Hey! 5 years ago, in an interview about our first hookah lounge (which, by the way, was one of the top 4 interviews of the year!), we promised to create a cool IT system. Today, I’m going to share what we’ve come up with. We’ve added sci-fi design, quests, and game mechanics, and we hope to surprise you.

For those of you who don’t know me yet, let me introduce myself. I’m Andrei Ryzhov, the founder of TIMELESS, a chain of lounge bars. I’ve written articles on all sorts of business topics, like opening establishments, construction, hiring a team, rebranding, and more. You can check out the most recent one here. In every piece, I mention that we’re building a technology company with our own IT system. This article is going to be all about our IT direction.

Today, I’m going to tell you about how we build a spaceship to automate business processes, why our employees go on quests (alas, not the ones with dungeons and dragons), and why we evaluate skill levels by grades. I promise not to torture you with nerdy terms and tell you about the most interesting things. Let’s dive in.

Our system is called TIS (yes, yes, hello Fedor). It’s similar to spaceship consoles and ahead of its time. I’m a big fan of games, and that’s basically what influenced the design. It looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, a stylish and cutting-edge product.

TIS is a suite of business automation solutions that has pretty much everything you could ever need. It’s got everything from employee shift registration to payroll and booking management, all in one place. Our offline know-how keeps the system updated and solves real business problems. It’s a must for a tech product like this. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? That’s why all TIMELESS establishments become a platform for testing TIS capabilities. We see the results, get feedback almost instantly, and can immediately improve or correct something. And since our young colleagues are really into games and technology, the feedback is top-notch.

We put a lot of thought into the user experience when they interact with our product. It’s a key part of our company’s philosophy, and you can see it in everything from the menu to the interior design and the team. I know it might sound a bit overconfident, but that’s what we’re all about.

Basic Structures

We came up with some basic structures to get the system’s functionality going. These structures are like starting points, like the Geo (Regions and Locations) and Team (Users and Roles) modules. Everything in the system is connected to these modules. For example, the Regions module lets us group locations in other modules. So, if we want to apply a filter to all the establishments in a country, we can just click on the name of the region instead of having to select each of the five existing TIMELESS separately.

Geo is linked to Team too, so if the network director wants to see the team data of only one establishment, they can just select the desired location. Geo is also used in shifts, transactions, or payroll for the same purpose.

One of the great features of Locations is that you can manage different sites from one admin. You can also set up multicurrency, which is really helpful for us working in Dubai and doing financial operations in dirhams, dollars, and rubles.

By the way, we even added some office departments as separate locations, which turned out to be a pretty good idea. Our team saw how the tool worked, appreciated the benefits, and asked the developers if they could use the system to work with finances within their department.

The Users situation is a bit different. The system has real users, and to interact with TIS, they need to be digitized. So, the Users tab has a big archive with data on current and former employees.

One user can be tied to a bunch of different locations and roles. Like, a master might work as a receptionist some days and then be out in the lounge on other duties. Today they’re on Novy Arbat, and tomorrow, they’re over on Chistye Prudy. But at the end of the month, they’ll still get paid for all the different shifts they’ve worked.

In the next tab (it’s called “Roles”), users are assigned their roles and grades. We’ll come across these concepts again, so I’ll add some context. Roles in the system are positions, and they can have several grades, or levels. For example, there’s a Shift Manager role in the system, and it has five grades: trainee, junior specialist, mid-level, senior, and expert. This grading affects access to the system and salary parameters.

There are 3 modes in the access settings:

·        Deny mode

·        View mode

·        Edit mode

You can set the time period for viewing or editing in some sections. As you can see in the picture above, a shift manager (let’s call him Vasia) can only edit transactions for the last three months and view transactions for the whole last year. You can also tweak parameters like hierarchy. In our example, Vasia can see the actions of all roles and edit only what his colleagues with similar roles and lower priorities have done. So, Vasia won’t be able to change what the director or manager has done in this section, like edit or delete transactions.

Dashboard

A dashboard is basically an employee’s personal workspace in the system, and for masters, it’s their main working area in TIS. Management staff also have personal accounts, but they’ve got more features, like tools for handling the venue’s finances, managing human resources, and salaries. But for now, let’s focus on the dashboard from the perspective of the masters.

The page is split into three sections: a brief summary of an employee, a shift calendar, quest and salary cards.

Let’s go through this step by step. On the top bar, users can see their positions, locations, work experience, and the number of penalty points (the ones with the fire icon). Under their avatar, they’ll see the results of their most recent exam. On the opposite side, they’ll see the date and time of their next shift.

