Top 9 Staff Scheduling Software Tools in 2022

Business owners and managers alike know that staff scheduling is a headache to manage and always needs altering, regardless of how much work you put into it.

It seems to be a task that torments all managers; having to cover all shifts and at the same time taking into account employee availability and requests, the scheduling process seems to never end.

What you need is outstanding staff scheduling software to automate the process as much as possible and free up your valuable time for more important matters. 
That’s why we scoured the web, read countless reports, and spoke to a select handful of experts—all so we could present you with the 9 best online staff scheduling software options that simplify and speed up your scheduling process.

What to Look for in a Staff Scheduling Software

A great staff scheduling software should streamline your scheduling process, help you and your employees choose and assign shifts, and simplify your workday–in short, it should make your life easier. To get what you need out of a staff scheduling app, make sure it offers the following features and abilities:

• Ease of use: You want to be able to drag and drop employees to move them around in the schedule. It would also be great to have weekly or monthly templates and just make a few tweaks here and there. 
• User interface: Both you and your employees need to be able to find what you need quickly.
• Mobile app: Employees need to view their schedules from anywhere and make any requests or changes on the go.
• Time management: Employees clocking in and out of the scheduling software ensures they are working their scheduled shifts. Using geo-tracking prevents time theft by only allowing them to clock in and out from the preset location. 
• Employee self-service: The ability for employees to request time off, upload sick days, and switch shifts with other employees – all takes the burden off the manager and puts it into the hands of the employee. 
• Communication features: Employees may have questions that arise due to scheduling and will need to be able to communicate with the manager that scheduled them or with coworkers. 
• Payroll tracking: Integrating staff scheduling software with payroll software reduces human error when logging employee hours and ultimately saves you time and money.

The Top 9 Staff Scheduling Software Tools In 2022

By far the easiest staff scheduling software, Connecteam allows you to schedule shifts and dispatch jobs easily and quickly. Create single, multiple, or team shifts, or just upload a bulk using an excel file. With calendar view, drag & drop options, and copying last week’s shifts, you save valuable time. 

Connecteam’s robust staff scheduling software tool can save you time and effort thanks to quick actions, easy customization, automated reminders, and an intuitive interface.

In addition, the Connecteam scheduling tool has other features for effective employee management. For example, it tags an employee’s GPS location when they clock in and clock out. And you can customize status updates for employees to check-in at the job location, so they check-in, reject, or complete their shift. Connecteam also allows for shift attachments so employees can add photos, videos, notes, etc. In addition, Connecteam has an in-app chat and employee directory so it’s easier than ever for employees to contact you if needed and vice-versa. In addition, they offer discounts to nonprofits and charities that meet a certain criteria.

For whom?

Ideal for businesses with deskless employees, small businesses, and Enterprises.

Key Features:

• Real-time scheduling oversight

• Recurring schedules

• Schedule shifts in bulk, drag & drop, templates

• Quick reference employee availability

• In-app communication

• Shift comments with notes, images, files, videos, and GIFS

• Automatic notifications

• Overtime and limitation notifications

• Unavailable or overlapping shift notifications

• Open shift claiming

• Desktop, mobile, and Kiosk access

• Accurate timesheets for accurate payroll (integrates directly with Quickbooks Online and Gusto)

PROS & CONS

• All-in-one employee scheduling and employee management software

• Easy to use

• Responsive and helpful customer support

• No cost prediction (at the moment)

Pricing:

• Premium plans start at $29/month for the first 30 users.

• Free trial: 14-day free trial

• Free-for-life plan: For up to 10 users, without limitations

Google’s free cloud spreadsheet software makes employee scheduling quite simple. The pre-fixed rows and columns offer organized options so you can set each individual employee in their own column within one spreadsheet. Or have one spreadsheet per employee and simply divide up their columns by days of the week. 

With its sharing feature, you can quickly share the spreadsheets with employees via email. Plus, it has an automatic-saving, cloud feature so you don’t have to worry about losing all the data.

