10 Best Employee Scheduling Software for Small Businesses

Employee scheduling software solves 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 10 best small business employee scheduling software 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

Buddy Punch is a user-friendly and versatile time tracking and employee scheduling software that’s been adopted by over 10,000 businesses. Our tool has proven particularly effective for small businesses. You can use it to track employee hours, create schedules, manage PTO, and run payroll. 

We created Buddy Punch to be this versatile for one simple reason: it’s the sort of software we wished was on the market when we needed it. At our previous business, we relied on manual methods of timekeeping and scheduling to manage 20 employees at three different locations. It was unsustainable, inefficient, and worse, was preventing us from improving our productivity.

Back then, time tracking and scheduling tools either lacked the sort of functions we needed to monitor our employees and encourage greater productivity, or they seemed overly complicated and difficult for team members to learn. It seemed like there was no tool that managed to be both versatile and intuitive.

So we set out to create our own, and Buddy Punch was born.

Why Buddy Punch stands out

Our primary concern while designing Buddy Punch was ease of use. We wanted to ensure that any employee could use the tool regardless of how tech-savvy they were.

As you can see in the image above, employees are only presented with the most necessary options when they log in. They can clock in, clock out, and view their schedule. No other distractions, no need to jump through several hoops before your team members can get to work.

Buddy Punch can be accessed on any device with an internet connection, including computers, tablets, and mobile apps. This means your employees can clock in and out and view their schedules from anywhere. There’s no need for them to come into a central office to see when they work or punch in/out. 

How Buddy Punch streamlines employee scheduling

Employee scheduling should be as quick, simple and painless as possible. Additionally, team members should be able to fully understand when they’re expected to work at a glance. There are a few ways Buddy Punch helps achieve this.

Drag-and-drop scheduling

Buddy Punch makes it easy for you to schedule your employees. Create shifts on the calendar by simply clicking on an empty cell, then drag and drop shifts as needed. This level of ease paired with the ability to visualize scheduled employees helps ensure there are no gaps in the workweek. 

Shift trades 

Tired of dealing with last-minute schedule changes when an employee puts in a leave request or has an emergency? The shift trades feature helps alleviate your responsibilities and puts power in your team members’ hands at the same time. Employees can trade shifts or request someone to cover their shift. Once a match is made, you’ll receive those shift trade requests and can approve or deny them. 

Shift notifications

Once you’ve made a schedule, all relevant employees will receive a notification to ensure they know when they’re expected to work. You can also set up notifications for events such as approaching the end of a shift, needing to submit timecards, for employees to remember to punch in or punch out, and more.

How Buddy Punch improves time tracking

Buddy Punch empowers you to make sure that employees are where they need to be when they need to be there, focused on tasks during work hours — even if you’re not present to ensure it. This is accomplished through the following features.

Geofencing

Create a radius on an interactive map, known as a geofence, up to a circumference of 5,000 feet. Whenever an employee attempts to clock in or clock out while outside of a geofence, they’ll be denied. Create multiple geofences at will and use this to exert control over remote retail locations or on construction job sites without being present.

GPS tracking

Buddy Punch’s GPS tracking allows you to monitor where your remote and field workers are while they’re on the clock. There are two options you have here: tracking employees while they’re on the clock in real-time, or only logging employee locations the moment they clock in and clock out.

Regardless of how you choose to ensure team members are where they’re meant to be while on the clock, Buddy Punch preserves privacy by immediately ceasing data tracking once your staff members clock out.

PTO tracking

Easily monitor employee PTO through the most common types or by creating custom types at will. All paid time off taken will automatically appear on employees’ time cards. As team members request time off, you’ll receive a notification for easy approval or denial. You can even take things a step further and enable auto-approval on leave requests.

Buddy Punch’s PTO tracking comes paired with a built-in PTO accrual feature to determine how paid leave accumulates for your employees.

Facial recognition

Buddy Punch’s facial recognition helps solve most concerns about time theft in the workplace. Buddy Punch uses Face ID to scan an employee’s face as they clock in, comparing it with a verified screenshot on file. No employee will be able to clock in for another employee with this security feature enabled.

How Buddy Punch helps you run payroll

Tracking employee data accurately is extremely useful, but it could still be a hassle to wrangle this information when it comes time for payroll. That’s why we included several payroll-related features in Buddy Punch to cut down on human error and streamline the entire payroll process for business owners. 

