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OpenSimSim is perhaps the most impressive and robust free employee scheduling software. It provides all the core scheduling features such as messaging, schedule creator, notifications, and group/individual chats free of cost. This makes it an ideal solution for small businesses with limited teams.
ShiftBoard is ideal for large production-centric organizations looking to effectively schedule shifts and optimize labor costs. It makes life much easier for shift managers by giving employees access to their schedules and the option to trade hours.
ScheduleBase does what it promises - simplifying employee scheduling. Its limited features make it an easy-to-use product for field staff and employers looking for a straightforward employee scheduling tool.
Skedulo has all the core employee scheduling features you’ll find in most other competing products. However, it stands out by helping users create employee schedules considering their immediate and long-term business goals. In addition, it allows users to switch views to find the most suitable employees for the right times and the right jobs.
Like Calendly, Calamari is not made for shift management and employee scheduling. But we’ve included it in this list because it’s a cost-effective tool that companies can use for managing worker shifts and availability. In addition, its leave management and time tracking features combine to provide managers a bird’s eye view of their team’s availability which helps avoid miscommunication and plan more accurately.
When I Work is ideal for small businesses with limited budgets looking for a robust employee scheduling application. It’s not loaded with unnecessary features like many other HR tools but delivers excellent employee scheduling and time tracking capabilities.
QuickBooks Time isn’t the most robust product on this list. But the overall feature package that comes with QuickBooks makes it worth using. It provides you a 360 solution for employee scheduling, time tracking, and costing, which saves you countless hours and a significant amount of money in the long run.
7Shifts combines an array of functionalities such as their innovative AI-powered auto-scheduler, in-app messaging, applicant tracking, and time tracking all in one restaurant tech platform. This is not the case with the majority of systems in this category.
SageHR’s biggest strength is its comprehensive suite of HR tools. Its employee scheduling feature comes with other tools such as time clock, leave management, and other core HR functions. So, it’s an excellent choice for companies that are not only looking for an employee scheduling app but a complete HR solution.
There’s a lot to like about Homebase. Its central scheduling interface is its biggest strength, which gives employers and employees a clear view of the company-wide schedule. We also love the fact that it offers a free version which is sufficient for most small businesses.
Calendly stands out from its competitors for its ease of use, slick design, and the amount of time it saves. It’s also one of the few scheduling tools with an indefinite free plan.
Deputy makes employee scheduling a breeze. But what makes it different from other employee scheduling software is its AI capabilities. It does the heavy lifting for you by developing optimized employee schedules for departments, teams, or individual employees based on their workload and availability.
Humanity is a very flexible employee scheduling tool that companies in diverse industries can use to simplify their shift management and employee coordination. Its biggest strength is that it offers multiple types of scheduling depending on an employer's needs. For example, companies can create flexible shifts for peak and low-demand hours.
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Vendors Reviewed
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best in class offering.
- User feedback: We do our best to understand what users say when they experience this product. User input allows us to accomplish a more thorough due diligence of products, put new vendors on our radar, and generally make sure we are presenting the right products to our readers.
- Financial metrics: We are very much finance nerds and so use a product's retention rates, growth, profitability, and scale to understand whether or not it is truly best in class.
- Best for a use case: Sometimes the best solution is the cheapest, the best tool for international companies, or the best for startups. We try to include a diversity of solutions so that our readers can find the tool that is best for what they need.
Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
In this guide you'll find
The best employee scheduling software solutions help organizations plan their labor needs, assign jobs to the right employees, and ensure that the total available working hours are being optimally utilized.
We spent hours researching, evaluating, and comparing the best employee scheduling software for small businesses.
Our focus has been the same as if we were in your shoes, on the market for an employee scheduling tool. We looked at their features, user experience, and main strengths and weaknesses.
However, finding the most suitable employee scheduling tool for your business is as much about understanding your business as it is about the product. Depending on how you’re set up, ‘the best’ product will vary.
For that reason, we’ve tried to put together a list with sufficient variety in industries, types of tech, and pricing styles. That being said, all of these are good bets for businesses with less than 1,500 employees.
Sounds good? Let’s dive in and take a closer look at each tool’s strengths and weaknesses.
Featured in
Top Employee Scheduling Software for Small Businesses
We track thousands of HR Tech solutions. Here are the best employee scheduling vendors for small businesses as of 2022.
Why we love it
:
ScheduleBase does what it promises - simplifying employee scheduling. Its limited features make it an easy-to-use product for field staff and employers looking for a straightforward employee scheduling tool.
