The 18 Best Employee Scheduling Software Tools of 2023

No matter if your organization has 1,000 employees or 10 employees, it can be difficult to coordinate everyone's schedules. With all the other responsibilities workplace management requires, the last thing you want to do is waste hours trying to plan each person's individual work schedule.

Luckily, we live in the modern age where there are many options other than the traditional pen-to-paper method. Any of the following employee scheduling software tools will help take a load off your back, while also ensuring a more organized and efficient scheduling system for your team.

Skip to:

• Top Scheduling Software Tools
• Online Scheduling Tools
• Free Scheduling Tools

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Online Employee Scheduling Software

1. ScheduleAnywhere

Price: Contact for a quote, free trial available

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ScheduleAnywhere is an easy-to-use employee scheduling software that streamlines everything about scheduling, saving you time and money while improving efficiency and team communication. It’s simple: ScheduleAnywhere makes your life easier, your daily operations smoother and your employees happier.

The software ensures proper shift coverage, eliminates scheduling conflicts, estimates payroll costs, tracks certifications and training, and manages shift rotations, staff availability, overtime, and time-off requests. You can also access and manage staff schedules and employee requests from any mobile device with our free ScheduleAnywhere app or mobile site. See who's scheduled, or not scheduled, and make last-minute changes.

2. Workforce.com

Price: Contact for a quote

Workforce.com has plenty of useful features that make it a powerful employee scheduling software. For example, its round-the-clock scheduling tool lets you create templates that you can apply every time you‘re creating your team’s work schedule. This can save management tons of time from having to recreate the same work schedule every week or month.

Workforce.com also provides insights into your labor costs, so you can see how your budget is doing in real-time. You can see your labor costs per staff, per team, or per location in a daily or weekly format.

3. QuickBooks Time

Price: Starts at $20/month

QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets), another great option for employee scheduling, offers similar scheduling and time-tracking software to competitor apps. Its mobile app sends employees updates about upcoming shifts and shift changes and sends you notifications if an employee is late or forgets to clock in.

The app has two special features. One is a GPS Time Tracker which maps employee locations from clock-in to clock-out. The other is the ability to attach photos to timesheets; that way, you can keep track of completed projects without requiring lengthy, written recaps. QuickBooks Time offers two paid plans: Premium and Elite for $20 and $40 per month respectively — plus an additional base fee depending on the number of users.

4. MakeShift

Price: Starts at $2.75/month/user

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MakeShift is an all-in-one platform that combines scheduling, time tracking, payroll, and internal communications. It's a flexible tool that works for both small and enterprise-level businesses alike.

The mobile app allows employees to view their schedules on the go, in addition to swapping shifts and setting availability. Makeshift also blends seamlessly into your operations with integrations for payroll and HR like ADP, QuickBooks, and BambooHR.

5. Paycor

Price: Based on company size, contact for a quote

Paycor (formerly Ximple) is an excellent employee scheduling app that covers all your needs. It has an easy scheduling feature and allows you to easily repeat schedule templates. Along with a time-tracking tool, it has an efficient staff management feature that helps you track time-off requests and employee availability. Employees can also switch shifts or pick up extra ones using the platform.

In addition, Paycor offers AI to help you use historical data to assign the right staff to each shift. The software helps you produce the most efficient and high-quality schedules and maintain control over your financial spending.

6. Humanity

Price: Contact for a quote

Humanity is set apart from competitors because of how simple it is to use. The interface is incredibly user-friendly and easy to grasp, and its apps make it even easier to edit and check schedules on your phone.

Humanity also has a very strong customer support team — perhaps that‘s why it’s called Humanity.

7. WorkSchedule.Net

Price: Starts at $3.49/user/month, discount on annual plan

WorkSchedule.Net is the perfect employee scheduling software for keeping all your employees on the same page. It‘s easily accessible by all employees, and employees can track changes in real time. The app’s special time block editor is incomparable in its ability to schedule three levels deep and multiple schedules at once.

In addition, the app has special on-the-go options. You can access WorkSchedule.Net on a mobile app. The app also has a special feature in which you can call a phone number that will alert your app to read you your schedule aloud when you're driving and unable to read the schedule. WorkSchedule.Net has several plans at different price points for monthly, one-year, two-year payment plans.

8. Jotform

Price: Starts at $34/month, free plan available, custom pricing for Enterprise

Jotform offers a comprehensive employee scheduling solution that streamlines the process of managing and coordinating shifts, time off, and availability for your workforce. Whether you need to create schedules from scratch or use our pre-designed templates, Jotform makes employee scheduling effortless, making it ideal for tracking attendance, managing shifts, and beyond. The platform comes equipped with a fully customizable Jotform app, allowing you to centralize all your employee scheduling forms in one place.

With Jotform, you can log weekly employee shifts, view employee schedules, assign tasks, collect time-off or sick requests, and more. You and your employees can also view and access all your scheduling forms from any mobile, tablet, or desktop device. Additionally, with your Jotform Enterprise upgraded plan, you can access helpful tools like Single Sign-On (SSO), a dedicated support team, white labeling, user management tools, and more.

