Homebase

Avantages

The ability to copy and paste schedules from week to week and customize your week start date makes it so much easier to do an entire month’s schedule in advance. They are constantly offering free trial upgrades, and the features the upgrades include would be critical if we were a larger business.

Inconvénients

The mobile version is not as easy to use in terms of creating and modifying schedules, and the inability to have more than one email address/account designated as an administrator on the free version is a little inconvenient. The calendar printout isn’t as customizable as I’d like - a month won’t fit on one page.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

Scheduling. Having a central location for employee communication. push notifications. employee integration. Customer service is great.

Inconvénients

Sometimes doesn't sync with toast. can lag at times. Can lag and force close at times. No search bar in the message thread. unable to edit people out of specific chats forcing you to start whole new chat.

Avantages

We love the software. It allows us to schedule, save info, talk to employees, and hire! I would love to have the pro feature but we simply cannot afford over $300 a month just to schedule and speak to employees. I’m a VERY small business and that takes about all the left over money I have at the end of the month.

Inconvénients

The price, it also has been glitching ALOT. Most days I can’t see the schedule I created. The app will appear blank as if nothing has been created. I have deleted and redownloaded the app and still experience issues.
The fact you can’t have multiple managers to adjust the schedule SUCKS. I am always signed in under my husbands profile to adjust the schedule. Please fix this. So many company’s would love this new permission set.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

Homebase does a great job on tracking employees across a whole organization and making sure to correctly assign overtime etc for employees that work in different locations and roles across the organization.

Inconvénients

The POS connection seems to drop off every once and a while, and while connecting it back up, it sometimes creates new locations for our organization. Customer support is super helpful in getting this fixed, but probably the one thing in my years of working with Homebase that has been a bummer.
One suggestion is having more control over who can see wages within the software.

Avantages

This is a very simple to use software and it is very easy to train our store managers to use it. It also gives visibility to All team members who is scheduled and for what shift.

Inconvénients

It is really the best scheduling software. I do not have anything negative to day about it. The only thing that I wish it has, is the ability to have another layer of management report view that would allow my General manager to see that exclude those reports reserved for me as the owner. Current levels are "owner/general mgr", "store manager" and "user". It would be nice to separate "owner" reports from "general manager" reports.

Avantages

I've used this for so long now it is hard to imagine what I'd do without it. We began using it as a simple time clock, and it has slowly become our go to for hiring, time tracking, time off, and employee messaging. If you have a mostly hourly workforce it is super simple to setup, and as your business grows it has helpful and intuitive tools to make your life easier. Their support in my experience can be a bit disorganized, but they always get the job done and are easy to work with.

Inconvénients

Not as helpful for salaried employees as it is for hourly employees in my experience. The lower tiers lack some of the onboarding functionality and digital form filing I'd like it to have, but I think this may have been added recently.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

First off......It is free for basic features. I love that it has an app for phone and tablet use. It is very intuitive and easy to learn. Staff can track their time and their salary. I could make a huge list here, but basically it is the software we needed, but now we can't live without it.

Inconvénients

Some of the features are a little on the expensive side when purchasing plans, but mostly because of our exchange rate.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Homebase 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

I think it is fairly simple to use and for all questions I have I generally get quick answers from support. The free HR support offered during the pandemic was very generous and we ended up signing up. In past reviews I have stated that I think your pricing should be based on a sliding scale depending on how many employees a business has. For someone like myself, who only has 2 hourly employees I don't need to use HR pro much and may not be able to justify $800+ for annual renewal for minimal assist and usage. I do like the onboarding paperwork feature that was added as well.

Inconvénients

I don't like that when publishing a schedule, the default on my version is to update all employees. Unfortunately, we had to furlough employees and if I don't manually change it, it defaults to alert all on our team even though they don't have a schedule or employed by us currently.

Avantages

I like everything about homebase. It's very easy to use and accurate

Inconvénients

There isn't nothing I don't like about homebase. It has all my needs.

Avantages

Scheduling and time clock work well. I wish the software forced GPS and pictures for mobile clock outs as well.

Inconvénients

2 of the features I'd like are in the next level package price, but those 2 features aren't worth $30 more a month (Prevent early clock ins & Set up automatic clock outs)
Doesn't support international phone #s

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

There are a lot of features that come either with the free edition or the basic package, it was by far the least expensive option for what we were looking for. Time tracking, scheduling, and different pay rates for different roles.

