
Top 11 Employee Scheduling Apps of 2022
MAY 29,2022 | MANAGEMENT , TECHNOLOGY , TOP ONLINE TOOLS | READING TIME: 8 MINUTES | By ALEXANDRA
MAY 29,2022 | MANAGEMENT , TECHNOLOGY , TOP ONLINE TOOLS | READING TIME: 8 MINUTES | By ALEXANDRA
That effort of constantly looking for opportunities to save money and keep operating expenses in check. This isn’t something new to business owners like you, yes?
Good thing is, there is a way to deal with all that, and that is managing your employee scheduling necessities efficiently. This without even going over the board with costs and overly straining yourself. All thanks to the ever trusty employee scheduling software.
With the use of these employee schedule apps, you can manage your workforce well. Proper and good employee management often equates to happier work culture and more productive staff—plus more income!
In that, we’ve rounded up some powerful apps for scheduling employees for you to check. So that overall workforce management—rostering, managing labour costs, swapping of shifts, and shift scheduling—can be done without a hitch.
If you’re ready, check out our top 12 employee scheduling apps of 2022.
What makes an employee schedule app stellar? It should provide functionalities that are beyond average. How? You may ask. Then check out these key features.
Just like most apps nowadays, good employee scheduling software should be mobile-friendly. Employees should be able to request shift changes or shift swaps via their mobile devices, may it be Android or iOS, with ease.
It’ll be easy for you to check, approve, and finalise employee requests and who will work on certain shifts. What’s more, you can schedule and approve shift changes directly from your smartphone or tablet too, especially when you’re outside the office.
The self-service feature of an employee scheduling app gives your employees the ability to manage their schedules by themselves. They can easily view schedules, clock in and out, grab available shifts, and swap shifts with other colleagues.
This gives your employees the feeling of autonomy in managing their schedules, and likewise, saves you time from completing these minor tasks.
A good employee scheduling and management software like RosterElf should better streamline your payroll process by integrating with other platforms such as Xero, MYOB, and Sage. This stores all your employee information in one location.
While other software charges you for integrations, some offer free for systems they collaborate with. Make use of these systems to reorganise and optimise business processes for payroll, HR management tasks, and workforce management.
Certain cloud-based employee scheduling software solutions can track your regular scheduling process. It will then offer suggestions to help you bolster your shift assigning schemes. It has the capability to monitor trends such as common scheduling patterns and employee preferences.
With this, it can recommend some scheduling changes as you designate shifts. The employee scheduling app also alerts you on regulations and fair work compliance to ensure there is equality and a reasonable work schedule for your workforce.
It’s best to have an employee scheduling app with a built-in payroll feature. It makes it plain-sailing to compute employees’ pay based on the number of hours they’ve worked. Having a payroll tracking feature can automatically calculate your employee’s gross pay the moment they clock out.
Handling payroll processes is highly efficient if you can track your employees’ absences. What’s more, you can monitor when your employees call in sick and request a paid-time-off.
This feature also lets you know when an employee requests for an LOA (leave of absence) to ensure there is shift coverage beforehand. Likewise, your employees can send request time-offs through this feature.
You can streamline and automate the scheduling process using the auto-scheduling feature of your chosen employee management system.
It recalls previous schedules, employee time-off references, and overtime requests, making sure your workforce gets sufficient coverage every week. Using this information, the software automatically keys in the number of hours into schedule for your assessment afterwards.
Most, if not all, apps for scheduling employees can collect data and analyse the following: the number of times your employees take time off, how much do your employees work, and the income they earn during a certain period of time
Some features utilise these details to formulate insights on valuable data like financial reports and labour budgeting costs. You can also export these records into a comprehensive report using the software’s employee scheduling template. Doing so lets you share and present this data across the organisation.
This feature allows you to view schedules in different formats—weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Check any schedule discrepancies to know where you should add extra shift coverage. Certain features let you filter this by locations, times, roles, and shifts.
These are the top employee scheduling apps to look out for this 2022.
RosterElf is perfectly designed for business owners made by business owners. With its seamless features and third-party system integration, without a doubt, it is one of the best employee scheduling software solutions there is.