Payroll integrations

Attached to third-party payroll software? Buddy Punch integrates directly with many of the most popular tools on the market, making it easy to transfer over your employee data without hassle or risk of human error skewing numbers. We integrate directly with Zapier, QuickBooks, ADP, and more. Click here to view the full integrations list.

Job codes / project tracking

Buddy Punch allows you to set up job codes, departments, or locations as a method of tracking employee time for specific tasks and projects. You can assign these codes to employees or let them clock in and select the specific task or project they’re working on.

How much time does it take Kyle, Jake, and Chris to finish up on a construction site? How quickly can Jane and Bill restock your shelves? This feature lets you answer these questions by recording the time employees spend on tasks. When you run payroll reports, you’ll see exactly how much time was spent on each project.

Payroll reports and exports

Buddy Punch offers customizable reports to accompany many of its features, including payroll. In just a few clicks Buddy Punch calculates everything you need for payroll, exported in Excel CSV or Adobe PDF format.

Built-in payroll

For business owners that are open to upgrading their payroll software, Buddy Punch offers a comprehensive payroll option. Turn Buddy Punch into your all-in-one solution for all things employee management and take advantage of features such as:

• Anywhere, anytime payroll
• Automatic payroll tax filings and payments
• In-depth employee data for workforce insights
• Paperless payroll

Buddy Punch’s other features

Believe it or not, we’ve still only scratched the surface when it comes to features Buddy Punch has for business owners. There are other options as well, such as QR codes scanning, overtime calculations, group punches, timesheet editing, automatic punch outs, and more.

You have a full arsenal at your fingertips that you can pick and choose from depending on what works best for your workforce management style. Click here to view a full list of Buddy Punch’s features.

2. 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.

Key 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.

Customer reviews

Desktime has a score of 4.6/5 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.”

3. When I Work

When I Work is a tool that specifically focuses on optimization of work schedule creation and management for business owners. Their goal is to provide a modern solution for scheduling that works on desktop and mobile apps alike.

Key features

• Employee scheduling: When I Work’s main component. Shift management is meant to be drastically simplified through tools such as auto scheduling, task assignment, schedule templates, and remote job sites. Save hours by creating schedules in mere minutes.
• Time clock: The When I Work time clock ensures accurate time tracking regardless of employee circumstances or locations. This feature comes with GPS tracking for remote workers, labor cost management, absenteeism monitoring, timesheet editing, and more.
• Team messaging: Manage team communication all in one centralized app. When I Work allows you to bring team messaging under one private and secure roof, allowing you to improve team member cooperation through options such as one-on-one communication, broadcast messaging, group messaging, and notifications.
• Integrations: When I Work has many third-party integrations to make it easy to slot this into your pre-established routine. They have options from payroll, to point of sale, to on-demand pay, working perfectly with names such as Gusto, Square, ADP, and more. 

Customer reviews

When I Work has a score of 4.5/5 on Capterra. Here’s what one user had to say about it:

“When I Work was an answered prayer for our personnel department. We recently underwent a large expansion that added several employees, contractors, and locations. By shifting to When I Work, we have been able to eliminate the need for a separate staff member to oversee employee attendance and productivity.”

4. Connecteam

Connecteam has enough versatile features to be an all-in-one time tracking, scheduling, and workforce management tool. They offer you full control over your business, from scheduling and training to payroll.

Key features

• Time clock: Connecteam lets you accurately track employee work hours and submit timesheets for payroll in a click. You can also monitor attendance in real-time with notifications and enhanced dashboard visibility. 
• Scheduling: Connecteam makes it easy to create optimized schedules with ease. You can view employee availability, qualifications, and preferences while you’re setting up schedules. Then, quickly build them with templates and duplicates, or let auto-scheduling take control. 
• Task management: Connecteam makes it easy to track employee task completion, all from your mobile device. You can even set up one-time tasks with due dates or establish recurring tasks in order to automate daily assignments among your team. 
• Forms and checklists: Connecteam has a fairly unique feature with its digital forms, which allow you to create forms and checklists for employees to fill out. These provide digestible breakdowns of tasks for team members to complete in order to boost their productivity.

