The Best Employee Scheduling Software of 2023

Pricing for Setmore’s solution is based on “per staff,” which is identical to the per-location fee structure charged by some of Setmore’s competitors. The per-employee rate that other employee scheduling software companies charge often is slightly cheaper than this model, depending on the size of your company.

Setmore has three plans: Free, Premium and Pro. Here is a breakdown of the pricing and features in each plan:

• Free: Companies can access up to four calendars and staff logins, a basic customer list, a booking page for clients, unlimited appointments, 100 email reminders per month, staff profiles, and other basic features on this plan. This option also comes with a free Square integration so your customers can pay for their bookings upfront.
• Premium: The premium plan version supports one to two users and costs $12 per user per month or $108 per user per year. Pro is for teams of three or more people and costs $9 per user per month or $60 per user per year. Both plans come with unlimited appointments and email reminders, customizable SMS text reminders for each appointment, integration with Square and Stripe for online credit and debit card payments, Zoom integration, and two-way calendar sync.

Setmore says there are no additional charges and that users can downgrade to the free version at any time. It also offers a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

Features

Setmore’s platform is easy to use for small businesses and customers alike. When we signed up for the free tier, we were immediately met with an easy setup process that helped us find certain features.

After setup, we were able to get our hands on the platform’s payment scheduling feature, which helps you create invoices and track payments – an important function for any business. As bookings come in, staff members with logins to the account can view the group calendar with everyone’s schedules and appointments. This transparency between employees makes overbooking and double booking less frequent.

When a customer books an appointment, the software sends confirmation emails to the customer and the employee, as well as follow-up emails and SMS reminders. It’s easy to reschedule appointments or make them recurring with the platform’s drag-and-drop function. Staff can also view a client’s history, which shows how long they’ve been coming to your office, their past payments, and how many times they’ve rescheduled or missed appointments. You can integrate this data with your CRM software to better manage customer information.

Setmore also offers several website and business application features that bolster its functionality. You can add booking widgets directly to your business’s website, whether it’s a self-hosted page or constructed with the help of platforms like WordPress, Wix or Drupal. Your customers can use those widgets to book appointments without picking up a phone. If social media is important to your business, Setmore can also integrate its booking features with your company’s Facebook or Instagram pages or the company Slack.

Setmore can integrate with other major business applications, like Salesforce, Mailchimp, QuickBooks and Zendesk. It also has an iOS and Android app that your employees and customers can use to set appointments, sync data and receive push notifications for upcoming appointments.

Additional Considerations

In addition to its regular service tiers, Setmore offers a live booking service for companies in the U.S. and Canada. For $89 a month, Setmore employees will answer your company’s calls as if they were your in-house receptionist. They can book appointments, answer with your business’s name and provide email summaries of each call. This service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and your company won’t be charged for “calls, solicitors and hang-ups under 30 seconds.”

Setmore’s support section has an extensive knowledgebase where you can search for answers to any questions you have. If that fails you, you can call the 24-hour support line (in the U.S. and U.K.), with the option to leave a message if needed. You can also email the tech support team, but there’s no live chat option on the website.

During our interactions with customer service, we found Setmore’s staff very easy to interact with. They were quick to answer our questions and attentive to our needs, which is what you want when you’re a small business owner looking for help in a timely manner.

Limitations

While Setmore is our best pick for a booking platform, we have to point out that it’s pretty limited in scope for employee scheduling software. This may not be a drawback for service-based companies, since booking help may be all they need, but if your business needs an all-in-one scheduling solution, this isn’t it.

It would also be wrong of us not to mention that we found a complaint was leveled against Setmore on the Better Business Bureau’s website this past July. The company still has an A+ rating even though it’s not currently accredited with the BBB, and it’s noteworthy that Setmore CEO Bryce Morrow personally responded and offered to change the offending policy.

Humanity Pricing

Humanity, like every other employee scheduling software provider, charges a monthly rate for companies to access its functionality.

While most companies generally charge on a per-location basis, Humanity charges for each user. The former style of pricing is generally good for companies with a small number of locations, while the latter is good for companies that have multiple locations with different teams at each site. What you’ll generally notice in a location-based solution is that the prices are much higher upfront, while per-user pricing models can be considered more akin to buying something in bulk.

