The Best Employee Scheduling Software for Businesses in 2024- DigitalTreed

‘Scheduling is all about assigning the work to your team members.’ Now, it may sound like ‘walking in the park,‘ but Employee Scheduling is a lot more than that. From employee competency to availability, expenses, and project deadlines, there is more than one factor to consider regarding employee scheduling. Scheduling daily with a pen on paper or just in your mind can create confusion and make your workflow crumple. However, the right employee scheduling software for small businesses can automate the whole process with your bare minimum inputs.

In this article, we will take a look at:

What is employee scheduling software?

Employee scheduling software allows users to easily create work attendance schedules for employees. Gone are the days of hand-written paper schedules and complicated, outdated software options. Today’s modern schedule builders offer many robust features developed for flexibility and usability with an anywhere-you-are approach.

Employee scheduling software can help reduce employee turnover since it allows them to understand their designated shift start and end times. You can also expect a much easier time tracking correct payroll payments since every hour worked is accounted for, assuming employees clock in and out. However, if a punch time is missing, the software allows for easy time adjustments and correction. You also gain the insight to schedule the best employees during peak business traffic to ensure that business operations continue smoothly and efficiently.

What to look for when choosing employee scheduling software

Software is an important piece of modern business, and job scheduling software is no different. Some would suggest it’s the most important part since human capital is the most valuable asset most businesses have. Ensuring that employees show up on time at the right place is critical to continued business growth. In thinking about the essential features needed for employee scheduling software, consider the following non-exhaustive list as a great starting point.

1. Ease of access

Minimally, employees should have access to your business’s scheduling software in a centralized business location and, ideally, everywhere there’s an internet connection.

2. Ease of use

Can your employees process time card punches when not at the office or headquarters of your business? If not, consider remote clock-ins a must-have feature, especially for service-based businesses like plumbers, roofers, HVAC technicians, inspectors, and traveling sales reps. Mobile clock-ins should allow employees to quickly and easily confirm the start of their workday directly from their smartphones. If the scheduling software offers location-based confirmation as well, consider this a bonus. Also, consider how easily you can create a schedule. A great employee scheduling software should save you time as a business owner or manager, not cost you more of it.

3. Integration

Having the ability to input your total payroll hours directly into payroll software is another powerful feature that not only ensures accurate and timely payments to your workers but also helps ease the burden of manually calculating time worked versus money earned. Another integration to consider is a POS system that can help define peak operation hours so you can deploy the needed staff during these busier times.

4. Impeccable Customer Support

On-boarding new software into your business operation may seem hectic for your employees. Starting from organizing proper training for all your team members to assisting them when they are in difficulties with the application, customer support can come in handy throughout the software life cycle. Thus, choose a service with decent customer support service that is easy to reach and has a minimum turnaround time.

Top Employee Scheduling Software List

Get the list of the top 10 best employee scheduling apps that provide the best result in your organization and reduce the business cost

DeskTrack

The next application on our list is not just a mere employee scheduling software but more monitoring software that allows you to schedule tasks and calculate employee productivity. If you are looking for a feature-rich tool that can help you with employee tracking, as well as task scheduling, then DeskTrack brings the best solution to you.

You can easily add more value to your remote team by increasing engagement with instantaneous time graphs and sheets. Also, DeskTrack boosts transparency in your system through timely screenshots and active hours tracking features.

Price: Basic plan starts at $2.99/user/month.

Pros

Real-time Employee monitoring to increase engagement and boost productivity
Workforce analytics for data-driven impactful decision-making
App-Url tracking and daily activity log

Cons

Not dedicated to employee scheduling

ScheduleAnywhere

The top employee scheduling app that we have on our list is the ScheduleAnywhere. It is easy to use and best for teams who are always on the go. The application comes with features to eliminate common scheduling conflicts and track employee training programs and progress. Even managers can make easy shift rotations, keep track of employee availability, and calculate overtime hours.

Price: Available at as low as 2 USD /user/month.

Pros

Comes with Cross-platform support
Light-weight mobile app for on-the-go scheduling
Pocket-friendly pricing

Cons

No trial plans for the monthly users
Lacks essential time-tracking features

Paycor

With simplified repeat scheduling systems, Ximple now Paycor is an excellent employee scheduling software that covers all your basic delegation requirements. The application offers AI-powered tools backed by historical data mapping to assign the right task to the right employee in each shift. Also, Paycor offers state-of-the-art time-tracking and efficient staff management tools to help managers track employee availability and make decisions on time-off requests.