Customer reviews

Connecteam has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra. Here’s what one user has to say about it:

“Connecteam has helped with managing our employee work time and scheduling tremendously. I have slowly implemented more and more features to benefit our company as a whole, and I have been extremely happy with what I have implemented so far. The customer service has always been outstanding! I am never disappointed in their service.”

5. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is an employee scheduling and productivity tracking app with numerous features to improve productivity and profitability in the workplace. 

Key features

• Time tracking: Hubstaff’s built-in time clock app makes attendance tracking easy for business owners. Your employees can clock in and out from any mobile device or computer, you can set and track budgets in line with your forecasting, and all client information is centralized for work orders.
• Employee timesheets: Hubstaff’s digital timesheet options make it easy to process payroll, invoice clients, and get a clear understanding of your costs. With exact time entries, billable hours and non-billable hours, and automated approval workflows, you can completely ditch paper timesheets.
• Project management: Hubstaff lets you set up accounts and teams to then track project workflow, which includes automatic notifications for costs and client budgets. You can also use insights gathered from data to plan better in the future.
• Detailed reporting: Hubstaff allows you to go much deeper into data than just looking at screenshots. They offer numerous detailed reports for employees and freelancers, covering general metrics, budgets and limits, payments, invoicing, time off, scheduling, and more. 

Customer reviews

Hubstaff has a score of 4.6/5 on Capterra. Here’s what one reviewer had to say:

“Using Hubstaff has been exceptionally easy across the board. It is an asset for our company to see project profitability, team member hours, and manage time off for a fully remote company. The customer service with Hubstaff is superb. Highly recommend the app!”

6. Paymo

Paymo is interesting because it bills itself as project management software first, noting that it also comes with time-tracking and employee scheduling app features as a secondary bonus. To that end, we’d recommend it to small business owners who are particularly interested in improving their project management.

Key features

• Time tracking: Paymo has numerous options for tracking time, including a web timer that incorporates itself directly into your browser, automatic tracking of time spent in browsers and desktop apps (functional on Mac, Windows, and Linux), and native mobile apps that can track spent on mobile phones.
• Kanban board: One of Paymo’s more unique features, this function allows you to visualize workflows with statuses and cards, which can simplify the process of identifying bottlenecks in your workflow. Your whole team can view and move tasks around as they complete them, improving team cooperation.
• Leave planner: Take a new tact for handling time-off requests with Paymo’s leave planner. You can add and manage leave days in bulk, establishing public holidays across the company in just a few clicks. Use the leave day widget so you and your HR department can track usage of paid leave days for every team member.
• Invoicing and estimates: Paymo makes it easy to generate or even clone invoices, customize invoices with branding, and export them to accounting tools such as QuickBooks or Xero or in Adobe PDF or Excel CSV format.

Customer reviews

Paymo has a rating of 4.7/5 on Capterra. Here’s a positive review from a loyal user:

“I looked at several options for my company and decided on Paymo for the following reasons. The software has a very clean and intuitive interface. One of the best features is how you can customize how projects are set up and tracked. You generate a task list that is checked off as you move through the project. This is an amazing feature that organizes the project while it tracks it.”

7. QuickBooks Time

QuickBooks Time is a very popular cloud-based time tracking and scheduling app. It offers time tracking, scheduling, project management, and payroll options for business owners.

Key features

• Timesheets: Track, edit, and approve timesheets right from your laptop or desktop, use the mobile app to approve and manage your team via your phone, and establish a tablet as a kiosk for clocking in and out on site.
• GPS technology: QuickBooks Time ensures you always know where your team is working from. The GPS time clock and geofence options both make use of real-time data to enforce rules about working at remote job sites.
• Mobile time tracking: Turn any device into a time clock app through QuickBooks Time. You get full access to its various features here, including project tracking, simplified scheduling, real-time data, and more.
• Reports: Dig into accumulated data in order to get greater insight into how your business and employees are functioning. Predict job costs, plan for payroll, and boost overall profitability.

Customer reviews

QuickBooks Time has a rating of 4.7/5 on Capterra.  As one positive review puts it:

“I’ve been using QuickBooks Time for a few months now, and overall, it’s been a solid experience. The software offers a convenient way to track time, manage payroll, and keep things organized, especially for small to mid-sized teams. The mobile app is one of its best features.”

8. Clockify

Clockify is an incredibly popular time tracker and scheduler, mostly because it has one of the most flexible free plans on the market. That said, most of its more powerful features are locked behind paid plans.