- ScheduleBase is an easy-to-use tool that takes users straight to employee scheduling without overwhelming them with features.
- It can be easily accessed from its website and mobile applications (iPhone and Android).
- It offers a generous free trial of 30 days during which you can test all its features.
- Automatically sends email and SMS alerts to employees when the employer modifies their schedules.
- ScheduleBase is an easy-to-use tool that takes users straight to employee scheduling without overwhelming them with features.
- It can be easily accessed from its website and mobile applications (iPhone and Android).
- It offers a generous free trial of 30 days during which you can test all its features.
- Automatically sends email and SMS alerts to employees when the employer modifies their schedules.
- ScheduleBase comes with very limited features and is only suitable for companies looking for basic employee software.
- It does not offer any third-party software integrations, which means you can’t connect it with your payroll or HR solutions.
- It has an outdated user interface that isn’t visually appealing and lacks the drag & drop functionalities that most modern employee scheduling tools offer these days.
- ScheduleBase comes with very limited features and is only suitable for companies looking for basic employee software.
- It does not offer any third-party software integrations, which means you can’t connect it with your payroll or HR solutions.
- It has an outdated user interface that isn’t visually appealing and lacks the drag & drop functionalities that most modern employee scheduling tools offer these days.
ScheduleBase
Review:
ScheduleBase has all the basic employee scheduling features that allow you to effectively create and manage your team’s schedules online. It provides you with an easy-to-use employee scheduler and instantly notifies your team of any changes to their shifts. However, you can’t call it an advanced tool since it lacks many additional features such as group chats, time tracking, etc., that the more expensive scheduling tools offer.
ScheduleBase
Customers:
Subway, Orange Leaf, GoRun Wichita, Holiday Inn Express, Bell Bank, Randy’s Hardware
ScheduleBase
Stats:
- Used by over 20,000 managers
- Used to schedule over 140,000 employees
- Used for managing over 5.8 million daily schedules
ScheduleBase
Pricing:
ScheduleBase has a straightforward pricing structure based on the number of users associated with a company account. You can start as low as $10/month for up to 20 users. If you’re unsure about getting a paid plan, ScheduleBase offers a full-featured one-month free trial to help you decide if the platform is right for your business.
Here are the different pricing ScheduleBase pricing slabs based on the number of users.
Best For:
ScheduleBase is a flexible employee scheduling tool that works perfectly for various business types and industries. However, due to its limited features, it is best for businesses with small-medium-sized teams that work in shifts. This could include restaurants, call centers, retailers, construction companies with teams in multiple sites, etc.
Why we love it
:
QuickBooks Time isn’t the most robust product on this list. But the overall feature package that comes with QuickBooks makes it worth using. It provides you a 360 solution for employee scheduling, time tracking, and costing, which saves you countless hours and a significant amount of money in the long run.
- Increases profitability with integrated time-tracking and employee scheduling features.
- It makes scheduling simpler by highlighting work windows and available employees.
- Provides accurate labor costing thanks to time-tracking, scheduling, and accounting features.
- This product offers promotions and discounts (up to 50%) from time to time.
- Their customer service is personalized. You get to reach them by scheduling a call and customers have commended the courteous, tailored responses to issues they have.
- Consolidated clock in/clock out system for central work locations.
- Not very user-friendly
- Limited customizations
- No features for scheduling sub-contractors
- The GPS technology is slow to catch up on current locations at times. Instead of live updates, the software shows the employee’s previous locations.
- While their customer support is very helpful, they don’t provide many options for you to contact them. You can only schedule a call.
QuickBooks Time
Review:
QuickBooks is a global leader in accounting and HR software. QuickBooks Time is a part of its ecosystem and provides employers with time tracking and employee scheduling features. It isn’t as impressive as some of the other apps in this article. But the overall QuickBooks feature range enhances its employee scheduling capabilities and links it directly to your payroll software and HR systems resulting in more accurate costing and streamlined operations.
QuickBooks Time
Customers:
QuickBooks Time
Stats:
QuickBooks Time
Pricing:
QuickBooks Time offers two subscription plans
Premium - $8/user per month + $20 base fee/month
Elite - $10/user per month
Both plans come with a 30-day free trial
Best For:
- Helps in creating employee schedules and tracking employee activities in the same tool.
- Replaces the manual work in employee scheduling with a fully automated system with real-time shit tracking.