Price: Starts at $1/user/month

Pros

AI-powered tools for automatic repeat task delegation
Salient time tracking and employee monitoring features
Multiple platform support

Cons

The user interface is a little more complex than its peers

Humanity

If a simple user interface and easy-to-use features sound more of the thing that your team needs, then Humanity is the go-to app for your business. The application has an incredibly easy-to-use interface that ensures a fantastic employee experience.

Apart from that, Humanity comes with custom templates and rules that are specific to the unique scheduling needs of your business’s operations. The AI-powered tools make 80% of the employee scheduling tasks automated. Thus, human errors remain much lesser, which helps in long-term employee retention.

Price: A yearly subscription is available at a minimum of $2/users/month

Pros

Highly customizable as per industry need
Automated task scheduling
Seamless integrations and visibility across schedules

Cons

A long feature list is enough to overwhelm basic-level users

WorkSchedule.Net

WorkSchedule.Net can be your perfect employee scheduling tool if you are operating in hospitality or any other public service domain. From time attendance and availability management to payroll, the application offers you all your employee data under one dashboard.

The best part about WorkSchedule is they offer amazing convenience to managers and operation teams with their mobile application. Through the app, you can manage your employee schedule on the go. Also, since the live dashboard remains visible to all your employees, they can easily keep track of real-time changes and work accordingly.

Price: Monthly plan starts at $2.99/user/month

Pros

Easy-to-use mobile app for on-the-go scheduling
Can easily manage 50+ employees under a dashboard
Great customer support experience

Cons

Not a good fit for freelancers

QuickBooks Time

Formerly known as TSheets, QuickBooks Time is another great time tracking cum employee scheduling software that offers features such as a GPS time tracker, employee timesheets, etc. If you are in search of an employee scheduling tool at a much more pocket-friendly price, then it’s probably one of the best available in the market.

Price: Available from $4/user/month

Pros

Can easily integrate with QuickBooks Accounting software
GPS tracking & GEO fencing features
Easily accessible through mobile, desktop, and kiosk

Cons

Customer support experience is not good
Expensive

Deputy

Price: Starts at $2/user/month

Deputy is a superb workflow management & employee task scheduling tool with some amazing features. Large businesses with a lot of compliance requirements can use the application for employee scheduling. The best thing is you will be able to integrate your POS system, payrolls, and other operations with Deputy. It supports integration to more than 35 applications.

Pros

Easy to integrate with existing business software
Offers great customer support
Simple yet intuitive user interface

Cons

Slow to load
Can’t filter employee location

Planday

If you are looking for a featureful app that not only does employee scheduling but also helps you in staff management, then Planday is the best option for you. The application comes with a Punch Clock feature that lets you embrace a flexible work schedule in your organization. This especially helps in remote workflow management since it easily helps remote employees punch in and out as they start and end their work.

Price: Basic plan starts at 2.49 euro/user/month

Pros

Simple and easy-to-navigate application
Offers reporting and attendance feature
Customer service is decent

Cons

Difficult to integrate with other software

Workforce

With some state-of-the-art features, Workforce makes an excellent employee scheduling software for managers working on the go. You can change shift timing for your available employees and replace unavailable staff from the schedule on the go with the mobile application. Workforce lets you integrate existing payroll software seamlessly. Also, its BI custom reporting feature allows you to send reports to clients and executives to offer them an accurate picture of the operations.

Price: Starts at $4/ month/user

Pros

Simple user interface
On-the-go task scheduling
Mobile time tracking for small business

Cons

Expensive than most other options with similar features.

Google Sheets

If you want the simplest solution at zero additional cost, Google Sheets are superb to start with. It’s an excellent option for businesses that run with small teams or individually, and the scheduling does not involve any complexity. The best thing about Google Sheet is that it comes as Google’s free cloud software and saves all the changes you make automatically. Thus, none of the changes get lost to network errors or any other issue. Also, you can easily share the sheet with your team members in their emails.

Price: Free

Pros

Available for free with Google Cloud Solution
Simple and easy to use
Easy to start with

Cons

Lacks essential scheduling features

7shifts

Price: Pricing ranges from free to $69.99 per month per location if you opt for the annual plan. On the low end, restauranteurs looking for basic time clock functionality and staff scheduling for one location with up to 10 employees can take advantage of the free plan. From there, the paid plans support more employees and offer sales integration with popular restaurant POS software like Toast and Square.