Key features

• Timer: Easily track the time spent on tasks in your workplace. Clockify’s one click timer is as simple to use as entering the activity you’re working on then starting the timer. You can organize categories based on projects, tasks, tags, status, and more.
• Timesheets: Clockify allows you and your employees to categorize and log time spent on different projects and tasks, along with additional information such as notes, tags, and more. You can also make use of templates to quickly populate timesheets with the most common activities for your workplace.
• Calendar: Clockify allows you and your team members to visualize your days and organize time. Use the timeline feature to view days in blocks, use total time to see total tracked time throughout the week, zoom in 5, 15, 30, or 60-minute time blocks, and more.
• Scheduling: Use Clockify’s built-in scheduling to plan shifts and resources and allocate workloads to your team members. You can see views of all assignments on a timeline from different perspectives, enabling you to better identify gaps and points of optimization.

Customer reviews

Clockify has a score of 4.8/5 on Capterra. Here’s what one user had to say:

“Clockify is a very easy to set up platform. Once one signs up, the functionality is available in minutes. It is easy to set up team members. The reporting is also straightforward; I use it to download my time with multiple clients into Excel.”

9. TimeCamp

TimeCamp, as the name implies, is all about everything relating to time tracking and scheduling. Their goal is to give business owners complete control over how employees spend their work hours.

Key features

• Automated time tracking: TimeCamp lets you track work time down to the second through its automated time tracker, promising minimal effort and maximal accuracy for business owners. Capture working hours, breaks, and clock-in and clock-out times.
• Productivity tracking: TimeCamp lets you fully account for the productivity of remote, hybrid, and on-site teams alike. Make use of website and app monitoring, work time tracking for billable hours, and attendance monitoring to optimize your operations.
• Budgeting: Make use of TimeCamp’s time budgeting feature to better visualize and plot a course towards increased profitability in your workplace. This feature comes with budget planning, customizable rates, financial reports, and more.
• Invoicing: Use TimeCamp to track time in projects, control work costs, and invoice clients. Use data gathered in accurate timesheets to ensure that all payments are accurate. 

Customer reviews

TimeCamp has a rating of 4.7/5 stars on Capterra. Here’s one user’s glowing review:

“I love this program. It is easy to use and easy to find where your time is for billing. I have really been able to keep on top of my hours with the functionality of this program!”

10. Insightful

Insightful is an analytical team tracking app that focuses on gathering data and using it to inform insights for your business. If you’re all about visualization of data and facts, this is likely the perfect scheduling app for your small business.

Key features

• Employee monitoring: Insightful empowers you to know exactly what your employees are doing, every minute of every day. Insightful tracks apps and website usage, uses random screenshots, and tracks activity logs throughout the day, including idle and active time. Additionally, you can use a stealth mode to help protect your team’s data.
• Time and attendance data: Insightful lets you manage computer-based time and attendance, so you can track employee hours, gain clear visibility into attendance, and see how time is currently allocated in your workplace (and can be reallocated to boost productivity). 
• Location-based insights: Whether your employees are working from home or working from the office, Insightful can help you determine which method is better for employees based on data on how they perform in different locations. 
• Integrations: You can use Insightful alongside some of your favorite work management tools. Insightful integrates directly with some of the most popular tools including Asana, Trello, ADP, and more. 

Customer reviews

Insightful has a score of 4.7/5 on Capterra. Here’s what one user had to say: 

“Automated time tracking is a great tool. Remote employee monitoring is great, but I solely used it to see what types of apps and websites our employees use. We don’t use the screenshots since ethically it is not accepted in our organization, but it could be a great tool for those who need it. They have projects and tasks — this has added significant value for us.”

Choosing the right employee scheduling software for your business

Even though we’ve drastically narrowed down your options, you may still be wondering which of these 10 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 nine options are also strong fits as well. If you like the idea of organizing teams with Kanban boards, turn towards TimeCamp. If you want productivity-based insights, Insightful is the tool for you. 

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.

Related Reading:

• The Best Hospitality Employee Scheduling Software
• The Best Retail Employee Scheduling Software
• What’s the Best Staff Rostering Software? Top 11 Picks
• Top 10 Schedule Maker Apps + Who They’re Best For
• The Best Healthcare Staff Scheduling Software