Top 11 employee scheduling apps for 2024

Looking for an effective employee scheduling app?

Creating and maintaining staff schedules is critical to boosting the overall performance of your organization. On the other hand, manual scheduling with Excel or using a clunky staff scheduling app can be time-consuming, which affects your productivity.

So choosing the right software can make all the difference in making the process simpler.

In this article, we’ll understand what an employee scheduling app is and highlight the best apps to make your process smoother and effortless.

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What is an Employee Scheduling App?
10 Best Employee Scheduling Apps

Let’s dive in.

What is an employee scheduling app?

An employee scheduling app automates the process of setting and monitoring work and break hours for your employees.

For example, at the beginning of each month or week, a manager considers the total workload and employee availability. Then, they use this information to assign shifts to each employee.

Ultimately, an employee schedule shows when each employee will be working across a given period.

Before digital technology took over, employers did this via analog methods such as punch cards and magnetic strips.

But as the scope and scale of employee scheduling expand, digital technology has brought in employee scheduling apps — which help you factor in multiple points to decide employee working hours for on-site and remote employees.

Here are some of the most significant benefits of using an employee schedule app:

Maintain clear communication about everyone’s working hours.
Keep records about work hours for tax and labor law compliance.
Ensure employees work according to assigned hours.
Prevent any additional labor cost from redundancies and overtime.
Allow the team to access all employee schedule records remotely.
Help employees maintain a work-life balance by managing their time better.

11 best employee scheduling apps

Employers today can access a range of productivity software that lets them set a work schedule. We’ve handpicked the best among these to suit your specific needs.

Take a look at the top ten employee scheduling software available today:

1. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a powerful employee scheduling and performance and workforce management tool used by major companies as well as small businesses.

The app’s robust time tracking and scheduling features help boost productivity and streamline workflows for both managers and employees.

Key features

Here’s a quick look at why Time Doctor is the best employee scheduling app:

1. Time tracking

Time Doctor helps employees report on every minute of their productive time with the manual time tracker.

Once the worker has set their tasks, all they need to do is hit Start or Stop on the time-tracker to track their work hours.

You also get an automatic time tracking option, where you can track time from the minute you turn on your PC.

2. Work schedules

Time Doctor’s scheduling feature is the easiest way to create and edit employee schedules and shifts, all from one place.

Experience smooth employee scheduling with functionalities like:

Add or delete single shifts or take bulk actions.
Pick a different schedule for each employee.
Generate .CSV file format for work schedules for easy sharing.
Set permissions to allow only a select few to view or edit.

3. Attendance reporting

Once you’ve added work schedules, you can monitor which employees are present, absent, or late in Time Doctor’s attendance report.

Besides attendance tracking, you’ll also be able to:

Check who’s currently working with ‘shift underway’ status for an online employee.
See what they’ve worked on during their work hours.
Find out how many hours each individual employee worked during the day.

4. Productivity reporting

Gain holistic insights into employee activities with Time Doctor’s detailed productivity reports.

Here are some of the reports available in Time Doctor:

Activity summary report: Shows active time, down to the second, based on the devices used and time frame.
Timeline report: Reveals the time spent on tasks and time spent in breaks in daily and weekly formats.
Projects & tasks report: Take note of employee’s project and task-wise break up of time usage.
Hours tracked report: See the team’s total working hours in any specified date range.
Web & app usage report: Displays the sites and applications used during work hours and how much time was spent on each of them.
Custom export: Pick and choose what data points you want to include in your report, and download it.

5. Invoicing and payroll

A business owner or manager can make direct payments to your employee’s preferred payment gateway right from Time Doctor’s payroll feature.

You can also:

Approve employee timesheets manually or automatically.
Set currencies and pay periods according to your convenience and policies.
Integrate with Gusto, PayPal, etc., for direct payments.
Download payment information in XLS, CSV, or PDF formats.

Pros

Smooth, easy-to-use interface.
Supports both online and offline time tracking.
Manual and automatic time tracking for high accuracy.
All-in-one software for employee scheduling and monitoring.
Option to set ‘productivity ratings’ for sites to track employee’s unproductive time.
Can take screenshots and screencasts during employee’s work hours.
Assign tasks and projects to employees.
Privacy controls to prevent leakage of sensitive employee data.
Idle time reports on each employee.
Effortless invoice and payroll management.
Powerful Chrome extension that integrates with tools like Asana, Jira, etc.
Attentive customer support.
Handy desktop apps for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu, and an Android app.

Pricing

Time Doctor offers a free 14-day trial that doesn’t require a credit card. Paid plans start as low as $7/user per month.

Customer ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (180+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (330+ reviews)

2. Humanity

Humanity is an employee scheduling solution that’s popular with healthcare brands for forecasting staffing needs. It can also automatically ensure that you’re compliant with the right scheduling labor laws, break times, and overtime.