Top 10 Schedule Maker Apps + Who They’re Best For

ByEric Czerwonka Last Updated

There are a lot of different schedule maker apps, but not all are right for every use case. The features you need to build a schedule for your employees are a lot different than those you’d need to build one for students, a project, or your own personal life.

To help you find the right one, we’ve put together this list of the 10 best schedule-maker apps and who they’re best for. Regardless of your use case and budget, there’s an app on this list that will help you do exactly what you need to do at a price you can afford.

1. Buddy Punch – Best work schedule maker

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. 

If you want to learn more or see the platform in action, you can read about all of its features, take an interactive tour of the product, request a personalized demo, or start a free trial — no credit card required!

2. Canva – Best printable schedule maker

Canva is known for being a popular free image creation tool, but it is also perfect for those who need to create images for their schedules to print out. It’s easy with Canva’s many different templates to create attractive and easy-to-read schedules, and with Canva’s visual suite, you can even use it for project and document management.

Key features

Canva has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 12,103 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“The numerous templates are great if you need a good starting point for a project. Workflow is quick and easy, support is solid, and the access to a wide variety of royalty-free images is a very nice inclusion with a paid account.”

3. School Schedule Generator – Best class schedule maker

School Schedule Generator is made specifically for creating class schedules, so if that is what you need then it is a great option. All of its features are easy to use, and it even includes automated timetable generation for when you need to get your schedules made quickly. 

Note: This app is the best for teacher-specific organization, the next app on the list is best for student-specific scheduling. 

Key features

School Schedule Generator does not currently have any ratings on Capterra.

4. Class Timetable – Best schedule maker for students

Class Timetable is specifically made for student scheduling and is made to be accessible and easy to use for both teachers and students alike. Class Timetable integrates with Apple watches and even has a widget on phones to keep students updated anytime and anywhere. 

Class Timetable is organized and efficient, and is a great option for student organization — but not necessarily teacher organization. 

Key features

Class Timetable does not currently have any ratings on Capterra.

5. ClickUp – Best project schedule maker

ClickUp is a great option for those who need a project management tool in tandem with scheduling. It’s a feature-heavy option that focuses on customization to make absolutely sure that any kind of work schedule or project schedule can be accommodated. 

ClickUp is easy to use because of this customization, and it even includes activity and time reporting so you know who is working on what and when.

Key features

ClickUp has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 4,295 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“ClickUp helped us to get all our project resources consolidated in one place, making it easy to organize our projects. It provides amazing dashboards and visualization tools that allow us to monitor the progress of our projects easily. The automation in ClickUp made it easy for us to set up our projects and attend to the repetitive tasks.”

6. Google Sheets – Best free schedule maker

Google Sheets is a great free option that is an accessible replacement for Excel. With multiple different AI features, sheet templates, and online collaboration features, Google Sheets will make it easy to build spreadsheet-based schedules. Plus, unlike most of the other apps on this list, it being entirely free means you don’t have to pay for its more unique features. 

Key features

Google Sheets has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 13079 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“In my opinion, Google Sheets is the best sheet app on the market. The main reason I use Google Sheets is that it’s an online app, stored in a Google account, and accessible from any device. When it comes to sharing and collaboration, Google Sheets is flawless.”

7. Clockwise – Best AI schedule maker

Clockwise is a great option if you’re looking for an automated schedule maker. Clockwise focuses on automating the process for you and making scheduling much quicker. It has other useful features like the focus time feature that helps you make sure that work is getting done when it needs to get done. 

Key features

Clockwise has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 50 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“I love it for two useful features: 1. I can schedule time slots for my tasks directly from Asana in two clicks while planning my week. 2. It syncs my availability between all without me at all. On top of that, it helps to easily find slots with my team for our meetings through its AI scheduler.”

8. Coast – Best personal schedule maker

Coast is a great option for personal use. It includes many different options that other apps on this list don’t, such as asset and inventory management which can be useful for smaller or individual businesses that need to keep track of their products. It’s a great all-around option as it also has project management tools to make sure that work gets done. 

Key features

Coast has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 58 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“The product is well-engineered and easy to navigate. It exceeded our expectations, and their customer support is excellent. Our agency will continue to expand our use of the features offered in the product. Even our staff members who are not technologically inclined were quick to adopt its use.”

9. Playpass – Best sports schedule maker

Playpass is made specifically for sports scheduling, and so all of its features are made specifically for this niche. It has multiple very useful features. 

The website builder is absolutely a useful asset to have to make sure that you can advertise your team. It keeps multiple tools in one place, so if you need one place to schedule, register, and keep your website information, Playpass can absolutely be what you need. 

Key features

Playpass has an overall rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 2 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“Playpass is very easy to implement into any sports management system. They are great at being able to make a schedule for you that you can easily change to fit your needs. Inputting teams is simple, as is inputting facilities.”

10. MakeShift – Best rotating schedule maker

MakeShift is a great option for those who need a time clock app as well as a scheduling app. MakeShift has multiple clocking options as well as customizable pay rules, so you can accommodate multiple different types of work and schedules. There is also an included communication feature so you and others can keep track of schedule changes. 

Key features

MakeShift has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra across 114 reviews. Here’s what customers like about the platform:

“The most impactful part of makeshift for our hospital is that employees can see their schedules and requests without calling the staffing office or contacting the unit. they are able to switch shifts and request trades in the app. We are also able to send announcements and individual messages if need be.”

Choosing the right schedule-maker app for your needs

Choosing the right schedule maker app depends on your specific needs, whether you’re organizing work shifts, a school schedule, personal tasks, or sports practices. 

Each app on this list offers unique features tailored to different types of scheduling, from automated and AI-driven options to user-friendly interfaces for simple, personal schedules. 

With options at various price points, you can find a tool that fits your budget and makes scheduling easier and more efficient, no matter your use case.