Homebase in San Francisco offers restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and retailers their employee scheduling and time tracking tools with scheduling optimization and team messaging for coordinating shifts; service includes a free time tracking app.
$14
per month
HotSchedules
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
HotSchedules is a cloud-based scheduling, labor and communication management software solution serving the restaurant and hospitality industry. According to the vendor, key benefits include: Build & Communicate Schedules The scheduling and labor management software reduces the time it takes managers to create and communicate schedules. All scheduling and employee information is stored in one central location, so managers have access to time-off requests,…
Homebase is well suited for small business owners and startups who need to track employee hours more efficiently, and who desire for their employees to be able to directly compliment each other, or have more control over the ability to trade shifts. It is less appropriate for larger businesses that have multiple departments, or businesses with few departments and employees who may be scheduled in more than one department.
HotSchedules can be implemented in any organization that has to staff a store with varying hours. I have recommended this to my colleague who has 8 employees, yet he has seen great results with the shift swaps and availability tracking/time off requests. I do wish we could see some more attention to general staffing and training VS. the heavy emphasis on restaurant businesses. It feels HotSchedules has grown into many more areas and should work away from marketing so directly to restaurant businesses. Some training programs for other business would be a welcome sight.
Homebase provides an easy way to schedule employees. Their scheduling platform is extremely user-friendly and easy to edit once the schedule is made.
Homebase makes it easy for employees to switch schedules on their own, a manager just simply has to approve rather than physically rescheduling both employees, this is great for any small retail business or restaurant with many hourly employees.
Homebase makes it easy to adjust hours that have been incorrectly clocked or clockouts that have been missed.
All the information needed for your employees can all be found in one place. From the availability of an employee to their pay rate to their phone number. It's all just a click away. Before HotSchedules all of this information was kept in different places and the managers would need to open several documents and contact lists to find what they were looking for about a single employee.
Control over how indepth you use the product. The possibilities of this service are seemingly endless. However if you are solely looking for a specific feature HotSchedules offers you have the ability to soley use that feature. HotSchedules can simply schedule, or it can automatically schedule, or you can assign a specific job to a specific person on a specific day. For us, we have employees who are doing a specific job/task one week and then they are needed for a different job/task the next week. HotSchedules allowed us to narrow down our options starting with department, moving to location, moving down to the job they would be preforming for that scheduled day.
The ease of changing/releasing shifts. If an employee wants more hours they can go in and select shifts that are up for grabs or request to work on a specific day at a specific time. The opposite is also true. If an employee is worried they will have too many hours that week, they can release their shift and put it up for grabs by a different employee. And of course, all of this is fairly customizable to what you want your employees to have the ability to do, with or without your intervention and approval. In our case, if a shift lead releases a shift we only want other shift leads to be able to pick up the shift. HotSchedules allows us to do just that.
6 Years of Experience provides me the insight on the upgrades and changes that HotSchedules has done to improve the experience of its users. There are so many features that we still have not started or used to the fullest, but we believe that we are currently getting a strong value out of the money that is paid for this product.
Always cheerful, informative, and educated staff. Each person seems to want to find a way to help us with any issues or questions we have. I love that all the staff is friendly and in a good mood when you call, I have never had a rep be unhelpful or short tempered, or ever less than accommodating to our needs!
Homebase is simpler to use. Easier to navigate and is much cheaper than other alternatives! We had trouble when I worked as they were harder to reach our ROI. Deputy was too expensive and it was the reason we decided on Homebase! Employees also find it easy to use on their end!
HotSchedules was the first to tie into a POS to control clocking in and out for employees compared to a canned product from major POS providers. HotSchedules is more widely used by hourly employees in the industry, so there is less of a training curve.
Saving time on scheduling means our managers can focus more on guest experience, managing the floor and other areas that contribute to the success of our business.