The shift calendar shows the next three months: current, before, and after. The master can see their schedule and simple analytics on the shifts they’ve worked. If you hover over a particular day, you can see the shift start time, end time, and total time worked. Just click on a day to see the total salary summary, which will pop up in the cards in the center of the screen.

I should say our salary system is a bit more complicated than the typical ones in the restaurant and bar industry. It’s got a basic part and an add-on, like completing quests or getting extra motivation. Every day, the system figures out how much a master’s earned, considering all these factors. The card shows the total amount and the event for which payment is credited (like finishing a sales plan). If you want to dig deeper, you can go to the next level and see exactly which positions you sold and how much you’ll get for them.

We’ve made the system as clear and transparent as possible for the employees, and we’ve created our own TL Concierge mobile app to make it convenient for them to use. It’s the same dashboard with all the functions described above, but with a few differences. All the information isn’t on one screen but is divided into four tabs: Profile, Calendar, Salary, and Quests.

We’ve got two mobile apps for employees: TL Concierge and Shifts. “Shifts” is where you sign up for shifts, and your pay depends on that. You just enter a code when you start your shift and then enter the same code when you finish. All that info will show up in TIS under the “Shifts” section with the same name.

Shifts

The “Shifts” block shows the schedule for all employees working in the selected locations. Managers, supervisors, and directors can edit and view this information.

The first thing you can do is check the opening hours for a particular place or the whole chain. Pick the location you’re interested in and take a look at the circles in the table. There’ll always be a helpful hint at the bottom of the screen in the form of a legend. Just a quick look will let you get a good idea of the situation at the place, like the level of discipline and how effective the staff placement is.

If you put your cursor over a certain day, you’ll see a summary. This feature is designed to help you understand how much money the company is overpaying for overtime and find the best solution to change this situation. Let’s say you have an average of 40 hours of daily overtime, and an employee hour is paid at 350 ₽. In the calculation of an average month, the overpayment would be about half a million. These are just rough calculations, but they’re a good example.

You can also check out the general analytics for any given employee. When you put your cursor over a person’s picture, a card pops up. If you read from left to right:

1. In the first column, you’ll see the avatar, name, and roles the master can work in.
2. The second column has personal info as well as work info.
3. The last one is the analytics for the month, including the total time of overtime, tardiness, underwork, and the number of future shifts this month, as well as the total number and the average time.

Just a quick note:

To make it easier to find what you’re looking for, we’ve created some handy filters. You can filter by Geo or by other parameters.

Salary

The salary system in TIMELESS has a bunch of different parts, and how much an employee gets paid depends on their position and grade. The basics include a fixed rate per shift or per hour, a percentage of personal sales, or sales of the whole shift, including for certain categories. This isn’t anything new for the restaurant and bar industry. Then there’s what we’ve put into the payroll system for the first time: quests, tasks for employees with certain conditions, and rewards. There are modifiers and bonuses for exams too, which is how we get a custom salary system where each role collects its own set of parameters.

This module has 6 parts: customization—penalties, salaries, and quests; functional parts—modifiers, quests, and salary calculations. The first three parts serve as customization for the other parts of the module.

Penalty settings

Our penalty system adds up points that get added to your balance until they hit the limit. Then, those points get converted into real cash. We also burn off a certain amount of penalty points at the end of each month. So, you can be penalized but never lose money.

In the “Penalty Settings” block, we set the limit of points, the amount of points to be burned, and the frequency of points burning. These settings are set for each role, and grades will have exactly the default setting that is set for the entire role. However, we can change the rules for each grade separately. For example, we can increase the number of burn points for junior grades or give them immunity, which means that penalty points won’t be applied to a master with this role.

Payroll Settings

In this section, we’ll explain what’s included in the salary for the role and grade. There are three types of settings that apply here.

1. General

Here, you can set:

·        Rate per hour;
·        Rate per shift;
·        Monthly rate;
·        Percentage of monthly revenue;
·        Percentage of monthly profit.

2. Sales percentage

This tab is where you can set the settings for personal and shift sales as a percentage. You can set the setting for all product categories, or, if you need to, you can select only some of them and set your percentage. For example, the bartender gets a percentage of the whole shift sales, but only for items like alcohol, soft drinks, desserts, snacks, and so on.

3. Exam bonus

Here, we specify the amount of the bonus for passing the exam. The amount varies depending on the pass rate. We can also specify how the bonus is added. There is a fixed amount per month, but it can be added to the rate per hour, shift, personal sales, and so on.

