX/UI improvements coming in 2019 to make it easy to access the information users need, and how they need it.
Learn more about the Reports page →
8. Punch audit reporting
In August, 7punches—our integrated restaurant time-clocking app—was enhanced with the Punch Audit Report, which allowed users to view the history of modifications that have been made to an employee punch. The audit report includes details about clock-in and clock-out times, location, department, role, hours worked, tips, and much more!
Learn more about the Punch Audit Report →
Major Mobile Upgrades ?
1. Employee mobile app redesign
One of the biggest gifts given in 2018 was the complete redesign of the 7shifts app for employees! ?
The mobile app went through a major redesign to bring all restaurant employees better:
- Clarity: Badged messaging and notifications area now ensure employees won’t miss anything that happens at work.
- Messaging: Staying in touch is easier than ever with a better looking, faster, and more reliable messaging feature.
- Navigation: Streamlined navigation between schedules, messaging, notifications, and more makes using the app a better experience overall—and employees always know when they work.
- Tracking: Tracking and estimating employee hours and earnings is easier than ever with a new weekly report section that alleviates questions about pay and hours worked.
7shifts has always focused on making employees work lives easier. When employee's get instant access to the tools that make their schedule work for their lives, they are happier and more efficient. We were so excited to be able to revamp the employee experience this year and have big plans to do even more in 2019!
—Brent Beatty, Product Manager
2. Shift feedback ⭐
Communication is key! In October, we introduced a new way for restaurant managers to get real-time feedback from staff so they can make better operational decisions and address employee issues that lead to turnover. Employees now get a push notification 15 minutes after they clock out and have 6 hours to rate their shift, which managers will be able to view in their manager log book.
With a better pulse on their team’s satisfaction, restaurant owners and managers can better identify and solve issues as they arise, and work to cultivate the best quality of service for customers and ideal work environment for employees.
Learn more about Shift Feedback →
3. Manager Time Clocking on the go ⏰
What’s a better gift for restaurant managers than time? With our mobile time-clocking enhancement, restaurant managers and admins can now view and review staff punches in real-time right from the 7shifts mobile app. Use this enhancement to keep an eye on who clocked in, who’s on break, and even approve punches—all from their mobile device.
For managers on the go, it's now faster than ever to manage your business, labor and payroll!
Learn more about Mobile Manager Time Clocking →
Integration Highlights ?
We know how important integrated operations is for restaurateurs, so we invested heavily this year in both adding to and enhancing our POS integrations. 7shifts integrates with a variety of POS software to streamline restaurant operations and provide restaurateurs with better forecasts, shift enforcements, and management capabilities.
We introduced several brand new POS integrations, as well as updated the functionality of many existing integrated partners. Check it out!
Brand new POS integrations ✨
- Lightspeed✅ — Sales and labor integrations
- Koomi ✅ — Sales integrations
- Bypass ✅ — Sales, labor and schedule enforcement integrations
- Rezku ✅ — Sales integrations
- Clover ✅ — Sales integrations
- Square ✅ — Sales integrations
Schedule enforcement enhancements ?️
Schedules can now be enforced through 7shifts updated integration with:
Labor rate calculation updates ?
Calculate your restaurant’s labor rates accurately in 7shifts through updated integrations with:
- Squirrel ✅
- Positouch ✅
- Touchbistro ✅
- Upserve ✅
Employee wage sync upgrades ↔️
Employee wages can now be automatically synced between your POS and 7shifts for these integration partners:
- Aloha ✅
- Micros ✅
- Squirrel ✅
- Positouch ✅
- Toast ✅
- Upserve ✅
New strategic partnerships ?
In 2018, we began to build out an ecosystem of strategic partners from around the restaurant industry to help connect restaurateurs with other technology solutions they need to help hire, manage, and engage with their workforce.
These strategic partners include:
In 2018, we introduced the strategic partner ecosystem focused around the employee lifecycle stack and the restaurant operations stack. These will continue to be built out in 2019 and beyond!
—Kassigan Naicker, Head of Partnerships
7shifts Milestones
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The 7shifts family grew by 20 people ?
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Over 500 5-star reviews received ⭐
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59 blogs posted ✍️
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Hit our 10 millionth time punch ?
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$3.7 billion in 2018 receipts processed (more than 7000 per minute!) ?
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4.2 million chat messages sent ?
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26 million shifts published ✔️
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161 million hours scheduled in 2018 (that’s 6 million days, 18,441 years!) ⏳
That’s a wrap!
2018 has been a big year for 7shifts and the restaurant industry overall, and we can’t wait to show you what we have in store to revolutionize your restaurant operations in 2019.
How did you enjoy your 2018 with 7shifts? Give your compliments to the chef and leave a review!
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Dew Smith
Hey! I'm Dew, the former Brand Strategist. I cultivated 7shifts' social and content garden, and I looked for ways to grow our network of restaurateurs, local talent, and tech companies.