With that in mind, you can pay for your subscription to Humanity monthly or as a singular lump sum payment for the entire year. If you pay monthly, you’ll have more control over how long you use Humanity’s service, while the yearly option helps reduce costs with the understanding that you won’t be able to back out of your agreement as easily.

Humanity offers two regular service tiers and one enterprise-level service tier. The company offers a 30-day free trial of its Starter level service and 24/7/365 support online. (Phone support is available for all three tiers.) Here is a breakdown of each tier:

• Starter: Companies with basic scheduling needs for their teams may be best served by this service tier. For $2 per user, per month, companies can access Humanity’s cloud-based scheduling platform, a centralized administrative dashboard, employee-controlled shift-trading capabilities, employee-dictated availability and time-off management, mobile access, and SMS/email/in-app notifications. If you pay monthly, you will need to spend at least $80 per month. Annual payment plans have a $60 per month minimum.
• Classic: The Classic tier is designed for midsize companies. For $4 per user, per month (or $3 per user, per month on the annual plan), you get everything in the Starter tier plus autofill scheduling, real-time labor cost and budgeting, labor law compliance checks, reporting and analytics tools, the ability to schedule employees based on their skills and certifications, an integrated online employee timeclock, GPS-enabled clock in and out, custom employee leave types, secure messaging, and payroll exports. Like the previous tier, there’s an $80 per month minimum for the monthly plan and a $60 per month minimum with the annual plan.
• Enterprise: While your small business will need some time to grow before it can fully utilize this service tier, Humanity’s Enterprise option offers all the same features as the previous two tiers as well as demand-based scheduling that will forecast scheduling needs, the season or company KPIs, open API access, and human capital management integration. Since this tier is more customizable than the other two, there is no standard pricing model. Instead, you’ll need to call the company for a quote.

Features

From its drag-and-drop functionality to its highly accessible mobile application, we found Humanity’s software easy to use. (We used the trial period, which only allows access to the Starter tier while the company’s knowledgebase and YouTube videos on the software’s functionality helped demonstrate the software’s other features.)

The software includes many features to make scheduling easy, such as the setup wizard. Its mobile application lets you tend to scheduling issues on the fly. Humanity provides powerful scheduling capabilities, such as drag-and-drop functions and the ability to fill shifts based on employees’ skill levels.

Employees will benefit from Humanity’s scheduling software; they can swap shifts with co-workers and request time off online. Schedules are easily accessible on the smartphone app, so employees can keep tabs on when they’re expected to come in for their shift. This work scheduler includes a GPS-enabled timeclock that you and your employees can use to easily track hours. Humanity integrates with many payroll software solutions, including ADP and QuickBooks.

The best scheduling software allows employees to set their availability, which prevents scheduling conflicts. Humanity’s employee scheduler does this and offers employees the opportunity to swap shifts and bid on open shifts. Since employees can log in to the scheduling software anytime, they can submit time off requests without going to work to do it. Each request must be approved by a manager, so supervisors are always aware of what’s happening with work schedules.

You can access Humanity through any computer with a connection to the internet, and you can download a free mobile application that lets you manage schedules anytime. You can also set up text and email alerts for individual employees to reduce tardiness.

Additional Considerations

In addition to Humanity’s employee scheduling capabilities, the software features a robust reporting system that covers more than a dozen different reports, including attendance and labor costs. With the ability to look at minute data surrounding your employee scheduling efforts, you’re able to properly adjust how you handle the schedule week to week.

While Humanity is our pick as the easiest solution to use, the company website features a comprehensive help section aimed at guiding new users through the process of setting up and using the software. For more intermediate users, the website has forums and FAQs. There are also video tutorials covering various aspects of the program.

If those options don’t answer your questions, Humanity’s customer service is available via live webchat 24/7 and by phone. During our interactions with their customer service, we found Humanity’s staff to be well versed in the program and willing to walk us through our concerns. They were clear and concise in their answers, and easy to work with.

Limitations

The most pressing issue for us is Humanity monthly minimum charge. While $2 to $4 per user is reasonable, a minimum of $60 or $80 for a small business is a little high. After speaking with a representative, however, we learned that Humanity offers a custom pricing plan if your company can’t meet that monthly minimum payment.

