When you opened your restaurant, you probably didn’t imagine you’d be up at night stressing over scheduling. But restaurant scheduling is no joke, and odds are it’s given you more trouble than it needs to.
In the fast-paced world of food, you need all the help you can get. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the best restaurant scheduling software—so you can take one thing off your plate and focus on plating for others.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, the right scheduling software for restaurants can help you streamline scheduling, reduce employee stress, fully utilize your talented team, and better delight customers.
You worked hard to fill all those jobs at your restaurant. Now, it’s time to master scheduling them.
How do you create a restaurant schedule?
Because restaurants are so fast-paced and prone to change, it can be hard to get a schedule right. But following certain rules can help set you up for success.. When creating your restaurant schedule, follow these steps:
- Pick a schedule cadence. Do you want to post your schedule weekly? Biweekly? Keep in mind that giving your team only a week’s notice can lead to scheduling chaos. The further out you can schedule, the better.
- Make sure employee availability is all up to date. Quickly poll your team before making the next schedule to see if there’s anything new to take into account.
- Inform your team of your PTO policies. It’s a good idea to require some advance notice, even two weeks, for any time off. This prevents last-minute scheduling chaos.
- Take note of scheduling issues and iterate on your scheduling process over time.
What is restaurant scheduling software?
Restaurant scheduling software helps optimize work schedules, allowing you to focus on other aspects of the business. Scheduling software for restaurants can often include automations that streamline scheduling, tools to improve team communications, and integrations that help with restaurant payroll.
How much does restaurant employee scheduling software cost?
Restaurant employee scheduling software can vary in price, with some offering free plans that include core functionality. Other restaurant scheduling software can have a per-location cost, or location and user based pricing, costing as much as $5 per team member per month per location.
For example Homebase provides extensive features at every level, with our top-level plan providing you with onboarding assistance, employee documentation, and everything you need to manage your restaurant’s HR needs. Our scheduling tools are free to use for up to 20 people at one location—but other options may offer different things.
12 features to look for in scheduling software for restaurants.
No two restaurants are exactly alike, and the same goes for scheduling software. When looking for your own scheduling software for your restaurant, try to find one that covers as many of these features as possible—to make your life as easy as possible.
Scheduling features:
- POS integration: Integration with your POS system can help you track productivity levels and optimize staffing levels, and ultimately tailor labor costs.
- Schedule creation: Look for software that allows you to build and distribute employee schedules electronically, eliminating the hassle and potential for error associated with paper schedules or spreadsheets. (Bonus points for automated scheduling creation!)
- Shift trades: Find a tool with shift trading, allowing your team to swap shifts when life gets in the way.
- Task management: Task management should allow you to assign open and closing duties, kitchen prep, and more, helping you plan out days and ensuring all work is completed.
- Clock-in, clock-out: Your scheduling software should make it easy for your team to clock in and out, especially using a secure mobile app.
- Onboarding: Restaurant scheduling software that includes an onboarding feature can streamline the addition of new employees to the system and set them up for success.
- Messaging and notifications: Built-in messaging can help your team communicate urgent shift changes, if extra hands are needed, and more, keeping everyone in the loop.
- Ease of use: Your restaurant scheduling software should be easy for you, your managers, and your staff to use. Remember, you’re trying to make everyone’s life easier, not harder!
- Mobile access: Your software should include mobile access, allowing your team to send and receive messages, check their schedule, and trade shifts between each other on the go.
- Reporting: Look for software that includes reporting on overtime trends, PTO use, and other labor-related issues. This will all allow for smarter scheduling decisions.
- Shift trades with approval: Shift changes happen. Your scheduling software should allow your team to trade shifts, but also keep you in control with approval and final say.
- Employee availability: Lastly, it’s essential that your software has a mobile app that allows you to easily check availability, and enables your staff to submit availability updates as well.
4 Best restaurant scheduling software you can use today.
When it comes to restaurant scheduling software, there are more choices than breakfast options at your local greasy spoon. To help you out, we’ve picked out a few of the best restaurant scheduling software, along with who they’re ideal for.
Homebase
Homebase’s scheduling tool offers the best solution for businesses looking for a smart, user-friendly scheduling system that improves team happiness. With Homebase, you can create an optimized team schedule with the option to use templates or auto-scheduling without spending hours manually scheduling each employee.
You can also track availability and time-off requests to avoid scheduling issues, get overtime alerts, and build schedules based on your sales forecasts and labor targets.
Once the perfect schedule is ready, you can instantly share it with your team so everyone has the latest version.
The best part? Homebase is an all-in-one tool that connects your scheduling, time clock, labor forecasting, payroll, team communication, hiring, and more.
Best for: Restaurants of all sizes, from mom-and-pop shops wanting full HR options to multi-location restaurants that need advanced scheduling availability.
Pros:
- Simplified interface and mobile app.
- On-the-fly schedule changes from virtually anywhere.
- Streamlines the scheduling process across multiple locations.
- Access to features beyond scheduling, like team comms, labor forecasting, and compliance support.
Cons:
- Not all features are available on the free plan.
Pricing
- Homebase scheduling is included in the free plan, which is available for up to 1 location and 20 employees.
- Plans after the free tier are anywhere from $20 to $80 per month per location, and include additional features.
Sling
Sling started as a remote-centric scheduling and accountability tool, and is now suitable for restaurants. It offers employee messaging, task management, scheduling, and more.
Best for: Restaurants more focused on accounting than customer experience.
Pros
- Exports timesheets for payroll processing.