For whom?

Ideal for small companies or freelancers. 

Key Features:

• Detailed reporting

• Analytics

• Templates

PROS & CONS

• Easy to use spreadsheets

• No customer support

Pricing:

• Free

When I Work is a great employee scheduling software for businesses with less than 75 employees. They have a free version that doesn’t limit you to one company location but it doesn’t let you schedule weeks into the future. 

However, it does have scheduling features like GPS locations and job instructions. Also, admins can view historical timesheets of a user on mobile, but editing past user entries/ shifts from the mobile is not available, and you will need the desktop version for it.

For whom?

Ideal for small companies, non-profit, and multi-site businesses.

Key Features:

• Automated scheduling

• Alerts and notifications

• Calendar management

• Class scheduling

• Drag & drop

• Employee database

PROS & CONS

• Easy to use

• Weekly and monthly calendar views

• Based on user reviews, there are many software issues and bugs

• Expensive for large teams

• Pricing can be deceptive

Pricing:

• The Small business plan, which covers up to 100 employees, costs $2/user per month. This does not include the time and attendance feature.

• Free trial: Yes

• Free-for-life plan: No

Google Calendar is a cloud creation of Google. However, it is designed to be a calendar so you can view everything in a day, four-day, week, month, year, or schedule format. Easily add events and reminders into a calendar and add notifications so employees don’t miss a shift.

Create employee shift calendars and share with everyone so they can view the shared work schedule calendar from their own personal calendar.

For whom?

Ideal for small companies or freelancers. 

Key Features:

• Address book

• Syncing calendars

• Appointment reminders

• Event management

• Task management

PROS & CONS

• Syncs and pairs with all google software

• Video conferencing

• Not user-friendly

• Problems with integrating calendars

Pricing:

• Google calendar is free, but if you would like to sign up for Google Business plan, which comes with a business email and some other advanced capabilities, it costs $5/user per month.

• Free trial: 30-day free trial

• Free-for-life plan: Yes

Homebase has a number of features, like scheduling, timesheets, time clocks, and messaging, but it also has special recruiting software that can post to online job boards. Homebase can also sync data from many payrolls and POS companies.

For whom?

Ideal for brick and mortar businesses with hourly employees.

Key Features:

• Alerts and notifications

• Applicant tracking for recruitment

• Automated scheduling

• Employee database

PROS & CONS

• Mobile app works well

• Good customer support

• Difficult to manually enter hours

• User report that sometimes that software lags when performing certain tasks

Pricing:

• There are 3 feature-rich paid plans starting at $19.95/unlimited users/per location/month, with custom pricing for enterprises.

• Free trial: Yes

• Free-for-life plan: Yes, for one location and unlimited users.

Paycor Scheduling helps you focus on what’s important — increasing productivity and reducing labor costs. The built-in reporting provides insight into your shift hours and costs, and this scheduling software also offers AI so you can use historical data to assign the right staff to any shift.

It has an easy scheduling feature and it’s simple to create and reuse schedule templates. Aside from a time-tracking tool, it also includes a staff management feature that can help track time-off requests and employee availability.

For whom?

Ideal for small businesses. 

Key Features:

• Desktop, mobile, and kiosk access

• Applicant tracking for recruitment purposes

• Automated scheduling

• Check printing

• Direct deposit

PROS & CONS

• Easy to use

• Simple payroll feature

• Users complain that pricing can be deceptive

• Poor customer service

Pricing:

• The Small Business plan, which covers 1-39 employees, has 3 different plans. The Basic plan starts at $99/month and does not cover features such as PTO requests and approvals. In order to fully understand what price you will be paying, you must speak to a sales representative.

• Free trial: No

• Free-for-life plan: No

Humanity is pretty easy to use and their apps make it simple to edit and check schedules straight from your phone. It is easy to manage schedules, all employee availability, employee shift trades, and day-off requests.