Depending on which service tier you sign up for and whether you include point-of-sale (POS) integrations with existing web-based functionality, you will pay for the service on a per-user basis as well as per location.

TimeForge Max includes all the features of TimeForge Attendance, TimeForge Scheduling and TimeForge Human Resources, making it a prime solution for small businesses. Here is a breakdown of all of the service plans offered:

• TimeForge Max: This is the company’s most feature-rich offering. At $3.45 per user, per month, with a $25 monthly minimum, the web-only option not only includes the features of the three previously mentioned modules, but it manages attendance and work schedules, cuts down on early clock ins and late clock outs, and provides an AutoScheduler to quickly generate schedules. If you want to integrate TimeForge Max with your POS solution, you must have one of the 13 systems it supports before you can get started. Prices for each POS are charged on a per-location and per-user basis. For example, Dinerware POS users can expect to pay $25 per location, per month, in addition to $3 per user, per month. Along with the feature-rich TimeForge Max, the company sells other solutions piecemeal at low prices.
• TimeForge Scheduling: If you’re only needing an employee scheduling solution, TimeForge Scheduling covers that base. At $1 per user, per month, with a $15 monthly minimum, TimeForge Scheduling lets users match previous schedules and forecast sales to predict the best coverage patterns for a given day. In addition, this tier features time off tracking, and employees can swap shifts, with management getting the final say.
• TimeForge Scheduling Lite: If you want to try TimeForge Scheduling, the Lite service tier is a free yet limited version.
• TimeForge Attendance: This module tracks attendance and manages employee timecards. Managers can keep tabs on an employee’s clock in and out times, the tips they collect and the mileage they log while driving for your business. This service is available for $1.95 per user, per month, with a $20 monthly minimum.
• TimeForge Human Resources: As the company’s solution for a digital human resources product, TimeForge Human Resources tracks staff demographics. It costs $1 per user, per month, and there is no monthly minimum. Through this feature, managers can track an employee’s certifications and training, as well as manage prehiring, onboarding, and other functions.

If you’re not satisfied with the packages TimeForge offers, according to the company, you can create a custom one by picking the package that’s closest to what you want and then requesting a custom price.

Features

While many of its features deal with regular employee scheduling needs, what sets TimeForge apart from other software solutions is its ability to take the data it has received and transform it into actionable information that business owners and managers can use to fine-tune their business.

The software includes over 60 reports on topics such as attendance, shift swapping, labor costs and employee retention. The reports include bar graphs that are color-coded and easy to read, making them suitable for your own perusal or for presentations. You can access reports in different formats, which can be useful if you need to export the information to various programs or Excel.

TimeForge Attendance users have access to a timeclock with management tools that provide real-time insights into your labor costs. Attendance users benefit from the solution’s ability to simplify state and federal labor law compliance by setting grace periods, scheduling staff breaks and handling overtime.

TimeForge further helps with labor law compliance by integrating with existing payroll providers, including SurePayroll, CompuPay, QuickBooks, Heartland Payment Systems, ADP, Paychex, and FMS.

For more mobile businesses, TimeForge has two apps, TimeForge Employee and TimeForge Manager, for iOS and Android devices. As the names suggest, they address either the management or employee side of employee scheduling.

Additional Considerations

While TimeForge’s options are not the easiest to understand compared to the companies we examined, if you need a solution that reports important data in an easily digestible manner, this could be the solution you’ve been seeking. TimeForge Scheduling has a comprehensive set of tools and strong scheduling capabilities, though its strongest point is its variety of well-organized reports.

We had good interactions with the customer representatives at TimeForge. You can contact customer support by phone and email. They answered our questions clearly and professionally.

You can also access TimeForge’s knowledgebase, which includes training videos and links to the manuals and FAQs. (These are also on the website.)

Limitations

TimeForge may have the most comprehensive reporting capabilities of any employee scheduling solution we evaluated, but it also is one of the programs we evaluated that has a required monthly minimum. While their minimums are relatively reasonable for small businesses, for particularly small businesses, TimeForge may be too expensive.

Another concern was the pricing model structure. Looking at the pricing page can be a little confusing, as you may be tempted to sign up for TimeForge Max, along with some of the other modules that are already included in the highest tier. While it can be easily rectified, it’s the kind of thing that could cause an unpleasant surprise down the road.