Timeero: The Best Hospitality App for Managing Staff
Samson Kiarie
Last update on:
April 18, 2024 1:49 AM
Published on:
The hospitality industry is primarily guest-centric. For a business to thrive, you must deliver five-star guest experiences. One of the best ways to improve the guest experience and stay in tune with their needs is to make your staff empowered. How can you achieve greater employee productivity and satisfaction? Our answer is to implement a hospitality workforce management app such as Timeero.
While monetary incentives tend to increase employee satisfaction, the little things count, too. Fair compensation, accurate mileage reimbursements, smart scheduling, and adequate time-off can boost the morale of hospitality staff. This is where hospitality employee management software, such as Timeero, comes in handy.
In this article we’ll tell you how the best hospitality apps — like Timeero — automate hotel staff scheduling, time tracking, mileage tracking, and time-off management for operational efficiency and improved employee satisfaction.
Note: This guide isn't focused on hotel apps geared towards improving the hotel guest booking experience. Rather, it sheds light on how the best hospitality apps streamline staff management for hospitality businesses.
A hospitality app is a software solution that enables hospitality businesses to manage employees more effectively. Timeero fits the bill, as it offers scheduling, time tracking, mileage tracking, employee scheduling, and other vital solutions. Remember, hospitality apps indirectly enhance guest experience by improving employee management.
This differs from a guest app like Duve, which directly improves the guest experience by providing mobile keys, guest communication, upsell, and hotel branding tools. Moreover, Timeero also differs from Alice’s on property management system because it uses different tactics to boost staff productivity and guest experiences.
How Timeero Streamlines Hospitality Staff Management
Not only do your guests want cozy hotel rooms, but they also want a flawless guest experience to boot. If you are providing comfortable guest room accommodations but your revenue per available room (RevPAR) isn't improving, it may be wise to survey how your employees are measuring up to your business's guest experience standard.
Keep reading as we walk you through how to manage employees' jobs, schedules, and work hours with Timeero to deliver efficient dining and room service.
Smart Employee Scheduling
Scheduling cooks, waiters, dishwashers, housekeepers, front-desk agents, bellhops, and concierge staff is easier said than done. You have to wade through labor shortages, varying shifts, and seasonal changes to create effective schedules that will provide adequate coverage during peak and off-peak seasons.
Most importantly, you must ensure that each shift has the right mix of skills and personalities to give guests an unforgettable experience.
Amidst the hurdles, Timeero enables you to create a perfect schedule to keep your team organized and optimized. Here's how:
User-Friendly Schedule Generator
Timeero has an easy-to-use scheduler to improve user experience and hotel staff scheduling.
The Timeero scheduling module enables you to create schedules covering your day-to-day operation. We've built an easy-to-use scheduler that lets you focus less on how to use the tools and more on how to eliminate mix-ups and chaotic scheduling mess. Read our scheduling conflicts guide to learn why they happen and how you can avoid them.
If you want to automate your existing schedules and save time, Timeero allows you to import schedules in CSV formats. This allows you to adopt the schedules your employees are familiar with and add a dash of automation to curb absenteeism and no-shows.
However, if you prefer to create new schedules to match the ebbs and flows of guest traffic, you won't go wrong with the Timeero scheduler. Creating a hotel staff schedule is as easy as clicking a day, adding the schedule name and time, assigning it to relevant employees, and hitting "publish."
It's super easy to create new schedules with Timeero.
Timeero allows you to group employees by department or category, such as cooks, servers, concierges, dishwashers, bellhops, etc. This way, you can create multiple schedules for the cohort of workers.
Alternatively, you can create a one-off schedule and assign it to individual employees to cover unexpected guest influx or emergency events. This way, you'll always have the correct staffing numbers during peak and off-peak seasons.
Each schedule has a description or written instructions so employees know what is expected during their shift. This, coupled with the Timeero notification system, ensures employees get their schedule in advance and provides them with the opportunity to request necessary schedule adjustments ahead of time to avoid last-minute changes.