- Streamlines communication through notifications and email alerts.
Why we love it
:
There’s a lot to like about Homebase. Its central scheduling interface is its biggest strength, which gives employers and employees a clear view of the company-wide schedule. We also love the fact that it offers a free version which is sufficient for most small businesses.
- Provides a fully integrated employee scheduling system with separate interfaces for managers and employees.
- Instant messaging feature to directly communicate with team members and make schedule changes on the go.
- Makes requesting time off a breeze.
- Allows you to create schedule templates.
- Has desktop, android, and iPhone applications.
- Separate dashboards for managers and employees
- Real-time communication features allow for schedule changes on the move
- Requesting and approving paid time off is easy
- Great scheduling templates help managers streamline work
- It doesn’t have the most intuitive user interface, making it hard to navigate the product.
- Offers limited third-party integrations
- The tool offers very little room for customization
- Limited third-party integration support
- Additional features are somewhat expensive
Homebase
Review:
Homebase is among the best employee scheduling applications with thousands of customers worldwide. It provides organizations with an integrated system to manage their team’s schedule and instantly notify the relevant employees of any changes.
Its mobile apps allow employees to access their schedule on the go, coordinate with team members, and stay updated on any changes.
Similarly, it allows managers to assign work shifts and instantly notify employees of their schedules.
Try Homebase For Free
Homebase
Customers:
Homebase
Stats:
Homebase
Pricing:
Homebase offers the following subscription plans (billed annually)
- Basic - Free
- Essentials - $14/month per location [most suitable plans for employee scheduling features]
- Plus - $35/month per location
- All-in-one - $70/month per location
Best For:
Why we love it
:
OpenSimSim is perhaps the most impressive and robust free employee scheduling software. It provides all the core scheduling features such as messaging, schedule creator, notifications, and group/individual chats free of cost. This makes it an ideal solution for small businesses with limited teams.
- Easier to use compared to other employee scheduling tools thanks to its drag & drop user interface and excellent user experience.
- Offers a generous free plan, ideal for small teams, which includes all its core features with unlimited usage.
- Includes time tracking, recruitment, and sales management modules to provide a fully integrated one-stop HR management solution.
- Offers unlimited chat history which means your group chats can become a secondary knowledge base for your team to quickly refer to and find previously discussed information.
Easier to use compared to other employee scheduling tools thanks to its drag & drop user interface and excellent user experience.
- Offers a generous free plan, ideal for small teams, which includes all its core features with unlimited usage.
- Includes time tracking, recruitment, and sales management modules to provide a fully integrated one-stop HR management solution.
- Offers unlimited chat history which means your group chats can become a secondary knowledge base for your team to quickly refer to and find previously discussed information.
- Its knowledge base has in-depth help content, but its customer support is limited to Enterprise users.
- Its knowledge base has in-depth help content, but its customer support is limited to Enterprise users.
OpenSimSim
Review:
There’s a lot to like about OpenSimSim’s employee scheduling capabilities. It’s a modern application with an excellent user interface and drag & drop scheduling features.
It not only enables managers and employers to ensure work continuity through efficient scheduling but also empowers your teams and employers to control their work shifts and timely communicate time-offs or shift change requests.
In addition, it supports a wide range of third-party integrations including HR and payroll applications so that it can seamlessly become a part of your critical business tools.
OpenSimSim
Customers:
OpenSimSim
Stats:
- 200,000+ active users
- 75,000 monthly website visitors from organic and paid sources (SimilarWeb)
OpenSimSim
Pricing:
OpenSimSim offers three different subscription plans along with a generous free plan that includes all the core product features for one location, one department, and up to 10 workers.
All paid plans offer unlimited workers but apply different limits to the number of locations and departments. Here’s a useful table summarizing the plans on offer:
Best For:
Thanks to its well-rounded employee scheduling features and a wide range of integrations, OpenSimSim is ideal for all kinds of businesses, especially retail, restaurants, service-based companies, and manufacturing companies with field and shift workers. However, it works best for any company looking for an advanced employee scheduling tool that includes time tracking features and helps with labor law compliance as well. Small businesses with limited teams can also use its free plan to great effect. But if you’re on a tight budget, don’t need integrations, or need a basic scheduling solution, you can explore other cheaper options as well.
Why we love it
:
7Shifts combines an array of functionalities such as their innovative AI-powered auto-scheduler, in-app messaging, applicant tracking, and time tracking all in one restaurant tech platform. This is not the case with the majority of systems in this category.
