Easy shift planning and scheduling for teams.

What is shift planning?

Shift planning refers to the process managers use to schedule employees and assign their daily and weekly work hours. It involves optimizing the timing of shifts to ensure the right level of staffing as customer demand fluctuates.

The goal of shift planning is setting schedules that meet operational needs within budget. This means forecasting how many employees are required at different times of day. Things like store traffic patterns, project timelines, and staffing costs help determine appropriate shift coverage.

Homebase provides templates and labor analytics to simplify coordinating shifts across an organization. Automated reminders and availability tracking also help minimize conflicts for both managers and employees.

With the right shift planning, managers can ensure work needs are covered while providing sufficient work-life balance for staff.

What is a shift planner?

A shift planner is an automatic scheduling tool that assists you in building a great staff scheduling plan. By using a shift planner app, you can ensure each shift is covered with enough shift workers to keep your business running smoothly at all times.

Using an automatic shift planner also helps you keep track of important information like availability, time tracking, time-off requests, and more. Instead of relying on the old-fashioned pen-and-paper method of scheduling shift work, your shift planner puts everything online and in the cloud.

This way, you do not have to worry about losing anything or having to handle a messy strategy that often results in things getting overlooked. With all the necessary information for your shift planner online, you will always be prepared to make the best shift schedule possible.

How can businesses benefit from a shift work planner free of charge?

If you want to create schedules for your business, an online shift planner is the best way to go about doing so. With every bit of information you need to create schedules in one place, your work hours will be laid out for each employee in no time.

With Homebase scheduling, there are many features that optimize your shift planning process. We provide drag and drop shift scheduling, which allows you to create those schedules by employee, role, or time period easily and efficiently in only a few clicks. This way, you will have more time to focus on other business priorities instead of spending hours on your weekly or monthly schedules.

Want to spend even less time on your shift planning while still making the best schedule possible? You can simply put your shift planning on autopilot with Homebase. Our auto-scheduling feature will copy over last week’s schedule, taking yet another task off your list for the day.

Then, our auto-scheduling tool will distribute schedules to your employees automatically so they can prepare for the next week with advance notice, making their lives easier and more convenient.

What is the best online shift planner software?

The best shift planner is one that does all that we mentioned above and even more, which is why Homebase is the best solution for you and your business.

Homebase allows you to spend less time managing employee schedule changes and shift swaps. Your employees can simply use the free employee app, available on both Android and iOS. In the app, they will always be able to see the latest schedule, and they’ll have the option to request shift trades right there on their mobile device.

The schedule can be sent through email, text messages, and even through the communication tool in the app. Once they see it, you will receive a confirmation, so you’ll have a pulse on who is up to date on the shift planning and who is not.

Your employees will even be able to update their availability, which is crucial for creating a schedule that works for everyone and won’t need to be modified as much based on when everyone can work. What’s more, you will always get a notification to approve those shift swap requests, keeping you in control of any changes that are going on.

Maintaining this ease of shift trading and availability updating greatly reduces the possibility of no-shows, errors in work hours, and time spent on building the schedule in the first place.

Can shift planning software help reduce labor costs?

Homebase’s shift planning tool can help save you time creating work schedules and money on labor costs thanks to the great features it provides. Most importantly, we will keep an eye on your labor costs and make sure you do not have too many employees scheduled for each shift.

Our system does so by connecting with our online time clock and calculating hours worked, overtime, and break times. Speaking of break times, we’ll even send your employees notifications if they miss their breaks to help keep you compliant in regards to every team member you hire.

If you connect your point-of-sale device to our app, and we will take things a step further by automatically forecasting your sales for each shift so you can have an even deeper look into the state of your business.

Do you have a business that relies on sunny skies? In your homebase dashboard, you will be able to see the forecasted weather so you can make better decisions on how many people, if any, to schedule for your patio or backyard events.

What else can Homebase do?

Homebase works hard so you don’t have to worry about working too hard yourself. From scheduling, time tracking, and communication, to HR and compliance, and even health and safety, we cover all the bases so your business can run smoothly and efficiently.

Get started with Homebase today to discover how connecting every aspect of running your business can make your life—and the lives of your employees—easier and more convenient. Sign up for free with Homebase today!