Prevent Schedule Conflict
Scheduling conflicts often lead to uncovered shifts, which in turn cause the quality of guest services to decrease. For example, overlapping shifts can create confusion for your servers and front-of-house staff, potentially leading to missed shifts or last-minute cancellations.
Timeero scheduling enables you to sidestep scheduling conflicts, such as double bookings and overlapping shifts. When scheduling a server for a shift between 10:00 am and 2:00 pm, Timeero locks the hours in place so you can not schedule a shift that partially overlaps with the locked time slots.
If, for some reason, you need hospitality staff to have overlapping schedules, you can adjust the settings to allow this function. Simply toggle the "allow users to have overlapping schedules" button under schedule settings in the company settings to make this change.
You can allow hotel employees to have overlapping schedules if your policy supports it.
Easy For Employee to Accept or Decline Shifts
If you want joy and satisfaction to radiate throughout your hospitality workforce, consider employees' preferences when scheduling. No hotel staff would be happy to miss an important event like a child's graduation because you scheduled them to work.
With Timeero, you can allow employees to accept or decline shifts. When you publish a schedule, employees will get an email notification, "You've been assigned the following shift(s): shift start and end time." Employees can accept, decline, or cherry-pick shifts based on their availability.
Allowing employees to pick their preferred shifts makes them feel valued and heard. It might not sound like a big thing, but it can provide the spark your workforce needs to deliver quality service.
If your company opts to allow this scheduling method, it is recommended that you implement a solid attendance policy to go with it. Ideally, the policy should specify when an employee can decline or cherry-pick a shift. This will prevent employees from declining shifts on flimsy grounds.
Shift Reminders to Minimize No-Shows
Scheduling employees is one thing; ensuring they show up for work is another. All it takes is one no-show employee to throw an entire shift into total disarray, causing irreparable damage to customer experience.
Imagine a case where your sushi chef failed to show up on the day you happen to host the largest party of sushi lovers that your restaurant has ever seen. The entire shift would be thrown into chaos! Not to mention, that your servers and front-of-house staff would have much explaining to do to calm the unsatisfied guests.
To prevent these situations from occurring, Timeero allows you to configure notifications and reminders to keep your staff on their toes. When you publish or update a shift, the app sends instant in-app and email notifications to assigned employees.
Hi [name] , you have a new shift on [shift date and time]. Log in to your mobile app or web app to see your shift.
Timeero notifies employees when you publish or update a shift.
Of course, the employees can accept or decline the shift if your company allows that. It also notifies the manager as to who accepts and declines a shift. This way, hoteliers and managers can make swift adjustments to fill the gaps in good time.
Once everything is confirmed, Timeero will alert the employee before their shift starts. You can set the app to notify employees 60 minutes before their shift starts If they forget about the shift, this gives them ample time to prepare for work.
Automated Time Tracking
Scheduling sets the wheels rolling, but it's not the end-all-be-all of managing hospitality staff. You must ensure employees show up for work at the right time and fulfill their shifts as assigned. Not to mention that you'll have to compensate them for work done accurately. All this is possible with an automated time-tracking tool, such as Timeero.
Easy-To-Use Time Tracker
The Timeero mobile app works flawlessly on Android and iOS smartphones.
Timeero iOS and Android apps are super easy to use for all employees. Clocking in is as easy as selecting the assigned job/task and tapping the "clock in" button. Once employees clock in, Timeero automatically tracks and records their work hours. You can set clock-out reminders to improve the accuracy of employee timecards if needed.
Timeero has the tools you need to track employee attendance. For example, you can set the app to notify you of late clock-ins to reinforce timekeeping. Additionally, there are safeguards to prevent time theft tactics such as buddy and off-site punching. We’ll discuss more about time theft tactics below.
Geofencing to Curb Off-Site Punching
Picture this: an employee is running late for a shift, and to avoid triggering a latepunishment, they clock in a few blocks away from your establishment. As a result, they misrepresent clock-in time ontheir timesheets by 5-10 minutes. At first, that might not seem like a big deal.
But if 20 employees are inaccurately reporting start times on their time cards by ten minutes per shift, you lose 200 minutes every shift. And that's a big deal for small businesses grappling with inflation, rising commodity prices, and tight margins.