As it definitely is a challenge for business owners and managers alike to chase staff for available hours, make weekly rosters, and keep up on payroll, RosterElf is made to do all that with ease. You can save time creating a business budget to stick to, all while making more time for employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
What’s more, you can even save 4% on labour, set financial business targets, view labour costs in real-time, and approve staff schedules by minimising time theft via electronic clock in and out. Using RosterElf’s cloud-based employee scheduling app allows your employees to keep their availability up to date.
Your teams are always aware of new rostered shifts through clear-cut and easy-to-manage workforce management features.
Core Features:
Mobile friendly feature
Labour budgeting
Scheduling
Workforce management
Pros and Cons:
With free trial
Simple to set up and use
Fair pricing
Pricing
This is analogous to Outlook and Google Calendar, yet it’s designed specifically for field service business owners. Some key features this employee scheduling app has are: automated assignment notifications, customer information, employee availability, and underbooked/overbooked management.
mHelpDesk is also capable of integrating third-party systems like QuickBooks, Home Advisor, and Google Calendar. This employee scheduling app is ideal for growing or stable businesses in small to large-sized.
Core Features:
Multiple features
Appointment scheduling
Employee availability reference
Automated features
Pros and Cons:
User-friendly
Good customer service
Streamlined invoicing and billing
Certain integrations don’t function well
Slow loading times
Can’t delete old users
Pricing:
Price starts at $169/user per month
With a 14-day free trial
No free-for-life plan
Skedulo is designed to streamline everyday workforce operations and boost productivity. It is a good employee scheduling software for a mobile organisation. With Skedulo, you can manage scheduling, oversee employees through a mobile app, and analyse recorded data for reporting.
Core Features:
Automated scheduling
Alerts and notifications
Employee database
Pros and Cons:
Appointment booking
A bit high-priced (user is charged by feature, per month)
Only works best in the healthcare industry
Pricing:
The scheduler feature alone costs $79/user per month
No free trial
No free-for-life plan
Intuit QuickBooks, previously known as TSheets, has uniform features with most cloud-based employee scheduling apps available in the market. You can easily schedule by job role or shift, send updates about roster changes, copy a previous employee schedule template—the list goes on.
You can get notifications about missed shifts or overtime, thus reducing labour costs. TSheets also has a feature where you can instantly see who is available for high-priority jobs. This software is ideal for small to large businesses.
Core Features:
Employee scheduling
Accounting integrations
Asset management
Pros and Cons:
Multiple features
User-friendly
Lack of customer support
Many bugs as per user report
It May get pricey for a large workforce
Pricing:
The premium plan is at $20/month and an additional $8/user per month
With a 30-day free trial
No free-for-life plan
Sling is another employee scheduling software that, similar to most scheduling apps, can manage time off, shift swapping, and employee availability. More so, mitigating absenteeism, as well as scheduling overtime and late arrivals, are also part of its features.
You can also save employee scheduling templates so that creating new ones is easy as pie. Sling is ideal for businesses of all sizes with shift work.
Core Features:
Alerts and notifications on overtime
Employee directory
Payroll management
Analytics and reporting
Pros and Cons:
User-friendly
Filter fields to view specific shifts
Not recommended for large organisations
Not that mobile-friendly
Private messaging
Pricing:
The premium plan costs $2/month per user | Business plan costs $4/user per month
With free trial
With free-for-life plan
HotSchedules’ user interface is simple and straightforward which makes your employee scheduling process smoother. Your employees can pick up, release, or request to swap shifts from their mobile device—may it be Android or iOS.
You have complete visibility over this matter and can approve or reject any changes with ease. You can even receive labour and sales data which makes it easier to generate an accurate roster. HotSchedules is ideal for various industries such as retail, hospitality, and restaurants.
Core Features:
Budget management and forecasting
Automated scheduling
Employee database
Employee management
Pros and Cons:
User-friendly
Easy scheduling process
Inadequate support from customer service
Not-so-good scheduling templates
Software updates are frequent
Pricing:
You need to contact their sales representative to get a price quote
No free trial
No free-for-life plan
You can drag and drop team schedules easily with Homebase’s employee scheduling software. Not just that, making changes directly from your mobile device, copying last week’s schedule, and scheduling automatically can be done effortlessly, too.