Humanity is known for its customer support team, and also offers lots of integrations with other software platforms, such as Oracle, Workday, BambooHR, as well as multiple payroll partners.

For whom?

Ideal for small companies like coffee shops or those on hourly wages.

Key Features:

• Activity tracking

• Alerts and notifications

• Attendance and availability management

• Automated scheduling

• Drag & drop

• Real-time data

PROS & CONS

• Nice user interface

• Great scheduling feature

• Some features don’t show correct information

• User mention there are lots of different settings, which can be overwhelming

Pricing:

• The Starter plan, ideal for small teams, costs $3.50/user per month, with a $100 minimum cost.

• Free trial: Yes

• Free-for-life plan: No

As far as staff scheduling goes, TSheets, now QuickBooks Time, offers similar scheduling and time-tracking software as other software tools do. Its mobile app sends your employees updates about their upcoming shifts and shift changes, then it sends you a notification if an employee is late or forgot to clock in.

However, the system is a little complicated and does need a lot of implementation training. In any case, two main features are worthy to mention. One, the GPS Time Tracker maps employee locations from when they clock-in to when they clock-out and the second feature allows employees to attach photos to timesheets.

For whom?

Ideal for service businesses. 

Key Features:

• Alerts and notifications

• Automated scheduling

• Group scheduling

• Multi-location

PROS & CONS

• Allows for multiple billing rates

• Allows for multiple billing rates

• Time tracking feature is more robust than scheduling feature

• Users complaining that some features are complicated to use

Pricing:

• QuickBooks scheduling costs $8/user per month with a $20 base fee and unlimited users.

• Free trial: 30-day

• Free-for-life plan: No

Here’s the thing, you really need to know IT & software if you are going to use Deputy. And they know it. That’s why they ask for all your pen and paper timesheets and scheduling in advance, so they can customize the software for you, and then you can begin onboarding. 

Deputy is a scheduling and time management software that overall is well-rounded and time-efficient. Additionally, it easily integrates with other business systems; it integrates with more than 35 payroll, POS, and accounting programs. Use Deputy to forecast sales traffic and schedule shifts automatically. They offer special pricing for nonprofits, charities, and community organizations. 

For whom?

Ideal for small companies and multi-location businesses. 

Key Features:

• Desktop, mobile, and kiosk access

• Alerts and notifications

• Automated scheduling

• Calendar management

• Drag & drop

• Employee database

• Group scheduling

PROS & CONS

• Great payroll integrations

• Employee management features

• Hard to use

• Poor customer support

Pricing:

• The scheduling feature costs $2.50/user per month.

• Free trial: 31-day

• Free-for-life plan: No

Compare the Best Staff Scheduling Software

What is staff scheduling software?

Staff scheduling software brings companies into the 21st century. Rather than using old systems of excel sheets, or even older pen-and-paper systems, you can now create a digital schedule for your employees. Staff scheduling software eases the process of employee scheduling by seeing exactly who is working when and where, and if there are any conflicts such as a double-booked employee, or an unscheduled shift. 

The best staff scheduling software gives a clear overview of the schedule as well as integrates with payroll software, reducing costly errors. Staff scheduling software gives employees control of their schedule by submitting PTO requests and prevents time theft by only allowing employees to clock in and out of a pre-set location using geo-tracking. 

Basically, the best staff scheduling software eases the burden of scheduling for management by making the process easier and reducing mistakes. 

How does staff scheduling software work?

Online staff scheduling software works by lightening the manager’s load. The software automates scheduling when possible, notifies of conflicts in the schedule before publishing, and allows employees to take more control of their individual schedules. 

Staff scheduling software that allows employees to trade shifts with coworkers, request PTO, and add in sick days gives the burden of scheduling to the employee. The manager can then approve or deny requests and create open shifts for qualified employees to take, and any changes to the schedule can be done by employees with a manager’s approval. 