With Timeero geofencing, you set virtual boundaries around your hotels. Virtual boundaries allow you to restrict employees from clocking in or out outside of their workplace. For example, if an employee attempts to clock in a few blocks away from the hotel, they only get the error message:
"You cannot clock in. You need to be within the job area boundaries to clock in."
Timeero geofencing won't let employees clock in or out outside their designated workplace.
Facial Recognition to Prevent Buddy Punching
American Payroll Association found that 75% of U.S. companies lose money from buddy punching. Your company could be bleeding money, equivalent to 2.2% of your gross payroll if you've not implemented measures to curb buddy punching.
Use Timeero facial recognition to prevent buddy punching from impacting your profitability. The app takes photos of staff as they clock in and compares them to what is in their profile. In case of a mismatch, the app notifies the manager and flags the employee timecard for close examination.
Effective Break Trackers
Tracking breaks isn't all about complying with federal or state laws, such as the California break laws. It's a way to ensure employees get enough rest to boost their creativity, physical health, and productivity.
Timeero enables you to allocate and enforce breaks to suit your work schedule and meet regulatory compliance. You can also set break reminders to ensure employees are taking time to relax and recharge to increase their productivity.
For hotels and hospitality businesses in California, it's easyto track breaks with the California break tracker. With this feature, you only need to select meal and rest breaks, assign them to California-based employees, and let Timeero enforce the rules.
Employees who work more than 3.5 hours will have to sign the daily sign-off form before clocking out. The form pops up when the employee taps "clock out," requiring them to acknowledge whether they adhered to the meal and rest break policy. If they didn't, they have to provide a reason for non-compliance.
Even better, we recently introduced a signature feature to add extra safeguards for time tracking and break law compliance. With this functionality, employees will use a mobile device to append digital signatures on the daily sign-off forms and timesheets.
Even better, we recently introduced a signature feature to add extra safeguards for time tracking and break law compliance. With this functionality, employees will use a mobile device to append digital signatures on the daily sign-off forms and timesheets.
Accurately Track Overtime and Double Time
Timeero lets you set custom overtime rules. In this case, you'll only need to set when your workweek starts and define your regular workday and workweek hours. Lastly, you set your hospitality staff's daily overtime and double-time rates.
The app tracks time, separates overtime and double-time hours from regular work hours, and calculates employee compensation based on their regular pay rate. This ensures you comply with overtime labor regulations and accurately compensate employees.
If you're based in California or want to use the California overtime rule, you don't have to go the manual route. Instead, check the "Use California Overtime Rule" box, and that's it. Timeero will apply the California overtime rule to the tee, helping you sidestep costly penalties and lawsuits.
Reliable Offline Mode
No internet connection? No problem. Timeero tracks employee time and location even when there's no internet connection. Even better it syncs your timesheet entries when internet connectivity is restored.
The offline mode is beneficial if you have an outside catering team or your establishment is in remote areas with limited connectivity.
Time-Off Tracking For Hospitality Staff
It's easy for managers to approve or reject time-off requests.
There is no need to waste time figuring out who has applied for what time-off categories or what has been approved versus company spending. Timeero makes time-off application and management painless for employees and managers.
Managers can add time-off categories to match the list of found in your time-off policy. You can have sick leave, holidays, vacations, personal time, bereavement, parental leave, voting time, jury duty, etc.
Once you set the categories, it becomes easier for employees to request time off anywhere, anytime from their Apple or Android smartphones. They only need to add the category, time-off duration, and description then tap the send button.
The approval process is also straightforward since all requests are listed under "pending requests." Managers can see the details they need to approve or reject a request with a single button click.
Location and Mileage Tracking
If you cater to off-site clients or run outdoor events, your hotel faces unique challenges other in-house dining businesses don't deal with. For example, if you have an online ordering system, you must ensure food arrives at the customer's doorstep while fresh. To accomplish this goal, you have to track the location and mileage of your delivery drivers.
Timeero is the best food distribution software with GPS by merit. The app tracks delivery drivers' and outside catering staff locations and uploads the information in near-real-time.
