Employee scheduling software for shift teams

A restaurant manager with 22 hourly staff who builds next week's rota in a spreadsheet will usually hit the same problems: people text in availability, two cooks ask to swap Saturday, and the finished schedule goes out as a photo. Employee scheduling software replaces that loop with a shared schedule that staff see on their phones. The eight products on this page each let a manager build a shift schedule, take staff availability into account, let employees swap or cover shifts, and give staff mobile access. We read every price and capability on the vendor's own website on November 4, 2026, and each product page links to the pages we used.

What is employee scheduling software

Employee scheduling software is a tool for assigning hourly or shift-based staff to shifts, publishing the result and handling changes afterward. The manager builds a schedule from a template or by dragging staff onto shifts, staff record when they cannot work, and the software tells the manager who is available. Once a schedule is published, employees see it in an app, ask to trade shifts and pick up open ones.

Our inclusion test has four parts. A product needs a shift schedule builder, a way for availability to shape the schedule, shift swaps or replacements, and access from a phone. Products that lacked a verifiable source for one of these were left out, so some well-known names are missing. Every listed product links to the pages that show each capability.

Three kinds of product share the name

Restaurant and retail tools are priced per location. Homebase charges $30, $70 or $120 a month per location and keeps unlimited employees on every paid plan, so a single-site business with many part-timers pays little extra as it grows. Per-user tools charge for each employee. Sling, Deputy, When I Work and Humanity all price per user or per employee, which suits teams of a few dozen and gets expensive for a chain with thousands of part-time workers.

The third group sells a workforce platform. Quinyx and Workforce.com publish no prices, route buyers through a sales conversation and price by module and headcount. Findmyshift sits between the groups, since it charges a flat monthly fee per team that covers a stated number of team members, from 5 on the free plan to 300 on Enterprise.

Predictive scheduling laws

Some US cities and states regulate how far ahead schedules must be published and what an employer owes when shifts change. These rules apply to large retail, food service and hospitality employers, which are the main buyers of the products here, so they shape which features matter.

Oregon's law covers employers with 500 or more employees worldwide in retail, hospitality or food services. Written schedules must be given 14 calendar days before the first day on the schedule. Without that notice, an employer owes one hour of pay at the regular rate when it adds more than 30 minutes to a shift or changes a shift's date or time with no loss of hours. It owes half the regular rate for each scheduled hour not worked when hours are cut or a shift is canceled. Workers generally cannot be scheduled in the first 10 hours after a previous shift ends, and hours worked in that window are paid at one and one-half times the regular rate.

Seattle's Secure Scheduling Ordinance took effect on July 1, 2017. It covers retail and food service establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide, and full-service restaurants must also have 40 or more full-service locations worldwide. Schedules must be posted at least 14 days in advance. Seattle charges one hour of pay for added hours or a changed shift date or time, and half the unworked hours when an employee is sent home early or an on-call shift is not used. Hours worked between a closing and an opening shift fewer than 10 hours apart are paid at time and a half.

We did not read the current text of other cities' ordinances for this page, so check the rules where your locations operate. What these two laws show is the shape of the requirement: a published schedule 14 days ahead, a record of each change, and a cost attached to late changes. A tool that logs who changed a shift and when helps an employer show what it posted and when. None of the products here states that it makes an employer compliant with these laws, and we did not test any compliance feature.

Federal record-keeping still applies

Scheduling software also touches record-keeping. The US Department of Labor's recordkeeping fact sheet says employers must record the hours worked each day and each workweek for non-exempt workers. Payroll records must be kept for at least 3 years. Records used to compute wages, such as time cards and work and time schedules, must be kept for 2 years.

That matters when you leave a product. When I Work says access to customer data ends on cancellation, so schedules and timesheets should be exported before you close the account. Sling describes no export process in its terms and says a closed account cannot be recovered. Export a full year of schedules and time records before you cancel, and store the file where payroll can find it.

What the plans cost for 15 people

Prices vary by billing choice and by how a product counts users, so we priced one reference team: an admin and 14 staff, 15 users in total, on one location. The figures use list prices from each pricing page on November 4, 2026.

