If you are looking to save yourself time and frustration while creating schedules for your employees, ShiftPlanning is the ideal employee scheduling application. ShiftPlanning excels in many areas, including its extensive and powerful feature set, many reporting capabilities and a user-friendly interface that individuals of all skill levels can easily manage. This work schedule maker offers a mobile app that allows managers and supervisors to easily work on the go. There is also a time clock, which makes it easy to track employees' attendance and payroll information. ShiftPlanning receives our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award because it is a versatile and flexible application with the capabilities to complete several tasks within a single product.
When it comes to the scheduling capabilities that employee scheduling software offers, ShiftPlanning is hard to beat. One of the best elements of ShiftPlanning is its quick set-up tool, called the Auto-magic Schedule Wizard. When you first log in, it's easy to add shifts and locations. You can add employees one at a time or import them from a digital address book. This is the slowest part of the set-up process. Alternatively, you can add workers from Facebook, Google Apps or a CSV spreadsheet file. You can also send your employee data to ShiftPlanning, and the company will do the initial work for you.
ShiftPlanning is a fully hosted web service, so there's nothing to download, and you can access your information from any computer with a web browser. This means that your costs are ongoing; however, the benefits to this kind of product are many. You can post your schedules online, for instance, and your employees can log in from anywhere to see their schedules and ask for time off.
You can access your scheduler portal with a free app that is available for almost any mobile device, including iPhones, Blackberries and Android phones and tablets. You can also export data to use it in external calendar applications such as iCal, Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar. You can also post it all online.
A new feature to ShiftPlanning is the time clock, which is a rare feature among the employee scheduling software products we reviewed. You can choose whether to integrate the time clock with your schedule, and you can see which employees are clocked in at any given time from the online interface. You can also set up features such as a webcam that will take a time-stamped photo each time a worker checks in or out. Another option is tying this tool to IP addresses or employee mobile apps. From there, you can manage your timesheets using filters and reports.
ShiftPlanning's data services are ideal. You can export data to multiple file types, and back up and restore data easily. You can also send your schedule information to payroll and accounting software using Data API. Specifically, the supported programming interfaces are REST, JSON and XML.
You can further ensure scheduling accuracy with office scheduling software by way of real-time conflict warnings, an effective time-off portal and employee-availability notifications. Moreover, you can schedule employees for on-call shifts and let your workers swap shifts and bid on open shifts. Then, you can send your employees emails or text messages when you post the calendar.
Your employees can integrate their schedules with Facebook so that their friends and family know when they'll be working. Employees can likewise sync their schedules to Google Calendar and iCal from the Schedule page. Beyond benefits to your bottom line such as reduced absenteeism, these attributes of ShiftPlanning make for more satisfied employees and, ultimately, decreased turnover.
Knowing the current status of your business, along with its strengths and weaknesses, is crucial to running a successful company. This office scheduling software offers a handful of reports you can create regarding the day-to-day dealings of your business. You can create reports based entirely on the number of hours scheduled, employees, availability, time sheets and more. If you do not see the option to create a specific report on the software, you can use the custom reports tool to create a report containing the information you want.
As mentioned above, the data services that come with ShiftPlanning are excellent. Your ability to access this information in multiple ways makes this feature even more beneficial. First, you can see your schedules in monthly, weekly and daily formats. You can also pull up charts on weekly employee hours, attendance, employee information and a summary of time-off usage. A recent addition to the web application lets you track labor and payroll as well. You can print any report quickly and easily.
With recent additions such as shift colors, labor tracking and the Auto-magic Schedule Wizard, ShiftPlanning is easier to use than ever. Many of these changes were instituted in response to user feedback, and the developers of this software plan to continue such user-requested updates in future versions of the product.
Other elements that make this employee scheduling software easy to use are an intuitive menu system, multiple views and a convenient settings portal. If you run into trouble, you will find solutions easily and conveniently.
ShiftPlanning has all the help and support attributes we looked for, along with several additional resources to ensure that if you do encounter any problems, assistance is available. There are video tutorials and a user start guide available to help you with schedule creation. If you have any questions while creating schedules, you can click the photo icon in the top left corner to link to a comprehensive help section. You can also call or email the company, or chat live with representatives online.
We highly recommend subscribing to this company's blog feed. You'll find a link to it at the bottom of any company webpage. Topics include new features, information on software updates and tips such as how to use keyboard shortcuts and how to customize the payroll system.
New features, incredible data services, trouble-free scheduling and easy communication options for employees make ShiftPlanning one of the best employee scheduling software services we reviewed. This web application is unique among its competitors in its worker clock-in and clock-out capability and its effective help options. ShiftPlanning has made great strides in recent months to become an easy-to-use and fully capable employee scheduling software product.
