Employee scheduling apps solve many of the most difficult parts of managing employee availability, from filling open shifts to identifying and eliminating scheduling conflicts. However, not all scheduling solutions are made equal, and choosing an inadequate scheduling tool can ultimately impede your team’s productivity and increase your labor costs.

Drawing on our years of experience managing employee shifts, we’ve selected 10 tools that simplify the scheduling process for small business owners. The five best employee scheduling apps below were selected because of the features that they include, how flexible they are for addressing a variety of staffing needs across different operating systems, and the reviews and testimonials of their users.

1. Buddy Punch

If you’re looking for an online app to help you create schedules for your employees, Buddy Punch is our top pick. It’s a combined employee scheduling and time-tracking app that’s user-friendly, has high customer satisfaction ratings, and helps you create schedules quickly.

Buddy Punch’s scheduling tool displays all of your employees in one column and the days you’re creating a schedule for in subsequent columns. To create a shift, simply click in an open area, specify the shift’s start and end times, and add any employees you want to work that shift.

Repeat this for all of the days your schedule covers, then publish your schedule. Your employees will receive notifications that the schedule is live, and they can view their schedule at any time in the Buddy Punch app, which is available on the web and has mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices.

If your scheduling is simple, that’s all you’ll ever need to do. But if your scheduling is more complex, Buddy Punch also has lots of advanced features, too.

Repeating shifts

Choose if and when the shift or schedule repeats.

Buddy Punch lets you use automation to make scheduling easier. Specifically, you can set up repeating shifts rather than re-creating schedules from scratch each time.

For example:

  • Linda’s shift will repeat every weekday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
  • Bob’s shift will repeat once a week on Monday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
  • Jordan’s shift will repeat on the first Tuesday of each month from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  
  • And so on.

This means at the start of a new week, a good chunk of your schedule is already written for you.

Employee availability

Your employees can specify their availability in Buddy Punch. Then, times when employees can’t be scheduled show up on your calendar view, making sure that you never schedule employees when they’re unavailable. 

Plus, if you try to schedule an employee when they’re unavailable, the system will give you an error message and prevent publishing the schedule.

Shift trade and cover requests

Employees can request shift trades right from the scheduling interface.

Schedules change as the days go on. People’s availability changes or something unexpected comes up, and an employee needs to get someone to cover the slack. You can make it easier to handle shift scheduling changes in your workspace by allowing your team members to either trade shifts with or cover for one another.

Buddy Punch makes it easy for employees to send shift trade/cover requests to one another. If someone accepts the trade/cover, it can be sent to an admin or manager for approval. If it’s approved, the schedule changes automatically.

Locations

If you have multiple locations that you create schedules for, Buddy Punch makes that easier, too. You can filter your schedule by location to build schedules per location individually, and you can assign locations to shifts so employees know not only when they’re working but also where. 

Finally, different locations can be assigned different colors so you can quickly see where everyone will be working at a glance.

Departments

If you have team members working in different roles — such as host and server — you can create those different roles as departments in Buddy Punch. After that, you can assign the appropriate department to shifts so employees know when they’re working, where they’re working, and what position they’ve been assigned.

Time tracking

Buddy Punch expands beyond just employee scheduling, offering time tracking, PTO tracking, and payroll services. In terms of time tracking, here’s a small sampling of the features you’ll get access to with Buddy Punch:

  • Photo clock-ins: Have employees take a picture of themselves with clocking in and out. You can review those photos on their timecards to make sure the right employee was punching in for themself.
  • Geofencing: Prevent off-site punching by setting up location-based radiuses around your job sites that block punches when employees aren’t within the specified area.
  • IP address locking: Prevent off-site punching by requiring employees to be on your office Wi-Fi in order to clock in and out.
  • Time off tracking: Employees can request time off and view a summary of their available time off hours. All paid time off is automatically added to employees’ timesheets and included in payroll calculations and reports.

Payroll

In terms of payroll, here’s a small sampling of what Buddy Punch offers: 

  • Payroll services: You can use Buddy Punch as your payroll provider. This means you don’t need separate software for writing your schedule, tracking time worked and PTO, and issuing payroll. You can do it all from Buddy Punch.
  • Payroll reports: Export an Excel, CSV, or PDF file with each employee’s regular hours, time off, overtime, and more. Hours are all automatically calculated for you, replacing the most manual and time-consuming part of running payroll.
  • Payroll integrations: Save time on payroll by integrating with QuickBooks, Workday, Paychex, and other popular software to send your time data to payroll in seconds.