In “Salary Settings,” you can also set parameters for a role and change them for each grade. All changes will be highlighted on the cards, so you can immediately see where and what is configured differently.

Quest Settings

In this block, we customize quests. The quests are basically the tasks that employees have to complete (shifts are dungeons, quests are bosses, and the floor is lava). Some of the things the employees have to do include achieving the daily plan, daily overplan, prolonging the work of the establishment, or selling elite positions of alcohol.

When customizing a quest, we enter the basic information, conditions of its fulfillment, and rewards. We also specify which roles this quest applies to. After that, we set the start date and duration. Each quest can be set to repeat with a certain frequency (every day, week, month, year, or custom).

We maximized the game mechanics by adding quest levels: Normal, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. This clearly shows employees how important and complex a quest is.

The conditions of fulfillment are set with a single click, allowing you to choose one condition or add several. If there are many conditions, you can choose whether all or one of them should be fulfilled.

Then, we pick the reward and choose its type—fixed per hour, per month, per shift, or a cash bonus, and so on. It’s basically the same as with bonuses for the exam.

Here we finish the customizations and move on to the functional blocks.

Modifiers

Modifiers are divided into 4 main types:

·        Bonuses
·        Penalties
·        Reimbursements
·        Adjustments

When you create a new modifier, you’ll need to select its type, location, and the person or people it’s for (if there’s more than one, the modifier amount is written out to each person in the specified amount or divided among all of them). You’ll also need to enter the modifier amount and a comment.

Once you’ve entered all the info, the system will display all the issued modifiers in a table. To make things easier to understand, there’s a legend with some general statistics at the bottom of the page that specifies:

·        Penalties (Points) — the amount of penalty points accrued for the selected period.
·        Fines (Cash) — the amount of fines issued in money equivalent.
·        Burned Points — the total penalty points burned.
·        Conversions — a modifier that is written to an employee automatically when penalty points are converted into a money equivalent.
·        Reimbursements show the amount billed for reimbursements.
·        Corrections are the sum of corrections applied (for example, when the system didn’t check in some employee on the shift because of a bug).
·        Bonuses—the total amount of bonuses given to employees.

Quests

This is the block that shows you all the quests that are active, finished, or planned for a specific location. When you click on a card, you’ll get all the details about a quest. You can see the conditions, what the rewards are, and who’s on the quest team. The quest’s results will also be shown on the card.

Salary Statistics

This block shows salary statistics and forecasts for all users, taking into account bonuses, penalties, completed or uncompleted quests, and so on.

There are two types of statistics: general and individual. The general statistics cover all employees and show the total salary, the delta compared to the previous month, how much is left to be paid, and how much has already been paid as an advance. The individual statistics are for each employee and show the salary forecast based on the last three months. The next columns show the details of the amount we see at the beginning, like exams, quests, modifiers, fixed amounts, and percentages, as well as the average cost per shift.

If we go to the tab with the Individual statistics, we can see info for each employee and each working day during a given period. If you click on the cards, you’ll see more details, and the same information is displayed on the employee’s personal dashboard.

What are we doing now?

We’ve shown you the cool features of the system, talked about how it works, and what each part can do. Our team has done a lot to develop this project over the last year. We’ve talked about the system in other articles on the website and even mentioned TIS in job postings. Now you can see why this project is so important to us and to the industry.

And remember, this isn’t the final version by any stretch. There’s still a lot to be done, like adding new modules and features and making some final tweaks. One thing we’re planning next is a booking module, which is basically a tool for managing guests and seating arrangements in a place.

There’ll be a map of the place, called the “Floor Plan” block, that shows the location from above in 2D.You’ll be able to customize the look of the tables, set the maximum and minimum seating, and arrange outlets, speakers, TVs, and fire alarm sensors.

This is just a small part of what we’re working on. If we look a little further ahead, we’ll start developing our own CRM system, but that’s a topic for another article. For now, let’s finish our little tour of the development of a technological product from TIMELESS. See you soon!

P.S. Here’s a bonus video from the company’s 5th anniversary.

P.P.S. Our team has really put their heart and soul into this development. It took five years of coming up with ideas, two years to develop them, and about $2.5 million in the end. For me, personally, this is a giant leap into the future and a small step toward realizing a big dream. I’d love to chat in the comments and answer any and all questions, whether they’re humble or not-so-humble. Thanks for your attention.