30 Best Employee Scheduling Software For Small Businesses In 2024

Connecteam’s scheduling software is simple to use and scalable, so you can add more features when you need them. It supports drag-and-drop scheduling, as well as features like repeating shifts, flags for periods of unavailability, and a warning so workers won’t exceed their weekly overtime cap.

To ensure employees perform their jobs accurately, managers can also attach additional information to shift assignments such as location details, photos, forms, or checklists. Another useful feature is the ability to define specific qualifications needed per shift, such as specific safety training or other certifications or skills. This helps managers ensure they're only assigning qualified employees to a specific shift per compliance requirements.

To help with shift scheduling, employees submit their availability through the Connecteam app, making it easier for managers to create schedules that work for everyone, providing a better employee experience. The platform also allows employees to claim open shifts, make simple shift swaps themselves, or reject a shift if they aren’t able to attend it.

Beyond their scheduling features, Connecteam also offers communication and engagement tools such as team and company-wide chat channels, links to digital forms and knowledge repositories, a mobile-friendly organizational directory, and a news feed for internal company updates. Managers can also track which employees have read key updates, and send push notifications to any employees that missed it.

Connecteam also supports task management, including descriptive task lists with the ability to add sub-tasks and attachments to further clarify tasks. And they recently added an auto-scheduling feature, which automatically aligns with availability and time off, provides equal shift distribution among all employees, and assigns jobs based on qualifications for proper staffing

Available on mobile, desktop, or as a kiosk app for tablets, Connecteam was built for deskless and remote teams. It’s a popular choice in many industries including retail, restaurants, manufacturing, construction, field services, and healthcare.

Integrations include Paychex, Xero, Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll (online + desktop), Zapier, Google Calendar, API access, and others.

Buddy Punch is a web-based time clock and scheduling software. Their simple, user-friendly, and intuitive app interface empowers your employees instead of forcing them to learn a new, complex workflow just to punch in/out of work. Your employees can view their current time card, request time off, submit a claim to correct a punch-in error, or even submit their time card for approval—all without ever leaving the app.

Buddy Punch’s key features work to keep your team accountable and honest. Through GPS tracking, you can stay on top of your staff’s location whenever they clock in/out of work. Some additional features include facial recognition and photos on punch, which run a biometric scan of your employees’ faces to verify who is attempting to punch in/out. The interface has been built to ensure easy navigation and ease of use, with drag-and-drop schedule creation and the ability to create repeating/recurring shifts.

Buddy Punch integrates with QuickBooks, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Paylocity, PayPlus, SurePayroll, and Workday. With a paid Zapier account, you’ll have access to thousands of other apps and tools.

Buddy Punch costs from $3.49/user/month plus a $19/month base fee for their Standard time and attendance package. For enterprise organizations with over 200 employees, you can request a free quote. They also offer a 14-day free trial too.

The Homebase team scheduling software is mainly used by small businesses such as small stores, beauty salons or fitness facilities, and other service providers. The platform provides an exhaustive set of features that let you run your HR tasks from start to finish, including hiring and onboarding, scheduling, time tracking, team communication, and more.

Homebase allows you to create work rosters easily from schedule templates, and then make changes on the fly as required. You can build smart work schedules and forecast your labor costs.

Employees can always get their up-to-date work schedule using the free mobile apps, or they can get the information via text or email. Homebase’s scheduler automatically calculates overtime, subtracts breaks, and alerts you to schedule conflicts.

You can also integrate your sales data and forecasts, so you can build your schedule around your labor targets.

Homebase has a free plan you can use with an unlimited number of employees but fewer advanced features. This replaces a free trial. Their paid plans start at $20/month/location.

TimeClock Plus is a time tracking and attendance software that covers everything from time tracking to leave management and employee scheduling. It has powerful features that will help your small business work efficiently and smoothly.

And what better way to help a small business than with templates that you can quickly use. These templates support a wide range of pre-configured rotations, including 24/48, 48/96, Panama rotation, and California rotation. The views available in this tool will help you see your resources, the shifts they have been assigned, and if there is over or under-allocation at different times throughout the day.

This tool is great at giving employees freedom when working their shifts. The platform is designed to allow users to offer their shifts to others, pick up available shifts, swap with teammates and view upcoming shifts without any managerial intervention. Additionally, users can set their weeks or weekdays to availability presets like preferred, available, or unavailable.

Finally, if you are worried about payments - don't. The system integrates with over a hundred payroll solutions, including ADP, BAI, Ascentis, Accra, Casamba, Cayenne, Ceridian, and Epicure. Also Quickbooks, Paychex, or even payroll modules from ERP systems like SAP, Sage, and NetSuite.

