9 best work schedule apps | Calendly (2024)

Managers spend up to eight hours every week making schedules. And with more employees working remotely, managing schedules across locations and time zones can get complex.

Employee scheduling apps make it easier for managers and workers alike to share availability, track work time, and create schedules — without the complicated Excel spreadsheets or lengthy back-and-forth email chains. Here are nine of the best work schedule apps available today.

9 best employee scheduling apps

1. Calendly

Time-consuming scheduling tasks go beyond assigning shifts. How do you handle scheduling meetings with teammates, prospects, customers, clients, interviewees, and vendors?

Calendly is a user-friendly online scheduling tool for teams of all sizes across industries. Team members connect their calendar(s) and share their booking link, and invitees can instantly choose from available times.

Over 100,000 companies use Calendly’s team scheduling features to simplify the scheduling process — whether they’re booking team meetings, sales calls and product demos, vendor and partner meetings, customer onboarding, candidate interviews, or all of the above.

Calendly features

• Availability settings: Automatically block off holidays, avoid back-to-back and last-minute bookings, and set custom work hours. Connect professional and personal calendars (Google Calendar, iCloud, Outlook, Exchange, Office 365) so meetings don’t get booked over personal obligations (or vacations!).

• Round Robin scheduling: Automatically assign new meetings to team members based on employee availability, team member priorities, or equal meeting distribution. This feature lets you respond to customers faster and offer them more available meeting times.

• Collective events: Pool the availability of all employees in a group, so the invitee can only select meeting times that are open on every host’s calendar. For example, a sales engineer and account executive can co-host a demo for a prospect.

• Group events: Let multiple people sign up to meet with a team member at once for webinars, Q&A sessions, or training

• Reporting and analytics: Discover employee scheduling activity and trends — like popular meeting times, top performers, and in-demand meeting types — to forecast staffing needs

• Centralized team management: Managed Events let admins create, assign, and templatize the events teams use, so everyone stays up-to-date and on-brand. Assign role-based permissions for users, group and account admins, and account owners so everyone has the right level of access.

• Workflows: Automate and customize messaging before and after events, including event reminders, thank-you emails, follow-up meeting requests, and more

• Integrations: Calendly integrates with many of the tools you use every day, so you can add it to your processes without reinventing the wheel. Some of the 100+ available integrations include video conferencing, CRMs, ATS and recruiting software, marketing automation, project management, and payment processing.

Calendly pricing

Calendly has four pricing tiers:

• Free plan: Includes one connected calendar, unlimited event scheduling, Meeting Polls, and automated event notifications

• Standard: $10 per user per month (billed annually)

• Teams: $16 per user per month (billed annually)

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger organizations that need advanced security, control, and customer support

Explore Calendly’s Teams features with a 14-day free trial.

2. Sling

Sling’s workforce management software simplifies staff schedules, employee communication, and time tracking.

Sling features

• Drag-and-drop schedule builder

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• Schedule templates for recurring shifts

• Employee availability: Manage time-off requests, see employee availability, and let staff choose available shifts they’d like to work

• Team communications: Share announcements, send private and group chats, and create newsfeed pages for teams or topics

• Task management: Assign task checklists to employees or shifts

• Automatic notifications about upcoming employee shifts to avoid no-shows

• Mobile app time tracking: Let employees clock in and out from their phones

• Integrations with Toast, Gusto, Shopify, Square, and more

Sling pricing

Sling has three pricing options:

• Free: Includes basic shift scheduling features

• Premium: $1.70 per user per month (billed annually)

• Business: $3.40 per user per month (billed annually)

All plans come with a 15-day free trial.

3. ZoomShift

ZoomShift is a work scheduling and time tracking system for businesses with hourly employees. Over 20,000 small businesses use ZoomShift to manage staff schedules, time-off requests, and timesheets.

ZoomShift features

• Drag-and-drop schedule builder with templates for daily, weekly, and monthly schedules

• Email, SMS, and push notifications for new schedules and shift reminders

• In-app shift swaps: When an employee requests coverage, qualified team members get notified about the open shift. A second notification goes out once the shift is covered.

• GPS time clock for accurate employee tracking and timesheets

• iOS and Android apps where employees can view their schedules, set availability preferences, request time off, and pick up open shifts

ZoomShift pricing

ZoomShift has three pricing plans:

• $2 per active team member per month, billed annually

• $4 per active team member per month, billed annually

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for growing businesses with 100+ employees

All plans come with a 14-day free trial.

4. Deputy

Deputy is an employee management platform for shift work. The software is designed to take time-consuming admin work out of employee scheduling, time tracking, and payroll.

Deputy features

• Deputy app for iOS and Android: Employees can manage their availability, see upcoming schedules, get automatic shift reminders, request time off, and swap shifts — all from their mobile devices

• Drag-and-drop schedule builder

• Time and attendance tracking for accurate payroll

• AI-powered auto-scheduling based on demand forecasting, labor law compliance, and custom rules like lower labor costs or equal hour allocations

• Task management: Assign and track progress on one-time or recurring tasks

• Integrations with POS and HR software

Deputy pricing

Deputy has three pricing plans, plus two a la carte options. Users can try all features for free for up to 31 days.

• Free: Basic shift scheduling and timesheet features for up to 100 shifts per month

• Premium: $6 per user per month, billed monthly

• Enterprise: Custom pricing

A la carte options:

• Scheduling only: $4.50 per user per month, billed monthly

• Time & Attendance only: $4.50 per user per month, billed monthly

5. Homebase

Homebase offers HR software for small businesses with hourly workers. The app simplifies schedules, time clocks, payroll, and team communication for more than 100,000 small businesses.