All of these features are generally included in the best online staff scheduling software. The features create more time for managers where they’re able to focus on the business and less on the mundane tasks at hand. 

Benefits of the best staff scheduling software

Save Time & Money

Using a staff scheduling software tool can significantly reduce the time it takes to schedule employees. It also helps reduce the number of mistakes made during payroll. By using a digital scheduling tool, you can reduce the time spent creating staff schedules. With a robust scheduling software like Connecteam, you can easily view scheduling conflicts, employee availability, and even let employees claim open shifts.

On-The-Go Access

Mobile access is vital when finding the perfect staff scheduling software. On-the-go viewing gives employees access to their schedules from anywhere. Employees can set their availability, request PTO, and claim open shifts, allowing them more control over their schedule and thereby creating a better work-life balance. When employees feel that they have more control and stability in their work schedule, it positively affects employee satisfaction and productivity. 

Overtime, Tax, and Labor Compliance

Due to specific laws and regulations regarding overtime, it’s critical to be on top of your employee’s schedules to make sure they haven’t been scheduled for too many hours. With a staff scheduling app, you have complete oversight and control over employee overtime and schedules, reducing errors and complying with regulations.

How much does staff scheduling software cost?

The average pricing may vary depending on the size of your company. You have free options like google calendar or google sheets, but that’s really only practical for a few employees. Once you have 15+ employees, it gets pretty complex to use the free software options available. 

For any business with over 15 employees, you probably want to go with a paid staff scheduling software that allows you to do more than just assign shifts. Our top pick (and the cheapest on the list) is Connecteam. It has all of the features needed to smoothly create your staff schedules and integrate with payroll software, and it’s easily accessible from anywhere, making it ideal for your employees.

Frequently Asked Questions About Staff Scheduling Software

Will a Free Scheduling Software Meet All My Needs?

Not all free staff scheduling softwares are made equally. Some provide features that, while not directly related to scheduling, can assist and streamline scheduling issues even more than just a simple and free scheduling software. For example, not all free versions come with an in-app chat. With an in-app chat, employees and managers can efficiently and effortlessly get in touch with other employees directly on their mobile devices. This can reduce the time it takes to resolve scheduling issues or misunderstandings. In addition, there are only a few staff scheduling softwares that are also an all-in-one employee management software, like Connecteam. 

Do All Staff Scheduling Softwares Charge Per User?

No, not every staff scheduling software charges per user, or employee. Some charge per location. Additionally, there are some that charge a monthly base fee or require a minimum amount of users per month. With Connecteam, premium plans don’t charge per user. In fact, plans start at just $29/month for the first 30 users! It’s important to read the fine print from other staff scheduling apps and ensure that the software tool you have picked doesn’t have any hidden fees or costs. 

Should I Start With A Free Trial Before Choosing A Staff Scheduling Software?

Yes! Definitely take advantage of free trials when offered! This is the best way to determine if the staff scheduling software solution is the right fit for your business. While some companies don’t provide free trials, those that do usually allow users to experience all features included in higher, more advanced plans. That way you can determine if you need more advanced plans to fit your scheduling needs.

Find The Best Staff Scheduling Software Tool For Your Business

The benefits of using staff scheduling software will be apparent and felt within your business immediately! With the right staff scheduling software, you’ll save valuable time and money! You will also increase employee satisfaction and productivity by providing them a stable and flexible working schedule. 

Employees are much happier with a schedule that genuinely works for them. By doing so, you can also reduce employee turnover and keep the talent you employed. 

You want your scheduling tool to be as simple as possible, and your end schedule to be employee-friendly, otherwise, you are going to have a hard time trying to make your employees actually use it. 

If you’re looking for more than just a staff scheduling software, you may be interested in an all-in-one employee management tool. For example, with Connecteam, you can manage employee communication, daily tasks and checklists, and even onboarding and training new employees, just to name a few. Go through the nine software solutions we highlight above and choose the one that fits your company best.