- This software has a lot of integration options, making it easier to streamline aspects of your business like sales. You can, for example, connect to point of sale systems like Square and Toast so you can easily accept credit card and NFC payments as well as inventory and financing.
- A fully-featured software that helps you manage team schedules, timesheets, tasks, communications, and much more, within a mobile-friendly platform.
- Their free plan features basic scheduling and ATS functionalities to get your restaurant up and running, and it can accommodate as many as 30 users per location.
- This software has a lot of integration options, making it easier to streamline aspects of your business like sales. You can, for example, connect to point of sale systems like Square and Toast so you can easily accept credit card and NFC payments as well as inventory and financing.
- A fully-featured software that helps you manage team schedules, timesheets, tasks, communications, and much more, within a mobile-friendly platform.
- Their free plan features basic scheduling and ATS functionalities to get your restaurant up and running, and it can accommodate as many as 30 users per location.
- The platform’s scheduling can be a drag for teams with global remote workers because the shifts are only scheduled in CST timezone.
- The system, sometimes, does not synchronize employee’s mobile shift data with admin data. So shifts could be created and published on the manager’s end and the employees might not receive it.
- Doesn’t allow you to edit schedules before publishing. If a mistake is made, the schedule will have to be deleted and created again.
- The platform’s scheduling can be a drag for teams with global remote workers because the shifts are only scheduled in CST timezone.
- The system, sometimes, does not synchronize employee’s mobile shift data with admin data. So shifts could be created and published on the manager’s end and the employees might not receive it.
- Doesn’t allow you to edit schedules before publishing. If a mistake is made, the schedule will have to be deleted and created again.
7shifts
Review:
7Shifts was built specifically to be a human resources software for the restaurant industry, offering a wide range of functionality including employee scheduling, time clocking, labor compliance, and team communication.
Although this software has a lot of moving parts, they all synchronize to streamline restaurant operations. Additionally, the software offers innovative tools like an AI-powered auto-scheduler and templates, to help managers keep up with the fast-paced nature of restaurant HR management.
7shifts
Customers:
Sambo’s, The Chopped Leaf, Andy’s Frozen Custard, National Coney Island.
7shifts
Stats:
- Over 1 billion hours scheduled on the platform
- 27,000 restaurant locations use 7Shifts
7shifts
Pricing:
7Shifts offers three plans with fixed pricing and one with custom pricing. You can also purchase add-ons as needed. The plans are as follows:
- Comp: This is their free plan and it comes with basic scheduling and ATS features. The plan supports only 30 users per location.
- Entree: This plan costs $34.99 per location per month, but you can save about 10% if you pay annually. It is a little upgrade from the comp plan with reporting and budgeting added to the mix. It also supports only 30 employees per location.
- The Works: This plan costs $76.99 per location per month ($69.99 when billed annually). It offers all 7Shifts features to give you an all-in-one restaurant team management platform.
- Gourmet: The Gourmet plan is their custom plan. What separates this plan for the previous ones is that it comes with a dedicated account manager.
7Shifts also provides some add ons including:
- Task management: Costs $12.99 per location per month
- Tip pooling: Costs $24.99 per location per month
- Operations overview: Costs $6.99 per location per month
- Manager logbook: Costs $14.99 per location per month
Best For:
7Shifts is a great choice for restaurants that want a little bit of human resource management together with the scheduling.
Why we love it
:
ShiftBoard is ideal for large production-centric organizations looking to effectively schedule shifts and optimize labor costs. It makes life much easier for shift managers by giving employees access to their schedules and the option to trade hours.
- Offers two different products for production-centric companies and service providers.
- It’s a sophisticated employee scheduling solution that links directly with production plans, HR software, account, etc., to provide 360-degree resource management.
- It reduces absences and missed shifts resulting in lower labor costs and optimized production planning.
- Offers limited functionality to accommodate project-based employees.
- The user interface is clunky and hard to navigate.
- It has a learning curve due to its complex options.
Shiftboard
Review:
Shiftboard is a robust employee scheduling platform that offers significantly more features and functions than the other software in this list. This is why 60,000+ manufacturing and service-oriented companies use it for employee scheduling.
But it isn’t very customizable and lacks several key features for small businesses and companies that operate with contractual employees.
Shiftboard
Customers:
Shiftboard
Stats:
Shiftboard
Pricing:
ShiftBoard offers two different scheduling products for manufacturing and service-oriented organizations.