- Editable timesheets.
- User-friendly design and interface.
Cons
- Clock-out times are not recorded.
- A navigation learning curve that may take a lot of time to use correctly.
- Employees aren’t able to post-shift swaps.
Pricing
- Free trial available.
- Free plan is available for unlimited locations and employees and offers a few key features.
- Premium is $2.00 per month per user.
- Business is $4 per month per user and includes all features.
Zoomshift
Zoomshift was originally designed to not only provide a platform for the service industry, but also to work with retail and other desk-less jobs. It’s very strongly focused on employee scheduling. However, it doesn’t provide many of the other bells and whistles that make restaurant managers’ lives easier.
Best for: Restaurants with serious employee staffing issues.
Pros
- Time tracking includes GPS to ensure shifts start on site.
- Block early clock in and overtime.
- Pre-shift messaging to restaurant staff to reduce no-shows.
Cons
- Slow to load.
- Many features aren’t available offline.
- Employees can’t directly message billing liaison with information.
Pricing
- ZoomShift offers a free 14-day trial of their premium plans.
- Starter plan is $2 per employee per month.
- Premium plan is $4 per employee per month.
BambooHR
BambooHR offers extensive HR support, including benefits and onboarding, along with timesheets and time tracking. They place a large emphasis on data, particularly with dashboards that contain employee status, pay, hiring info, hours worked, and more.
Best for: BambooHR is ideal for larger companies with more complex staffing, as well as those in need of extensive HR support and functionality.
Pros
- Their hiring and onboarding tools make it easy to track applicants, onboard employees into your system, and even offboard.
- Employee experience and performance tools allow you to focus on culture and employee satisfaction, while setting goals and monitoring wellbeing.
Cons
- BambooHR may be too feature rich for smaller businesses and lead to bloat and frustrations.
- This option is more costly than some offerings. Accordingly, it’s especially expensive for smaller companies with fewer than 12 people.
Pricing
- A 14-day free trial is available.
- This option offers a Core and Pro plan, each of which contains different levels of HR features.
- Pricing is available upon request.
Build your first shifts in our free restaurant scheduling software… in minutes.
Not all restaurant scheduling apps are created equal. But with a little research, determine what fits in your budget and you’ll soon find the right software for your restaurant.
Once you’re up and running, you’ll be capable of handling the wildest of dinner rushes, helping employees find freedom through shift flexibility, and delighting customers in no time. With scheduling off your plate, you’ll be free to focus on expanding your menu, your business, and your dreams.
If you’re looking to start building your first shifts in minutes, and for free, give Homebase a try. Our free trial will have you building new schedules in no time, and give you a taste of what restaurant scheduling can be. It’s a dish best served warm, so get it while it’s hot.
Restaurant scheduling software FAQs
How do I create a restaurant schedule?
Though many restaurants are still using pen and paper templates, Excel spreadsheets, and other restaurant industry tools, there are many options that provide better employee scheduling tools, increasing your ROI.
Using employee scheduling software for your shift scheduling provides you with a better option, making it easier to avoid issues caused by restaurant understaffing.
With this type of restaurant scheduling software, you can simply enter your employee availability and allow the software to develop the restaurant schedule for the upcoming period, providing predictive scheduling your employees can enjoy.
How much does scheduling software cost?
The simplest answer to this question is it depends. There are many restaurant scheduling software apps that provide you with the absolute basics for free, but aren’t very good, while others, such as Homebase, provide plenty of functionality in their free option.
At the same time, paid restaurant scheduling apps often deliver more features that can make your business run more smoothly and take care of many of your HR needs.
As an example, Homebase provides extensive features at every level, with our top-level plan providing you with onboarding assistance, employee documentation, and everything you need to manage your restaurant’s HR needs. This allows you to minimize the number of software subscriptions you’re paying every month, saving money in the long run.
How does restaurant scheduling work?
The best restaurant scheduling software provides you with options for a free mobile app for iOS or Android that your employees can use from their own devices, or from mobile devices that you provide for that purpose.
The restaurant scheduling software pushes the employee’s schedule out to the mobile devices, allows for options such as last-minute shift swaps, and makes it easy for your employees to log in, even when your clock-in and clock-out device is otherwise busy.
What software is used for scheduling?
As we mentioned above, there are several types of restaurant scheduling software available to get the job done, but which one you choose is up to you. Because your restaurant is as unique as your employees, it will require you to carefully consider the different features, benefits, and drawbacks of each option.
However, Homebase does have a number of features that put us above other options on the market, such as Zoomshift, and Sling, which you should consider carefully before making your final decision.
Does Homebase have scheduling software for restaurants?
Yes! Homebase is focused solidly on providing workforce management solutions, so we work very well to handle your schedule creation needs. However, we’re so much more than just a software scheduling tool.
Homebase provides you with opportunities for your time clock, messaging, payroll, applicant tracking, onboarding, and many other aspects of employee management. Best of all, it’s free to get started with over 10 employees, provides scheduling support over 10 days out, and many other options.
Beyond our free accounts, we offer a range of options to meet your needs, including remote/field connectivity for catering work, labor cost control and budgeting, everything up to full HR support, and employee documentation.
If you’re ready to get started with Homebase, we can help. Save an average of 5-10 hours each week with our simplified restaurant scheduling software and mobile timesheet. Sign up for a free account today, check out our paid options, or discover more about what Homebase can do for your business in our blog.
Remember: This is not legal advice. If you have questions about your particular situation, please consult a lawyer, CPA, or other appropriate professional advisor or agency.