Key features:

Free mobile apps on iOS and Android for paid tiers
POS integration (sales)
Staff engagement dashboard
SMS notifications
Customized employee health check

7shifts is an amazing employee scheduling software for restaurants of all sizes. It integrates with many payroll software systems like ADP, Paylocity, and Intuit Quickbooks. An API is available for custom development. For an additional fee, you can add ancillary features like task management and operations overview, turning 7shifts into a powerful productivity app on top of an already robust scheduling application.

ClockShark

Price: Costs range from $3-$8 per user with an additional base fee of $15-$45 depending on the plan tier.

Key features:

Drag-and-drop scheduling
Payroll integration
Geolocation time clock with geofencing capabilities
Clock-out questions
Kiosk time clock with facial recognition

ClockShark is a great employee scheduling software for several different types of businesses, especially service-based businesses like real estate agents or mobile service technicians. One of CoolShark’s coolest features is clock-out questions, which can be customized to remind employees of critical closing procedures. ClockShark also has mobile time-clock features for in-field employees, with the ability to set a geofence that automatically clocks them in when they arrive at a job site. If you’re using one of the major payroll providers like ADP or Gusto, there’s an available integration. ClockShark also integrates with popular business accounting software like Intuit Quickbooks and Xero.

Findmyshift

Price: The company offers just three plans: free, $35 a month for businesses, and $26.25 a month for volunteers. The only difference between the business plan and the volunteer plan is payroll calculation, meaning that you’re not missing features trapped behind higher-tiered paywalls or additional costs.

Key features:

Drag-and-drop scheduling
Timesheets
SMS and email notifications
Shift reminders
Unlimited locations

Findmyshift allows you to input unlimited employees at unlimited locations. It has drag-and-drop scheduling for quick and easy schedule creation. You can send shift reminders by both email and text message, although there is an additional charge for SMS notifications. Multiple integrations are available to connect the software with other apps your business may currently be using, such as Xero, Monday, and Vend.

Float

Price: Float charges $5 per month per user for Resource Planning and $10 per month for Resource Planning and Time Tracking.

Key features:

Designed for medium to large businesses
Many productivity app integrations
High-level view of deep and complex project management structures
Schedule based on your team’s workload
Set project budgets based on time or fees

Float is an employee scheduling software that’s a bit different than other software systems on this list. While most other scheduling applications take on retail, restaurants, and health care, Float is especially useful for software development companies and other industries where project management is a huge factor. Integrations are available for team-based productivity tools like Slack, Asana, and Trello.

With workload scheduling, if an employee is behind on their projected schedule, you can simply reassign the next project to another employee. When resource management is critical to your business’s success, Float allows you to quickly and effortlessly assign work based on your company’s resource needs. Employee scheduling apps are available on both Android and iOS, which is especially useful if you have many remote workers.

Homebase

Price: Homebase has a free version as well as paid tiers ranging up to $70 per month per location if you opt for the annual plan.

Key features:

Free mobile messaging application for employees
POS system and accounting software integration
Hiring and onboarding
Employee health and screening
Clock in and out from any device

Homebase’s free option offers features like a time clock, employee scheduling and availability, and employee mobile apps. However, if your business demands more features, some of the paid tiers include budgeting and labor cost controls, performance management, and document storage. Homebase also has many application integrations from various POS and accounting software vendors, and there’s even assistance with job postings and onboarding when you need to find new talent. This employee scheduling software works great if you’re in retail, health and beauty, restaurants, and services.

Jolt

Price: Pricing information requires contacting the software company for a quote. There are two available tiers: Standard and Enterprise.

Key features:

Digital food safety
Temperature probe sync and Bluetooth cold sensor support
Employee announcements
Tasks and checklists
Unlimited users, unlimited devices, and unlimited data

Jolt is used by some of the biggest restaurant brands in the world, including Buffalo Wild Wings, Jersey Mike’s Subs, and Sonic. This “digital assistant manager” has a robust number of productivity features on top of its powerful employee scheduling. It includes digital food safety features like temperature notifications and food-life labeling to decrease spoilage and waste. Those outside the restaurant industry might find some of the other features, such as safety checks, employee performance, and mobile apps for in-field workers, useful.

Conclusion

That’s all. Now you have the list of best employee scheduling software to choose from. Get the application that matches your use cases. Also, it’s always better to invest in scheduling software that offers multiple solutions like employee performance tracking, timesheets, easy payroll, other software integration, etc. In terms of that, DeskTrack brings the best solution at a much more cost-effective price. You can check out the software features with a free demo.