ScheduleFlex Pricing (Service Industry)
Basic - $3/month per user
Professional - $6/month per user (ideal for growing companies)
Enterprise - Custom Quote.
SchedulePro Pricing (Manufacturing Industry)
Enterprise and Enterprise Plus plans - Custom quotes
You can schedule a free demo of SchedulePro and ScheduleFlex from their respective pricing pages.
Best For:
- Improves employee motivation and productivity by helping companies minimize overtime and unplanned shifts.
- Allows organizations to manage employees at multiple production facilities from a central dashboard.
- Minimizes communication gaps in large companies through group announcements and one-on-one chats.
Why we love it
:
When I Work is ideal for small businesses with limited budgets looking for a robust employee scheduling application. It’s not loaded with unnecessary features like many other HR tools but delivers excellent employee scheduling and time tracking capabilities.
- Easy shift scheduling for managers and employees.
- Global organization view of all employees.
- Minimizes absences and no-shows through shift confirmation messages and seen receipts.
- Allows managers to decide how much control employees get
- No way to track paid time off
- Limited reporting data
- Technical and user-experience issues with the mobile app
When I Work
Review:
When I Work is a robust employee scheduling tool ideal for small businesses. It gives employers a bird’s eye view of their team’s work schedule and allows them to make changes on the go. It also empowers employees and makes their off-time more enjoyable by giving them control over their schedule and saving them from unplanned work.
When I Work
Customers:
When I Work
Stats:
When I Work
Pricing:
When I Work offers the following subscription plans.
- Small Business - $2/user per month
- Enterprise - Custom quote
The Small Business plan comes with a 14-day trial, while Enterprise users can schedule a Demo before purchase.
Best For:
- It gives employers the company-wide schedule dashboard simplifying decision making and saving countless hours.
- Allows users to track their work hours and update schedules anytime.
- Enables instant communication between employees and managers to improve coordination and minimize confusion.
Why we love it
:
SageHR’s biggest strength is its comprehensive suite of HR tools. Its employee scheduling feature comes with other tools such as time clock, leave management, and other core HR functions. So, it’s an excellent choice for companies that are not only looking for an employee scheduling app but a complete HR solution.
- It’s a 360 degree HR solution that takes care of staffing, evaluation, time-tracking, employee scheduling, and other critical functions.
- Allows employers to quickly create and communicate shift plans and employee schedules.
- It gives employees a platform to share availability and swap shifts
- Lacks intuitive chat features
- The mobile app has very limited functions, and users need to log in to the web version to perform most tasks.
Sage HR
Review:
SageHR is a trusted name in the HR software industry and offers some of the best employee management, scheduling, leave management, and resource management tools. Its employee scheduling app is a part of its HR product suite, which offers a comprehensive solution for assigning tasks to the right employees, managing work shifts, identifying under and over-utilized employees, and calculating labor costs.
It is worth considering for any company looking for an end-to-end HR system.
Sage HR
Customers:
Sage HR
Stats:
Sage HR
Pricing:
SageHR’s pricing depends on the number of users you want to manage. Its subscription plan includes its core HR and leaves management system by default, while the other features such as shift management, timesheets, expense manager, etc., are optional.
If you choose shift management only, SageHR would cost you $8.5/month per user. However, if you include timesheets because they allow you to measure overtime, the rate jumps to $11.5 per month per user.
Before signing for the paid plans, you can avail Sage HR’s 30-day free trial.
Best For:
- It makes shift planning easier by integrating it with employee timesheets and leave management systems.
- Helps managers identify errors in shift planning by providing a visual overview.
- Saves managers from work repetition by providing templates for different shift plans.
Why we love it
:
Deputy makes employee scheduling a breeze. But what makes it different from other employee scheduling software is its AI capabilities. It does the heavy lifting for you by developing optimized employee schedules for departments, teams, or individual employees based on their workload and availability.
- Quickly create optimized employee schedules with AI assistance.
- Easily find replacements when an employee doesn’t show up.
- Accurately track breaks and unproductive time.
- Easily integrates with Google Calendar and other workforce management and scheduling apps.
- Create AI optimized employee schedules
- Eliminate no-shows with quick replacements
- Track unproductive time and breaks with precision
- Very limited reporting and analytics
- Average customer support in case of technical problems
- It has a complex user interface that makes editing shifts, and employee schedules unnecessarily complicated.
