10 Best Free Employee Scheduling Software [2023]

Social Schedule’s simple interface makes it easy to use for business owners, managers, as well as employees. The app offers all scheduling basics in one neat package. It’s a must-have for small teams so they can manage shifts without any communication lapses. With a built-in messenger feature, it’s easy to maintain team communication to maintain a smooth workflow.

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Connecteam is an excellent tool that ensures effective team communication and management of work scheduling in your organization. The free features provide a well-packaged deal that helps you keep track of your employees and your work. This mobile task management solution helps keep your employees updated on the go by making sure they are aware of any changes and announcements.

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Sling provides managers with an easy way to communicate with their remote employees spread across multiple locations.

This employee scheduling app allows managers to easily rifle through time-off requests and assign employees to shifts based on their performance while allowing them to apply to any available shifts. Managers can also share changes or news with teams using the news-sharing service. 

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Tickspot offers solid time tracking features comparable with any other application in this category. You can use it to record task duration and assign hourly rates to calculate the total project cost. Similarly, it comes with a resource view in which you can calculate a team member’s efficiency by tracking their time and cost.

When you sign in to your Tickspot account, you’re immediately taken to the time tracking app, where you can start recording your tasks with a single click.

You also have the option to assign a target duration or budget for each task and then measure your performance against it.

So overall, Tickspot does a fine job from a time tracking and budgeting perspective.

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.

On one hand, Timify offers a ton of useful features such as a shared calendar, the ability for customers to book appointments, and the integration of the booking system with the client’s website and Facebook.

But on the flip side, the tool doesn’t come across as the most user-friendly one we’ve seen so far. For example, we couldn’t add new employees from the Resources tab at the top of the screen. Instead, the setting is only accessible from the left panel under Management.

However, the introductory tour that runs at first login is very helpful in terms of app familiarization.

Wrike is an excellent employee scheduling app for team collaboration that allows employees to have transparency in their work and assigned projects. In addition, you can define user roles to ensure only the relevant team members have edit rights to a project or schedule. Overall, it’s a versatile app that teams can use in different industries, thanks to its versatile and easy-to-use features.

OpenSimSim is a versatile employee scheduling software. It’s perfect for small businesses like retail stores and companies that operate in the service sector.

The program allows for easy shift scheduling with an open communication interface so miscommunication can never again be the reason for missed or understaffed shifts.

Homebase is a delight to use as an employee scheduling software because of its intuitive user interface and robust scheduling features. It provides organizations with an integrated system that empowers both managers and employees with dedicated shift management features. This ensures scheduling conflicts do not lead to the loss of productivity.

Its mobile-app updates everyone about any changes in real-time and allows users to request changes independently. 

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Findmyshift is a web-based employee scheduling software designed for small and medium-sized businesses with small teams. The software is a popular choice for shift management because of its ease of use and intuitive interface.

Unlike many of its competitors, Findmyshift does not require local installation and can be accessed via any web browser. The tool also offers Android and iOS apps with limited functionality compared to the web version of the software.

It’s worth mentioning here that we came across many customer reviews complaining about the stability of the mobile apps. For many customers, the app kept crashing abruptly. In other cases, users would get logged out for no apparent reason.

The live demo provides an excellent demonstration of what it’s like to use the software. Simply, access it from the Demo tab on the home page to begin experiencing the Findmyshift in one click.

The spreadsheet-style scheduler allows you to type in shift details against each employee’s name, copy and paste shifts across multiple cells with a few clicks or keyboard shortcuts, save schedules as templates, customize your view to show details like job titles and employee IDs, and download the schedule in a variety of different formats including PDF, Excel, and HTML.

Furthermore, with its calendar integration, you can view your schedule from your phone’s calendar and set alarms for upcoming shifts.

Neil Guardhouse from Picturehouse Cinemas finds the scheduler quite useful. He says, “Findmyshift is a fantastic online tool that gives me clear visibility of all of our cinemas' schedules through one easy website.”

The software generates a record for every action taken. For example, when you add a team member or assign a shift, the relevant employee gets notified via email as well as text if you have purchased text credits. This ensures a reliable stream of communication to the employees to keep them on the same page and helps you track activity as a manager.

However, a communication feature we sorely missed in Findmyshift is a messenger for employees to communicate among themselves. This could have made it easier for workers to swap shifts and coordinate better.

Using the time clock, managers can see the exact clocking-in and clocking-out times of their team members, allowing them to effectively manage the company’s resources and monitor employee performance. The time clock can also be allowed to take employee selfies and record their locations at the time of clock-in and clock-out for even better accountability.

For software in this price range, Findmyshift pleasantly surprised us with its reporting features. Using approved timesheets, compare the actual hours worked against those scheduled. For more insight, Findmyshift can combine these hours with your staff pay rates to forecast labor costs as you create schedules.