Scheduling, leave management and attendance tracking are essential regardless of whether your employees work a fixed number of hours every day or enjoy flexible work arrangements.
For this purpose, it is possible to use such old-fashioned tools like Excel and Word or integrate scheduling modules and calendars into your HR and payroll systems. However, there are better ways to keep track of employee attendance and absence. Here’s our selection of employee scheduling software for different areas of application.
1. actiPLANS
Key features: Flexible work scheduling, Leave request management, Reports, Handy automation
actiPLANS is a simple and flexible tool for employee scheduling. It includes two visual timelines that you can use to schedule bespoke types of work and leave.
To start with employee scheduling in actiPLANS, you first need to decide what exactly you want to schedule with its help. It can be anything from employee shifts and project activities to work locations and corporate events. Then, simply open the Work Scheduling timeline, select the necessary dates, indicate which work type you wanna schedule and click the Save button. After that, the system will notify employees about their schedule change automatically via email.
In addition to that, the desktop version of actiPLANS makes it easy for users to track their current and future PTO balances and then use this information to plan out any kind of time off both in the short and long term. As for the mobile app, it allows you to quickly notify colleagues about lateness or early departures from work and overview who is absent at the moment and why. This is great for staying in the know of current employee availability, both within regular and flexible work arrangements.
One more valuable feature of actiPLANS is the automatic leave request approval. It helps make the absence management process more streamlined, which not only saves a ton of time for managers but also contributes to higher employee satisfaction by giving your team members more control over personal work schedules.
2. ShiftForce
Key features: Shift scheduling, Task management, Team communication, Mobile app
ShiftForce is an employee scheduling software and manager log book for any shift-based industry like restaurants, retail stores and hotels. Its features include an easy-to-use scheduler, time off management, daily communication and KPI tracking via the manager log book, forecaster, checklist system, messaging and more.
ShiftForce allows managers to create schedules faster while also saving on labor costs by reducing overtime and improving communication by utilizing the log book every shift. It also includes free training and onboarding setup!
3. Fourth
Key features: Scheduling, Cost management, Payroll, Employee engagement
Fourth is an enterprise-level workforce management solution for the retail and hospitality industry. It includes a robust work scheduling module that automates the process and saves a lot of time for both managers and regular employees.
Fourth users report that this solution not only makes it faster to create, communicate and manage work schedules in their teams but also helps to reduce expenses and forecast future workforce capabilities. The tool also helps control labor costs and budgets, which is a great addition to its work scheduling functionality.
4. Humanity
Key features: Labor cost tracking, Mobile app, Compliance, Time clock
One of the most popular solutions on this list, Humanity offers scheduling, time clock and staff management features. It helps organize shifts and communicate schedule information to the employees quickly and easily, and also includes payroll and HR features. Humanity has mobile apps for viewing and managing team’s schedules from anywhere.
5. Snap Schedule
Key features: Shift management, Compliance, Overtime control, Cost tracking
“Excel-like with more power,” as the authors call it. In fact, the interfaces of this tool are similar to Excel’s, but it offers special features for schedule planning and publishing. It enables users to create and assign shifts, plan workloads and control overtime. Snap Schedule also allows to schedule breaks and define tasks to be performed during each shift. The app helps build up a mindful shift management process, reduce labor costs, prevent unexpected overtime and easily collect payroll data.
6. Sling
Key features: Time clock, Task management, Integrations, Team communication
Sling combines schedule planning and absence management features, so it helps manage shift work and avoid conflicts with the team’s absence schedule. The tool allows you to copy shifts and schedules between days and weeks and create recurring shifts to eliminate repeated entries. A mobile app is provided so that you can stay on top of things and communicate with your colleagues from anywhere. What’s more, the app has a “social space” feature that allows to share updates and files, set up newsfeeds and interact with coworkers.
7. Calamari
Key features: Time clock, Leave management, Built-in automation, Integrations
Calamari contains two modules: leave management and clock-in and –out. Its leave management module offers an automated time off processing from request to approval and leave balance calculations. In it, you can create various leave types, see requests history and attach related documents to your requests.
8. Paycor
Key features: Visual scheduler, Notifications, Mobile app, Analytics
Paycor is a comprehensive HCM software that offers a robust schedule planner and helps create visual shift schedules. With its help, you can also manage absence requests, control labor costs, communicate with colleagues and more. The tool allows for managing schedules for teams located in different offices: it supports multiple calendars for different locations and protects from double-booking of work time by a person who works at two locations.
Paycor helps managers understand their employees’ availability for future workloads and sort them by job roles if the team’s capacity for a specific work type needs to be checked.
9. Shiftboard
Key features: Easy scheduling, Employee self-service, Integrations, Mobile app
Shiftboard is a scheduling tool for medium and large teams. It offers a complex approach to scheduling, attendance tracking, as well as performance and capacity analytics. Its scheduling features allow a simple setup process, avoiding schedule conflicts and unwanted overtime and automating schedule creation. Managers can benefit from built-in reports and analytics that help in planning work ahead.
The tool includes a startup procedure for new employees that simplifies the onboarding process and ensures that all employees have taken the necessary startup and training steps. For hiring managers, it also streamlines candidate data collection and organizes the entire hiring process.
10. Homebase
Key features: Payroll, Time clock, Scheduling, Team communication
According to the developers of this app, a thoughtful scheduling procedure can save up to five working hours each week. This is what the app offers: scheduling, shift management and labor cost control. Managers can create schedules and communicate them to the employees both from the desktop account and the mobile app easily and quickly. By automating work time calculation, Homebase also helps managers forecast labor costs and compare them to the planned budget figures.
As the developer emphasizes, using spreadsheets for leave management costs more than you expect. Up to 14000 minutes a year are spent on requesting leaves and getting them approved in a team of 200 employees, and this is the amount of time that can be used more efficiently with a special leave management tool.