- Limited reporting functionality
- Once published, upcoming schedules can’t be changed
Deputy
Review:
Deputy’s AI-powered employee scheduling features make it an ideal solution for busy small business owners. It takes the hassle out of employee scheduling by providing up-to-date workforce engagement details to managers and allowing employees to access their schedules online.
Deputy
Customers:
Deputy
Stats:
Deputy
Pricing:
Deputy offers a full-featured free trial of up t0 31 days. After that, you can sign up for one of its paid plans.
Scheduling - $2.5/user per month (billed annually)
Premium - $4.5/user per month (billed annually)
The Premium plan includes scheduling and time & attendance features.
Best For:
- Simplifies team communication and workload planning a breeze.
- It helps you identify underutilized and overburdened employees.
- Replaces spreadsheets and other manual work management methods with real-time dashboards.
Why we love it
:
Skedulo has all the core employee scheduling features you’ll find in most other competing products. However, it stands out by helping users create employee schedules considering their immediate and long-term business goals. In addition, it allows users to switch views to find the most suitable employees for the right times and the right jobs.
- Completely automates employee scheduling and dramatically improves team efficiency.
- Automatically matches customers with the right workers based on their location, expertise, and availability.
- Provides managers an easy drag & drop interface to create custom workflows and team plans.
- Completely automates employee scheduling and dramatically improves team efficiency.
- Automatically matches customers with the right workers based on their location, expertise, and availability.
- Provides managers an easy drag & drop interface to create custom workflows and team plans.
- Customizing fields in Skedulo reports is a hassle since several changes require technical assistance from their support team.
- Editing or amending block bookings is quite tricky, and several changes require the user to delete the whole block and start from scratch.
- Since Skedulo is customized for every organization, users may encounter frequent bugs and usability issues during the first few months of using it.
- Customizing fields in Skedulo reports is a hassle since several changes require technical assistance from their support team.
- Editing or amending block bookings is quite tricky, and several changes require the user to delete the whole block and start from scratch.
- Since Skedulo is customized for every organization, users may encounter frequent bugs and usability issues during the first few months of using it.
Skedulo
Review:
Skedulo helps organizations simplify workforce-related decision-making by eliminating manual scheduling problems. It provides a clean visual representation of a company’s workers, calendars, routes, shifts, and other key data to help streamline decision-making and easily manage your pipeline of jobs pending, assigned, and dispatched.
For managers, the tool offers real-time workforce locations and statuses in a map view that allows them to easily identify roadblocks and take corrective actions.
Skedulo
Customers:
The American Red Cross, DHL, BioReference Labs, Johnson & Johnson, Sunrun
Skedulo
Stats:
On average Skedulo customers experience
- 48% reduction in time to schedule
- 20% increase in deskless worker productivity
- 68% increase in customer satisfaction (up to 68%)
- 15% increase in billable appointments
Skedulo
Pricing:
Skedulo has two subscription plans for different end-users - Schedulers and Mobile Workers. The pricing for the two plans is based on a per-employee per month basis. However, you’ll need to get a custom quote to know the exact amount for each plan.
Best For:
Skedulo’s workforce management solution is ideal for medical companies, courier services, manufacturing businesses, and any other organizations with a large number of field workers and distributed teams serving customers at multiple locations simultaneously.
Why we love it
:
Like Calendly, Calamari is not made for shift management and employee scheduling. But we’ve included it in this list because it’s a cost-effective tool that companies can use for managing worker shifts and availability. In addition, its leave management and time tracking features combine to provide managers a bird’s eye view of their team’s availability which helps avoid miscommunication and plan more accurately.
- It gives employees an easy-to-use cloud interface to apply time-off, vacations, remote work, and shift changes.
- Provides managers a simple platform to approve/disapprove leave requests and evaluate employee work schedules.
- Provides a bird’s eye view of the organization's leave calendar
- It does not offer a shift management interface
- No shift trading features.
- Lacks work management features.
Calamari
Review:
Calamari is explicitly designed for organizations looking for leave management and time tracking features. It does not offer employee scheduling features per se. But it can be used for managing employee calendars and activity logs.
With a 14-day free trial, it is worth trying for organizations looking for an affordable time tracking and calendar management tool for employees.
Calamari
Customers:
Calamari
Stats:
Calamari
Pricing:
Calamari offers two separate modules for time tracking and leave management.
Clock In/Clock Out - $2/employee per month
Leave management - $1.7/employee per month
Both modules come with a 14-day trial.
