How Do I Choose a Scheduling Software?

Being in a customer-driven business can be backbreaking, especially during busy hours on the weekend. To remain profitable, you need to find the right balance between staff coverage and wage costs, but suddenly your lead server has left for an emergency.

What are you going to do? Is there a way to turn this predicament around?

There is a solution to that—automated scheduling software.

With scheduling systems, establishing a work schedule becomes easy and efficient. It streamlines the scheduling process and is far simpler than the typical pen-and-paper or Excel sheet formats.

With many employee scheduling software in the market, choosing the right one can be a real challenge. To help you decide, we've listed the core features of great software for scheduling for your review.

User-Friendly Interface

The ideal work scheduling software's interface shouldn't be hard to navigate. Therefore, you should look for usability as one of the key features. RosterElf's scheduling software is straightforward to set up, easy to use, has ingenious ways to keep users engaged, and is informative.

A scheduling app should be convenient for employees and managers with minimal explanation. In addition, it should only take minutes for you to set up employee schedules, and easy for employees to access them.

Flexibility in Scheduling

The ideal scheduling software should allow employees to access their work schedules anywhere. You should also be able to check your employees' availability, time-off requests, shift swaps, and delivery of a new roster.

The right software helps minimise any problems related to denied requests, late approvals, changes in shifts, and other updates. The scheduling app should allow you to set rosters remotely and efficiently if your business has several locations.

Copy and Paste Capability

It should be easy for you to move around the schedule according to what's desirable and to be able to copy your roster from a template quickly.

Templates should be flexible enough to save rosters with filled shifts (specific staff members pre-selected) or unfilled shifts (shift duration and position saved but choosing the staff member is left for when you use the template on a roster). It should also allow you to change the roster after loading the template into your current roster.

Adaptable on Devices

Your chosen employee scheduling software should be available on different operating systems on electronic devices —iOS, Android, or desktops. It should display information clearly with a familiar design across each platform. Most of all, it should offer a great user experience to you and the entire workforce.

Communication Channels

Needless to say that communication within the organisation should be smooth with no fuss. Communication with staff can be fallible and time-consuming in the traditional setting. Finding employee replacements, managing leave requests, filling vacant shifts, and notifying members about upcoming events can be problematic.

This would likely lead to burning daylight for everyone in the workforce. So, the ideal scheduling software should reinforce the communication channel within the organisation.

Forecasting Functionality

You'll likely gain more business profit if you can forecast your employee schedule. A good employee scheduling app like RosterElf can help you decide the number of employees needed for all shift timetables, which can help mitigate errors, such as understaffing or overstaffing.

Forecasting functionality can also determine the best pattern for hectic or sluggish business operations based on days and time of days. All thanks to predictive analysis.

Labour Budgeting

A company's most significant expense is often labour costs, and controlling this can be a daunting task. However, experts suggest that having 45% of gross revenue is an ideal target. Hence your chosen scheduling app should facilitate scheduling the right people at the right time. All while reducing the labour costs in your business.

With RosterElf adding insights into predictable staff needs and sales, you can control your labour budgeting better when making employee schedules. You can then forecast when you will need more staff and on what specific time shifts.

To boot, you can determine where you want your team to work—specific locations or departments.

Shift Changes

Excellent scheduling software allows you to take immediate action when employees swap shifts, update their availability, or manage their time off. With a scheduling app, you should easily reject or approve shift requests or swaps. Also, it should be easy for you to assign shifts to your employees when changes are required.

Streamlined Shift Swapping

It's a regular occurrence for employees to swap shifts regardless of industry. This feature lets you have complete control and offer available shifts to other employees when the rostered staff member cannot work, ensuring the shift gets covered.

The automated app should also allow you to confirm if replacement employees are available for an open shift whenever a colleague offers a shift to be taken.

Time and Attendance Monitoring

Good employee scheduling must have a virtual time clock feature. This is vital for you to track your employees' clock-in and clock-out times, including the number of hours they worked per week. This data can help you manage and complete payroll activities with higher efficiency.

Cloud-Based System

Being cloud-based is now a standard for all management software systems. It's super easy to put together and implement into your business practices. For example, cloud-based systems should be accessible regardless of location, time, and device.

Employees should be able to access the schedule on any device with an internet connection. Moreover, cloud-based features allow a more collaborative building process with your employees, even when they are outside the premises.

Key Takeaway

You can never overstate the benefits of having an employee scheduling app. The fact that it can help manage the entirety of your organisation makes this software more favoured than the standard methods. With the right software, you'll likely spend less time scheduling through automation, boosting staff morale, managing time-off requests, and better tracking employee availability.

There will be fewer to no mishaps, better tracking of requests and availability, managing the team accordingly, and obtaining more energy investment. There you have it! Now you're ready to pick the right scheduling software.

RosterElf: Rostering Made Easy

RosterElf's cloud-based roster and scheduling software is a game-changer. No more chasing employees for their availability to work. No more roster conflicts. Our smartphone app lets employees submit and update their availability to work information 24/7.

Staff set the times and days they can work, and RosterElf does the rest. Our software then automatically suggests available employees for each shift.

What are you waiting for? Time to take your scheduling game to the next level and boost your business' performance. Call us now at 1300 353 000, and our team will be more than happy to assist you.

To get a clearer view of how our app works, enjoy 30-day access to our tool for free!