Sling Premium costs $25.50 a month on annual billing ($1.70 times 15) and Business costs $51 ($3.40 times 15). On monthly billing those become $30 and $60. When I Work costs $37.50 on Essentials, $75 on Pro and $120 on Premium, but its pricing page does not say whether those are monthly or annual rates. Deputy costs $75 on Lite, $97.50 on Core and $135 on Pro, though its monthly plans carry a $30 minimum monthly spend per invoice. Humanity Essentials costs $41.25 a month ($2.75 times 15), billed annually.

Homebase and Findmyshift do not scale with this team size. Homebase costs $30, $70 or $120 a month for the single location, whatever the headcount, and the page does not label which billing period those figures reflect. Findmyshift Starter covers up to 20 team members at $24 a month on yearly billing or $27 on monthly billing, so 15 users fit on it. Quinyx and Workforce.com cannot be priced from public pages.

Free plans and trials

Three products have free plans. Sling covers up to 30 users, Homebase is free for up to 10 employees at one location, and Findmyshift is free for 5 team members and 1 manager. The free tiers keep the schedule itself but hold back the swap and time features: Sling lists shift swaps and unavailability tracking on Premium and Business, not Free.

Trial lengths differ. Findmyshift gives all features free for the first 3 months. Humanity offers 30 days on its Professional plan with no credit card, Sling 15 days, and When I Work and Homebase 14 days each. Deputy's pricing page shows a Start free trial button on Lite and Core but states no trial length for them.

Where shift swaps, auto-scheduling and SSO start

Shift swaps are on the entry plan for most of these products. Deputy lists Shift Swap and Find Replacement on Lite, and When I Work lists OpenShifts and shift swapping on Essentials. Sling is the exception, with swaps starting on Premium. Deputy also lets a manager choose whether a swap needs approval.

Auto-scheduling moves buyers up a tier. Deputy adds it on Core at $6.50, and When I Work adds scheduling rules on Pro at $5. Homebase puts its AI scheduling assistant on Plus.

Single sign-on is where the plans separate. Deputy has it on Pro at $9 and When I Work on Premium at $8. Homebase lists single sign-on in its security page without tying it to a plan, and neither Sling nor Humanity mentions it on the pages we read. A company that requires SSO for every tool should check this before the trial, since the cheapest plan rarely has it.

Time clocks and payroll add-ons

Several products sell the time clock or payroll as a separate cost. When I Work has Time Tracking and Attendance as an add-on, and its pricing page shows no price for it. Deputy Payroll costs $8 per user a month plus a $49 monthly base fee, and needs an annual Core or Pro plan in the US. Homebase payroll costs $49 a month plus $6 per employee paid, with the first 6 months free.

Sling includes mobile time tracking from Premium and kiosk time tracking from Business.

Security claims and what they leave out

Security pages differ in how much they say. Deputy states that it is SOC 2 Type II compliant and holds ISO 27001 certification, and it hosts on AWS in Australia, the UK or the United States. TCP Software, which makes Humanity, provides SOC 2 Type II reports under a mutual non-disclosure agreement and lists a public SOC 3 report for Humanity Schedule.

The others say less. Homebase lists AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS in transit, and names no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report. Sling's security page says all data except passwords and employee IDs is stored without encryption at rest, and it names neither report. When I Work lists TLS, AWS hosting and mobile two-step verification. Quinyx states GDPR compliance and names Sweden's IMY as its lead supervisory authority. Workforce.com's trust page did not load any readable content for us, so we list no security claim for it.

Contracts and cancellation

Cancellation terms are written down for only three products in our data. Sling and When I Work both say that an email or phone request does not count as cancellation, and that payments are not refunded. Sling bills month to month with no cancellation fee. When I Work lets you cancel in the web app, and its terms say the number of users cannot be reduced during a paid term.

Findmyshift says accounts can be cancelled at any stage, allows refunds only for future dates and says nothing about exporting data after termination. The other five products' terms were either not readable in our fetch or not checked, so the product pages leave those fields blank. Ask the vendor for the subscription agreement before you sign, and look for renewal dates and the notice period.

What to test during a trial

• Build next week's schedule for one real location, publish it, then change two shifts and check that staff see the change and that your system logs who made it.
• Have a test employee set unavailable days, then try to schedule that person on one and see what warning the manager gets.
• Post an open shift, have two employees claim it and one employee request a swap, and find where manager approval happens.
• Export a month of schedules and time data and confirm the file opens with names, shift times and locations intact.
• Ask sales for the full price for your headcount in writing, including the time clock, payroll and single sign-on, with the billing period stated.