Best For:
- Allows employees to submit leaves and time-off remotely
- Minimizes manual work and improves efficiency
- Gives employees an accurate view of their team’s activities.
Why we love it
:
Humanity is a very flexible employee scheduling tool that companies in diverse industries can use to simplify their shift management and employee coordination. Its biggest strength is that it offers multiple types of scheduling depending on an employer's needs. For example, companies can create flexible shifts for peak and low-demand hours.
- It accelerates the employee scheduling process through predictive technology, AI tools, and templates.
- Offers an excellent user interface to employees for time-off requests, schedule changes, and communication with managers.
- Significantly reduces overtime costs by timely identifying relevant employees, accurate costs calculations, and schedule optimization.
- Schedule builder doesn’t automatically adjust time zones.
- No way to prioritize shifts.
- Employee leave changes are not automatically incorporated into the schedule.
Humanity
Review:
Humanity is a leading employee scheduling software that allows shift-based employees to know exactly where they have to be and when. It empowers employees by giving them access to their weekly and monthly shift schedules, allowing them to trade shifts, submit time-offs, and communicate with their line managers instantly.
Similarly, it provides employers a one-stop solution to easily manage their employee schedule, assign resources, identify understaffed shifts, and take corrective actions on the go. In addition, it provides employers with the data and insights to take accurate recruitment decisions based on the demand-supply gap in a given shift.
It is ideal for service-oriented companies in healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, and household services.
Humanity
Customers:
Humanity
Stats:
Humanity
Pricing:
Humanity offers three different subscription plans for small, medium, and enterprise businesses. But users need to contact its sales team to learn more about pricing.
All plans come with a 30-day free trial.
Best For:
- Facilitates better decision making with multiple resource views
- Enables smooth communication without revealing the staff’s contact numbers to everyone.
- Simplifies schedule management, time-off requests, and shift exchanges between employees.
Why we love it
:
Calendly stands out from its competitors for its ease of use, slick design, and the amount of time it saves. It’s also one of the few scheduling tools with an indefinite free plan.
- Calendly’s simplicity is its biggest pro. It has an elegant user interface, it's very easy to navigate, it promptly gets the task done, and connects seamlessly with other applications.
- The reduction in back-and-forth emails. Your invitees can book a meeting slot, without reaching out to you multiple times. Calendly automatically sends them a confirmation and they can reschedule or cancel on their own. It’s even better for virtual meetings because once your invitees schedule a meeting with you, Calendly will automatically generate a meeting link based on your preferred video conferencing tool.
- The ability to set your own rules so that you can get complete control over your availability preferences. For example, you can decide how long a particular kind of meeting should be, buffer time between meetings, how many appointments can be booked per day, etc.
- Calendly seamlessly integrates with popular calendar and mailing tools. Meetings are automatically reflected on your personal calendar and video conferencing links with tools like Zoom or Google Meet are generated without any extra steps.
- Provides a bird’s eye view of your team’s availability for meetups and events.
- Calendly’s simplicity is its biggest pro. It has an elegant user interface, it's very easy to navigate, it promptly gets the task done, and connects seamlessly with other applications.
- The reduction in back-and-forth emails. Your invitees can book a meeting slot, without reaching out to you multiple times. Calendly automatically sends them a confirmation and they can reschedule or cancel on their own. It’s even better for virtual meetings because once your invitees schedule a meeting with you, Calendly will automatically generate a meeting link based on your preferred video conferencing tool.
- The ability to set your own rules so that you can get complete control over your availability preferences. For example, you can decide how long a particular kind of meeting should be, buffer time between meetings, how many appointments can be booked per day, etc.
- Calendly seamlessly integrates with popular calendar and mailing tools. Meetings are automatically reflected on your personal calendar and video conferencing links with tools like Zoom or Google Meet are generated without any extra steps.
- Doesn’t provide shift management features.
- Besides branding and the ability to choose different colors, Calendly does not offer a lot of options for customizations. This could be frustrating for users who want to embed Calendly in their website without making it seem like a completely different component.
- Calendly is not very mobile-friendly. You can’t perform all the functions on the mobile version.
- The payment collecting feature is not available in all currencies. Your invitees can only pay in the United States Dollar (USD), Australian Dollar (AUD), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Pound Sterling (GBP), and Euro (EUR).