TimeTrex is a comprehensive workforce management tool designed to automate various aspects of employee management. It offers features such as time and attendance tracking, payroll processing, HR management, job costing, scheduling, leave management, document management, expense tracking, and invoicing. 

TimeTrex's automated scheduling capabilities allow businesses to create optimized schedules in minutes, accommodating both simple and complex multi-week rotating schedules. This automation not only saves time but also reduces the administrative burden on small business managers, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks.

Employees can also access their schedules from any internet-connected device, ensuring they are always informed and reducing the likelihood of scheduling conflicts. Another significant advantage of TimeTrex is its robust time and attendance tracking system. The software supports various clock-in methods, including biometric facial recognition, mobile apps, and web-based interfaces, which help eliminate errors associated with manual entry. 

Integrations include ADP, Intuit QuickBooks, Sage, Paychex, Surepay, Ceridian, Meditech, Insync, Millennium, CompuPay, Tyler Technologies, Vensure Employer Services, Accero, Chris21, IRS, Canada Revenue Agency, and Service Canada.

ClockShark is an employee scheduling software with timesheets and time tracking for field services and construction businesses. Employees can clock in and clock out from their smartphones and all job costing data is recorded within the app so you can access it for simple payroll and invoice processing. You have multiple options for employees to access ClockShark: by web browser, mobile app, or even a ClockShark 'kiosk' using a tablet device. You can leverage facial recognition tools and individual PINs to ensure the utmost security no matter how you choose to access the software. 

Crew management is simple with ClockShark's work scheduling calendar. You can create and assign shifts, color-code entries, and drag-and-drop items to make changes quickly. Notifications will prompt affected parties in real-time if their shift is altered in any way (canceled, shortened, swapped, etc.). ClockShark also has GPS and geofencing capabilities baked in so you can see where and when people are checking in.

Overall, ClockShark is a must-have employee scheduling software for field service or construction businesses to streamline their timesheet-to-payroll workflows.

ClockShark integrates with QuickBooks, Sage 100 Contractor, Xero, ADP, Paychex, and other apps.

ClockShark costs from $7/user/month plus a $16/month base fee. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

7Shifts is a software that connects small businesses with their employees. It is free for the first 3 employees and has many features like shift bidding, work schedule management, time off requests, custom reports, and in-line approvals.

You also get to create shift templates, so you don’t have to start from zilch every single time. The product is mobile-friendly, with data that can be synced and accessed across all devices. The product integrates with Slack, Google Calendar, and Evernote.

The paid plan starts at $24.99 per month with an option for a free forever plan. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

EZClocker is a scheduling and employee time tracking software that allows small business owners to manage staff. The product has several features designed to simplify the day-to-day operations of a small business owner. The system features time tracking with GPS-enabled location verification.

Employees can easily clock in from their phone while business owners can verify their clock-in location with the help of the GPS location feature. The interface is simple and straightforward. EZClocker integrates with Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Trello.

Pricing starts at $10 per user per month and comes with a 30-day free trial.

ABC Roster is a straightforward employee scheduling software that is free to download and use. Features include drag-and-drop scheduling, employee profiles, availability tracking, staff and shift constraint rules, and file exports to Excel, PDF, or HTML. You can email schedules directly to your staff from within the platform. You can track staff availability, leave requests, and even skills.

The employee and shift constraint tool is probably one of the most noteworthy features of the app. You can toggle how many employees and managers are needed per shift to ensure minimum and maximum capacities are met. The staff constraints menu lets you tailor each employee’s profile to their unique work requirements: How many shifts they want, how many days they can work back-to-back, minimum number of hours required, and so on. You can even make note of which employees should not be scheduled together.

ABC Roster is free to use.

monday.com’s flexible Work OS system makes it easy for users to organize and track any process through their customized data dashboards. Their system comes with 200+ templates, including a weekly work schedule template, that can be adapted to your business needs. All of their data dashboards can also be visualized in a variety of formats with just one click, including a calendar view or Gantt chart format.

Monday.com is a straightforward and low-cost way to streamline your scheduling process. You can even include automation to notify your staff as soon as a new schedule is posted. Another helpful feature is the ability to share the schedule in “read-only” mode, so you can ensure no alterations are made. You can also search schedules for unique details or employee names, add customized labels, or break schedules down into as many groups and subgroups as you need.

To further enhance your planning processes, monday integrates with a wide range of other communication and productivity tools including Excel, Google Calendar, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Zapier, and others.

Pricing for monday.com starts at $8 user/month. They also offer a 14-day free trial, as well as a free forever plan with limited features for a maximum of two users.