When you open the "Who's working" tab, you can see the GPS location of each delivery driver and give customers an accurate expected time of arrival (ETA).
Timeero tracks the GPS location of employees in real-time for effective hospitality management.
Beyond tracking your field teams, Timeero lets you monitor the location of guards and bellhops within your premises. To avoid security lapses, you can tell who is operating each entry point, parking lot, and other areas. In addition, you can track the GPS location of bellhops and ensure they are strategically positioned to help guests as they check-in.
Regarding mileage tracking, Timeero uses an automatic drive detection system. But you'll need to set the minimum speed threshold before you can track mileage. Ensure the minimum speed is high enough to prevent tracking when the driver is walking and low enough to capture every section of the trip when the vehicle is moving.
Timeero tracks mileage when the vehicle exceeds the predefined speed. As a result, it hits a high level of accuracy, ensuring you compensate employees fairly and get maximum tax benefits.
Remember that for every business mile you track, you deduct 67 cents from your taxable income (learn more in our IRS rates guide).
Effective Internal Communication
Clear internal communication is one of the key ingredients for improved guest satisfaction — the ultimate goal of the hotel industry. Timeero Message Blast enables you to convey precise information, ensuring hospitality staff pull in the same direction.
Unlike social media or Slack-like communication tools, Message Blast supports one-way contactless communication. In other words, managers and supervisors can send messages, but employees have read-only permissions.
You can share company-wide updates or send congratulatory messages to a specific group or individual. Managers can have one-on-one or group conversations, share instructions, and communicate expectations with team members to streamline daily tasks and operations.
When you send a message, you don't have to chase down members asking them if they got the job instructions. Timeero tracks staff engagement with the message, providing details such as who has read and who hasn't read the message.
Message Blast is a one-way communication channel for hoteliers.
Timeero Pricing
Timeero pricing makes it ideal for businesses of all sizes, from Airbnb businesses and vacation rentals to hotels serving thousands of guests.
Start with the 14-day free trial to give the software a spin. No credit card is required — just create an account, and that's it.
Paid plans are affordable — the Basic plan costs $4 per user/month. Your account can have up to a maximum of ten users. You'll get time, location, and mileage tracking tools for one great price.
Upgrade to a Pro or Premium plan if you need to manage more than ten hotel employees and forsee needing to use our unique tools such as geofencing, time-off management, signatures, and scheduling. The former costs $8 per user per month, whereas the latter is available for $11 per user per month.
Pick Timeero — The Best Hospitality App
Timeero is the best hospitality app for businesses that want to manage their hotel teams effortlessly and keep daily operations ticking along flawlessly.Our app will help you schedule employees, track time and mileage, monitor field teams, and streamline communication for strategic alignment.
Reminder: Timeero doesn't have a booking engine to support direct bookings or help guests order room service. However, it's one of the best apps (if not the best) with tools to streamline staff and hotel management workflows to enhance guest experiences.
Start a 14-day free trial today to get a first-hand feel for all the features. No credit card is required at the start of your trial. You may also schedule a free consultation with our customer support team today to learn how the app suits your specific needs and preferences.
Hospitality Staff App: FAQs
How Do You Manage Hospitality Staff?
Hospitality staff members are managed through scheduling, time and location tracking, and recording mileage accrued. Managing an employee’s time off is a critical component to ensure your workforce is well-rested and ready to serve your guests.
What Are The Benefits of Hospitality Apps?
Hospitality app providers streamline employee management systems to increase employee satisfaction and morale, which improve guest experience — the ultimate goal for hospitality businesses.
Is There a Hospitality App For the Food Service Industry?
Yes! Timeero is the best hospitality app for the food service industry. Our app manages delivery drivers to ensure customers receive the best food delivery service possible.
Improve your staff satisfaction with Timeero.
Start your free trial today. No credit card required.
Samson is a mathematician turned content marketer specializing in SaaS and Tech content. He focuses on the practical aspects of software systems while keeping abreast of the industry’s cutting-edge principles to create informative and engaging content. When he’s not writing, Samson spends time playing or watching soccer.
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