9. Planday

Price: Starts at $2.99/user/month, free trial available

Planday is an advanced employee scheduling app that is incredibly simple to master. It has an effortless scheduling system that makes it easy for a company with anywhere from 5 to 500 employees. You can use the schedules to track financial reports and your overall business metrics when it comes to salaries paid versus profits made.

What puts Planday apart is its underwhelming number of features. It has less -- but more in-depth -- features, which makes it easy for any employee to transition into. You can purchase a Starter plan for $2.99 per user per month up to the Pro plan for $6.99 per user per month.

Free Employee Scheduling Software

10. Deputy

Price: Free with paid options

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Deputy is well-known for being a powerful, workforce management tool. Its scheduling and time management software are well-rounded and time-efficient. In addition, Deputy is a great option for integrating to other business systems; it integrates to over 35 payroll, POS, and accounting programs.

You can also use your Deputy app to forecast sales traffic and schedule shifts automatically and accordingly so that you never over or under-staff you business. Deputy has multiple affordable plans: a free Starter plan, $4.90 per user per month for the Premium plan, or $3.90 per user per month for scheduling only.

11. HubSpot

Price: Free

HubSpot's free scheduling software makes meeting email chains a thing of the past. Cut out the back and forth and schedule meetings with multiple people within the tool — allowing attendees to select a time that works for them with a scheduling link.

Not only do your customers and employees gain flexibility, but the software syncs entries to HubSpot's CRM so you'll never miss an important communication.

12. ZoomShift

Price: Free with paid options

ZoomShift makes it a lot easier for your employees to access their shifts in real-time. This makes it much simpler and faster to find shift replacements and ensure shifts are always covered. You can drag and drop shifts onto the calendar within minutes and share that schedule with your employees via email notifications. The app is very functional on mobile, creating a seamless transition from web to mobile.

ZoomShift has a powerful free plan, perfect for small teams getting started with a scheduling software. It also offers two paid plans with more features: a Scheduling plan and a Scheduling & Attendance plan.

13. When I Work

Price: Free with paid options

When I Work is an efficient tool that can save an average of eight hours per week that were originally spent on tracking employee schedules and attendance. By being able to send employees instant updates, you can also reduce the number of missed shifts. The program is mobile-friendly, easy-to-use, and flexible, perfect to fit the busy lives of your employees and yourself. When I Work's simple interface, featuring tons of shortcuts, gives employees the power to handle their own scheduling.

When I Work is free to use for up to 75 users, but you can create a custom plan if your company has more than 75 employees. In addition, there are paid plans with more features: the Scheduling Basic plan and the Scheduling Pro plan.

14. Google Sheets

Price: Free

Google's free cloud spreadsheet software is a great tool for employee scheduling. The pre-fixed rows and columns give you organized options for scheduling. You can set up each individual employee in their own column within one spreadsheet, or dedicate one spreadsheet per employee and divide up their columns by days of the week. Whatever your method may be, you can ensure that Google Sheets will keep things neat and easy to read.

In addition, the special sharing feature allows you to quickly share the spreadsheets with your employees via email. Not to mention, its automatic-saving, cloud feature can leave you assured that the program won't crash and delete all the data.

15. Google Calendar

Price: Free

Similar to Google Sheets, Google Calendar is another cloud creation of Google. However, Google Calendar is even better formatted to fit your employee scheduling needs. Designed to be a calendar, you can view the program in a day, four-day, week, month, year, or schedule format. You can easily input events and reminders into a calendar and add notifications so that your employees never miss a work shift.

In addition, you can create employee shift calendars for each employee and share it with them. That way, they can view the shared work schedule calendar on their personal calendar and integrate it into their daily lives. Rather than forcing them onto a new platform, you can reach them on a platform they might already be using for personal events and reminders.

16. Homebase

Price: Free with paid options

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Homebase is a top app because of its large variety of features. Not only does it have stellar scheduling, timesheets, efficient time clocks, and easy messaging, but it also has a special recruiting software that helps you post to online job boards.

Homebase can sync data from several payroll and POS companies, so you can effortlessly make the transition to Homebase from other platforms. This feature-rich, thorough app does offers a free Basic plan for unlimited employees. However, it also has other plans that offer more features for monthly or annual costs.

17. Monday

Price: Free with paid options

Monday is a team productivity platform that also features a handy scheduling product. It handles scheduling, manages your team calendar, and tracks tasks. The time tracking feature will also help you see a breakdown of how you spend your workday and where to make adjustments.

Monday easily integrates with Google Calendar and has an easy-to-use app for scheduling on the go.

18. Sling

Price: Free with paid options

Sling is a great scheduling app that keeps you up-to-date on employee news. That means, you can avoid double-booking or last-minute scrambling by having updated employee availability and time-off requests on-hand. The program will send you a notification if you've accidentally over-booked a shift or overlapped shifts.

Not only can you schedule shifts, but you can assign tasks through Sling Tasks. You can create to-do lists for employees and follow their progress to ensure that they're on schedule to complete tasks before deadlines. You can also message employees individually or in groups, right on the app. While Sling does have an unlimited, free plan, you can also purchase a premium or enterprise plan for additional costs.

Say Bye to Scheduling Headaches

Time-keeping and scheduling shouldn‘t weigh down your business’ productivity. Use employee scheduling software to save time, provide transparency with employees, and streamline your workload.

Editor's note: This article was originally published in August 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.