Your employees can update their schedule availability or request shift swaps, which are then sent to you for approval. In addition, Homebase can tally overtime and hours and can subtract break times, as well. It also integrates sales data from third-party systems. This scheduling software is ideal for small businesses and industries.
Core Features:
Automated scheduling
Employee availability monitoring
Overtime alerts
Pros and Cons:
User-friendly
Easy to track employee work hours
Less pricey
Lacks important features
User needs training prior to using it
Setting availability can be a tad tricky
Pricing:
Plans are charged per location rather than per user
The basic plan costs $19.95/month for unlimited users per location
With 14-day trial
With a free-for-life plan (very limited features)
Jolt is another cloud-based employee scheduling software that is capable of schedule distribution, mobile access, shift swapping, reports update, and time-clock app. This software makes it easy for you to obtain team fair work compliance, workforce accountability, and increase overall employee performance. Jolt is great for businesses in the food and beverage industry.
Core Features:
Employee Scheduling
Mobile and desktop access
Time clock management
Pros and Cons:
User-friendly
Good customer service
Setting availability can be challenging
PTO request is unserviceable
The app user interface isn’t on par with the desktop version
Pricing:
You need to contact their sales representative to get a price quote
No free trial
No free-for-life plan
Another great app for employee scheduling processes is Time Doctor. It is used by big and known companies as well as small start-up businesses. The software has robust scheduling and time tracking features that can boost your workforce’s productivity and optimise workflows for both employees and your managers.
Core Features:
Work scheduling management
Automated scheduling
Time and attendance tracking
Pros and Cons:
User-friendly
Does online and offline time tracking
Can do manual and automated time tracking
Out-of-date user interface
Customer support can be a challenge to reach
Idle time notifications can be bothersome
Pricing:
The basic plan starts at $8/user per month
With a free 14-day trial
With free-for-life plan
Humanity is fairly popular with healthcare companies for staff forecasting needs. Just like the rest of the employee scheduling apps mentioned above, it is capable of automatically ensuring that you adhere to employee fair work compliance.
Core Features:
Key business integrations
Automated scheduling
Time clock features
Pros and Cons:
A plethora of features
Solid set of features
Re-organised user interface
Its wide array of features can be overwhelming
Pricing:
The basic plan starts at $2/user per month
With 30-day free trial
With free-for-life plan
Say, for example, having an app for scheduling employees may not utterly win you over, or you’re having second thoughts. Well then, these benefits will surely convince you.
Making sure you have scheduled the right number of employees for every position and every shift.
Preventing you from scheduling an employee under the same shift (double-scheduling) or scheduling an employee for a job they don't fit.
Alerting you when you’ve scheduled your worker a shift that’s conflicting with their availability.
Notifying you whenever an employee may enter an overtime pay in a week.
Disseminating schedules to employees immediately once done creating the roster
Letting you make necessary amends to the work schedules, even after it’s already completed and finalised.
Updating your workforce with ease when there are schedule changes or updates.
These solid features can definitely change the way you handle your employee scheduling process in a complete 180 degree, positively of course. Take note, these apps don’t only manage schedules but handle other administrative tasks, too.
An excellent employee scheduling software can do a wide variety of tasks that save you hours in planning and executing. And maintaining good and clear communication with your entire team is par for the course.
Nonetheless, having an employee scheduling app in place mitigates the needless overlaps in terms of the scheduling process and, instead, improves productivity. Make sure to pick which one works best for your organisation for a more efficient schedule and workload management.
RosterElf’s cloud-based employee scheduling software truly is a game-changer.
Say goodbye to roster conflicts and chase employees for their availability to work. Employees can easily update their availability to work and notify managers about it through a smartphone app. Staff set the times and days they can work and RosterElf does the rest. Our software then automatically suggests available employees fill shifts.
We are truly the best rostering system in Australia. So, what are you waiting for? Time to take your employee scheduling game to the next level and boost your business’ performance. Call us now at 1300 353 000 and our team will be more than happy to assist you.
To get a more clear view of how our app works, enjoy 30-day access to our tool for free!
RosterElf is built with you in mind. Our online staff scheduling tool handles all your employee scheduling needs.
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