- You’ll be severely limited in terms of features if you choose the free plan or the cheaper ones. According to Craig, a Customer Success Manager at a small business, “All advanced functionality is locked behind higher subscription levels – We have the Professional level so that we can set up a team, but they locked the most obvious and useful meeting type for teams behind yet another upgrade to the sub level.”
- Besides branding and the ability to choose different colors, Calendly does not offer a lot of options for customizations. This could be frustrating for users who want to embed Calendly in their website without making it seem like a completely different component.
- Calendly is not very mobile-friendly. You can’t perform all the functions on the mobile version.
- The payment collecting feature is not available in all currencies. Your invitees can only pay in the United States Dollar (USD), Australian Dollar (AUD), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Pound Sterling (GBP), and Euro (EUR).
- You’ll be severely limited in terms of features if you choose the free plan or the cheaper ones. According to Craig, a Customer Success Manager at a small business, “All advanced functionality is locked behind higher subscription levels – We have the Professional level so that we can set up a team, but they locked the most obvious and useful meeting type for teams behind yet another upgrade to the sub level.”
Calendly
Review:
Calendly is a modern meeting scheduling platform designed for entrepreneurs, consultants, service-oriented companies, and businesses that frequently conduct meetings across time zones.
Businesses looking for an affordable solution can use it as a makeshift tool for assigning work slots to in-house and remote employees.
However, it isn’t an employee scheduling platform for managing shifts, employee communication, shift trading, or leave management.
Calendly
Customers:
Calendly has many big names in their customer base, such as eBay, Compass, Lyft, Dropbox, La-Z-Boy, Twilio, and Stack Overflow.
Calendly
Stats:
- 10 million user base spread across the world
- Used by 50,000 companies
- Over 100 partner integrations
- Ancestry, a genealogy company saw a 40% reduction in scheduling emails after using Calendly
- Cengage, an Ed-Tech company had a 30% increase in annual retention of employees after using Calendly
- AgriWebb, a company in the agriculture industry experienced a 75% reduction in time to schedule customer success calls because of Calendly
Calendly
Pricing:
Calendly has five pricing plans that can be billed either monthly or annually. If you choose the latter, you’ll save 20%. Below are the prices you’ll pay per month per user, if you choose to get billed annually.
- Basic Plan: This is completely free of cost. However, as the name suggests, you’ll only have limited features to use.
- Essentials Plan: This plan costs $8 and is suitable when you need scheduling automation.
- Professional Plan: This plan costs $12 and is their most popular plan. Use it if you need customizations, integrations, and basic team features.
- Teams Plan: This plan costs $16 and is useful for teams that rely on collaboration and need to align on a scheduling process.
- Enterprise Plan: This plan has custom pricing and is suitable for teams with 30+ members and advanced needs. You’ll have to contact their sales team to get pricing.
All the paid plans come with a 14-day trial, at the end of which, you’ll automatically be downgraded to the free plan. They also offer special pricing for non-profit organizations. You’ll have to reach out to their customer support specialists for details.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes looking for an affordable and user-friendly scheduling solution. Sole business owners and small businesses might find Calendly particularly helpful since there’s a free plan as well.
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What is Employee Scheduling?
Employee scheduling is the process of managing your employees' total available working hours and scheduling them properly to ensure the continuation of work with optimal productivity.
In easier words, an employee schedule outlines employee working hours across different work shifts so that everyone knows who’s working when.
Why is employee scheduling important?
A well-planned employee schedule means everyone in your workforce knows their working hours. This reduces miscommunication and allows managers and team leads to plan their work with more clarity.
In short, employee scheduling brings transparency to your workplace and leads to a more organized, satisfied, and motivated workforce.
On the contrary, the absence of staff scheduling can result in employees working overtime, losing interest in their jobs, and feeling burned out because of unplanned work and last-minute changes.
Research shows that frequent overtime poses a severe health risk to employees and directly impacts their productivity.
This is why it’s crucial for large organizations that operate across shifts to carefully plan their employee schedule and ensure that their workforce performs at the optimal level.
This is where employee scheduling software comes in.
What Is The Best Employee Scheduling Software For Your Business?
We’ve covered some of the world’s highest-ranked and most widely used employee scheduling software in this article.
Most of them offer similar features and benefits. However, they’re all different products with their unique strengths and weaknesses.
Which tool is right for your business depends ultimately on your specific scheduling needs. Since most of these software products offer free trials, free plans, or demos, we recommend using these options before finally choosing a product for your business.
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