This is just a small number of the features Buddy Punch offers to make tracking time, scheduling, and running payroll easier than ever. 

Learn more about Buddy Punch

2. When I Work

When I Work allows users to easily create schedules, track time, and message team members on the same platform. In addition to scheduling solutions like shift trading and schedule sharing, it also offers labor forecasting to improve budgeting. 

Where this app really shines is allowing your team to communicate. It facilitates group chats, one-on-one, and whole-team messaging, all while preserving privacy by keeping your phone numbers hidden. This even extends to file and doc sharing. 

Finally, the messaging system includes read receipts, meaning you’ll always know who’s received the necessary information and who still needs to be brought up to speed.

When I Work has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“I find that When I Work is a seamless way to schedule shifts. There are a lot of great features to assist with scheduling numerous part-time workers. I also like that I can sync my shifts with my digital calendar.”

3. Connecteam

Connecteam includes employee scheduling, task management, and real-time reporting features to help you schedule staff. It also provides ways for people to connect within and between departments. Finally, its HR hub includes ways to manage documentation, time off, rewards, and training. 

Of our top picks, this one has the most extensive options specifically designed for human resources departments. It facilitates the onboarding process by allowing you to share training, important documents, and updates, ensuring employees can hit the ground running when they arrive for their first shift.

 It also lets you track employee documentation, including aspects like whether their certifications are getting ready to expire. It even lets you make custom rewards that are automatically delivered to employees who hit important milestones.

Connecteam has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“Connecteam helps me validate the work that each employee does without having to be next to that person. We can communicate as a more united team in the work chat and be able to keep an improved order of the tasks that are pending to be done. This software helps me maintain a perfect order and a production with better results.”

4. 7shifts

Designed for restaurants, 7shifts is more than just a rostering system: it addresses industry-specific pain points like tip pooling and payouts. The resources section of their site also offers multiple ways for people to educate themselves on the industry, including free online courses, videos, and podcasts. 

In addition to being a boon to restaurants, 7shifts offers robust tools for hiring and recruiting fresh talent. It lets you post jobs online, get notified when you receive new applications, and track candidates by application status. 

Once you’ve selected a candidate, you can quickly add them to the schedule and save the applications of runner-ups for future job openings.

7shifts has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“From the ease of publishing weekly schedules to employees being responsible for covering their own shifts when needed or scheduling their own time off and/or sick pay is a game changer. No more manual processes.”

5. DeskTime

DeskTime is an all-in-one time tracker and employee scheduling tool for small businesses with a major focus on features that are meant to boost employee productivity. According to their data, on average they can improve stats by 30% — a bold claim, but one that’s believable considering their features:

  • Time tracking: Desktime considers this the very core of what their tool is all about: precise tracking of work hours, clock in and out times, and employee breaks. Make use of both automatic and manual time tracking to get a comprehensive view of how time is spent while employees are on the clock.
  • Performance evaluation: DeskTime allows you to take a deeper dive into tracked time data. Understand not just what your team members are doing, but for how long they’re engaged in each activity. Track URLs and apps, productivity, projects, and even document titles to ensure everyone’s working on their assignments.
  • Reporting: View all the in-depth information gathered by DeskTime at will. Understand how your team’s performance ebbs and flows over time and export the data to create physical records that you can use to create benchmarks to exceed in the future.
  • Scheduling: Streamline your team management through the use of DeskTime’s features to organize work hours and oversee staff absences. Make use of shift scheduling and an absence calendar to exert greater control over employee attendance.

Desktime has a score of 4.5/5 on Capterra. Here’s what one reviewer had to say:

“Attendance and productivity are typically managed by managers along with HR, but processes are usually manual and takes a lot of time. This allowed management and HR to have a tool to monitor and inspect productivity and attendance more effectively.”

Choosing the right employee scheduling app for your business

Even though we’ve drastically narrowed down your options, you may still be wondering which of these tools might be the best fit for you. Rather than spending time giving them all a try, we’d advise you to take into account what your ideal goal is.

If you want simplicity for yourself and your team members paired with great customer support, you can’t go wrong with Buddy Punch. But these other four options are also strong fits as well.

At the end of the day, so long as you’re open to trying new tools and making a switch if one proves too complicated or lacking, your perfect scheduling software is likely among this list.

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About the Author

Eric has more than 20 years of experience owning, operating, and managing businesses — everything from in-person, multi-location shops to fully remote SaaS companies. He uses what he's learned along the way to create helpful guides for other business leaders.