Homebase features

• Drag-and-drop schedule builder

• Time clock app for desktop, iOS, Android, and point-of-sale (POS) devices

• Team communication: Notify employees about schedule changes and upcoming shifts, add company events and shift notes to schedules, and stay connected with the in-app messaging tool

• Hiring and onboarding: Post and share job listings, track applicants, and onboard new employees

• Labor cost controls: Set overtime alerts, automatically clock-out employees who forget, track labor vs. sales data, and set team goals

• Integrations with payroll, POS, business tools, and job boards

• Optional payroll features: Automatically calculate and pay wages and taxes from timesheets

Homebase pricing

Homebase has four pricing plans:

• Basic: Free basic scheduling and time tracking

• Essentials: $20 per location per month, billed annually

• Plus: $48 per location per month, billed annually

• All-in-one: $80 per location per month, billed annually

Payroll add-on (for any plan): $39 base fee / month + $6 per employee paid / month

All users get a 14-day free trial of the All-in-one plan.

6. Connecteam

Connecteam is a workforce management platform for “deskless teams” in industries like retail, security, cleaning, hospitality, construction, field services, and logistics. Employee scheduling features are part of Connecteam’s Operations Hub.

Connecteam Operations Hub features

• Drag-and-drop scheduler builder with templates, recurring shifts, employee availability and preferences, regulatory limitations, and equal shift distribution

• Schedule sharing: Instantly send schedules and updates to your team, then have staff accept or reject shifts — all via the iOS and Android app

• Automatic shift reminders

• On-the-go forms and checklists

• Task management with subtasks, deadlines, attachments, to-do lists, and automated status updates

• Time clock app and digital timesheets

• Payroll integrations to export timesheets to Gusto, QuickBooks, Xero, and Paychex

Connecteam Operations Hub pricing

Connecteam has five pricing plans for the Operations Hub:

• Small Business: Free — includes full access to all hubs and features for businesses with under 10 users

• Basic: $29 per month for the first 30 users, then $0.50 per month for each additional user (billed annually)

• Advanced: $49 per month for the first 30 users, then $1.50 per month for each additional user (billed annually)

• Expert: $99 per month for the first 30 users, then $3 per month for each additional user (billed annually)

• Enterprise: Custom pricing

7. Shiftboard ScheduleFlex

Built with service organizations in mind, Shiftboard ScheduleFlex streamlines employee scheduling for healthcare, call centers, public safety, and staffing agencies.

Shiftboard ScheduleFlex features

• Flexible scheduling for full-time, part-time, contract, project-based, temporary, remote, and volunteer employees

• Day-of schedule tools to handle last minute changes like unexpected callouts and demand swings

• Schedule change management: Auto-fill shifts with qualified workers and create flex pools of workers who can fill multiple roles or time slots

• Real-time communication for schedule updates, company news, and availability changes via SMS, push notifications, and email

• Workforce management: Track staff details, including certifications, skills and performance ratings

• Integrations with business software solutions like Oracle, QuickBooks, ADP, and Paychex

Shiftboard ScheduleFlex pricing

Shiftboard offers two subscription options for ScheduleFlex: — Business and Enterprise — but you’ll need to request a demo for more pricing info.

8. Humanity by TCP

Humanity’s employee scheduling software is popular across a variety of industries, including healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, construction, retail, and higher education.

Humanity features

• Top-rated app for iOS, Android, and Apple Watch, so employees can stay up to date, on the go

• Demand Scheduler: Forecast and auto-schedule shift coverage based on team data, scheduling rules, and employee availability

• Compliant schedules based on labor laws and custom rules around hours worked, overtime, and breaks

• In-app shift-trading and self-scheduling for employees

• Automated communications for new schedules, shift reminders, shift updates, and open shifts

• Budget mode: Calculate the labor cost of your current schedule compared to your budget

Humanity pricing

There’s no publicly available pricing information for Humanity — you’ll need to request a trial for more info.

9. ClickUp

ClickUp is an all-in-one project management and collaboration app that offers hundreds of customizable features to help teams stay on top of their project timelines. ClickUp’s calendar view gives employees a timeline of projects, tasks, and due dates.

ClickUp features

• Multiple calendar views: Organize projects and visualize deadlines with Calendar, Gantt, Workload, and Timeline views. Filter by day, week, or month to get a high-level view of team and individual workloads

• Drag-and-drop updates: Instantly (re)schedule time for any task by dragging and dropping it across a date range

• Timesheets and billable time: Build customized timesheets to see where your employee time was spent, mark time as billable, and track invoices

• Easy calendar sharing: Share a project calendar with teammates in just a few clicks, or easily get a URL to share the schedule publicly

• Two-way calendar syncing with iCloud Calendar, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook

• Integrations: Connect over 1,000 other work tools, including Calendly, Slack, and Loom.

ClickUp pricing

ClickUp offers four pricing plans:

• Free

• Unlimited: $7 per member per month (billed annually)

• Business: $12 per member per month (billed annually)

• Enterprise: Custom pricing

All plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Set your team up for success

Whether you're creating shift schedules, managing employee availability, or booking critical meetings, the right work schedule app can save time, money, and stress for everyone involved. Take Calendly, for example: A study conducted by Forrester Consulting found that Calendly saved a composite organization more than 9,000 hours over three years.

That means spending less time on admin tasks — and more time collaborating, doing great work, and hitting your business goals.