Inconvénients

The different features are not very well integrated with each other. When someone requests a trade or cover for a shift, they can attach a message to the request, but it doesn't go through the messenger feature. Someone has to open the request to see the message. Geofence is great for making sure someone is at work when they clock-in, but if they forget to clock-out before they leave they are kept from doing so because they are outside the geo-fence. So I (the admin) have to fix their timesheet the next day. There are also issues with the automatic clock-out feature if someone has two different shifts in the same day.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

Homebase's integration with our Gusto payroll service makes this a critical piece of our business.
The ability to select different pay grades for different jobs, and to send messages about shifts is also a major plus.

Inconvénients

It can feel cluttered if you only need it for a few features (it can do a lot), and the app's need to access employees' location on their device can make for a clunky experience at times (i.e. if they generally keep their location off, or miss the second step of the confirmation screen).

Avantages

Homebase is easy to use. We had to quickly implement a scheduling software. The way our business is setup has a variety of departments but employees work in multiple departments in a single day. Homebase lets us easily schedule each employee for the exact shift they work. We can view by department or by employee, which is helpful for both our employees and our managers.

We haven't tried it out yet, but one of the bonus perks to Homebase is their hiring module. We have tested but not actually published a job. It was easy to do and posts across multiple platforms.

Homebase has a lot to offer at a very reasonable price.

Inconvénients

After you have scheduled in a department or scheduled an employee, you cannot use the + button to add another shift. This is annoying because you have to duplicate an existing shift and clear the information, instead of easily adding an empty shift and filling in what you need. We also did not find a way to delete an employee when they were duplicate added without choosing "terminate" the extra employee. This is not an issue now, but it could be in the future.
Another feature that would be nice in the app would be the ability to call the phone number from the roster or at least copy and paste it.

Avantages

The software is very easy to use, very easy to customize. I always have our schedule in my hand because it's on my phone. I'm able to most everything on my phone that I can do on my laptop. New staff have no difficulty navigating through the functions. Has made my life so much better

Inconvénients

In the beginning there were some little kinks that I had to figure out, like some functions I can't see on the monthly view that I can see on the weekly view, but any questions I had were found on the help tab or my chatting with Homebase staff.

Avantages

Everything. For starters, it's very user friendly. I also love the scheduling, time sheet integration, PTO, chat/messaging, integration w/ Clover is HUGE. Having the COVID checklist when clocking in is also a great addition.

Inconvénients

Homebase has some small glitches or bugs here and there but we look past that. For instance, although it's been a month or two now that I've heard an employee speak about this, Homebase does not always give you a notification when you receive a chat message.

Avantages

Two months ago, I would have given this software 5 stars all around. I think the software is easy to use and loved that I was unable to schedule my staff during their approved request off time.

Inconvénients

The last 2 months have been a huge scheduling struggle. First, when my staff requested off, it would only show the amount of hours on the schedule builder, not the actual times I had to go look up the request off times every week for everyone and write them down to make sure I didn't schedule at times they couldn't work. This was very time consuming. For the last two weeks, the times my staff is requesting off is not what shows up on my schedule builder. Example, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] requested off the evening shift this Saturday, Nov 28th. It showed up on the schedule builder that I approved a request off for the day shift. This has been a huge issue It has taken me so much longer to produce a schedule and I have had to work a lot of shifts that my employees requested off and could not get covered. I am extremely frustrated and am considering looking for other scheduling app options if this situation doesn't get fixed soon. I understand technical issues can occur during updates, but for 2 months?

Avantages

We have a few off-site jobs, not another location - but we are a food truck. So our shifts, timing, and dates and regularity change ALL the time. Homebase allows you to create and manipulate shifts, their names, times, etc. A lot of other platforms do now have as much customization available. AND its easy to create and change templates, as well as create and change schedules from a computer, phone, or ipad.

Inconvénients

I wish we had options for printing, so that we could manipulate the format a little bit more. But its still quite strong. Also, sometimes the communication between our POS and Homebase has issues. Not too often, but it would be so, so nice if they spoke to each other and updated more smoothly.

Avantages

Quite honestly, one of the first things I recommend to businesses that want to schedule employees and know their labor costs that are up to the minute.

Inconvénients

The one feature that I do wish was available, would be a calendar view that showed the entire department or business, so that it could be displayed on a monitor or web-based application.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Homebase 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

The interface/importing with QuickBooks Online. Easy to add time and track PTO, holidays, OT and more. Customization for our business hours was perfect. The cost is lowest I have found for the amount of features. T-Sheets in QBO is too pricey for us. Also the remote clock-in features and mobile app is a big hit with employees.

Inconvénients

Importation of hours into QBO Payroll needs to be adjusted and checked, but having HomeBase open after importing employee time cards makes it simple. Just match 1 to 1 and your good. Also the initial holiday set-up can be a bit tricky but HB customer service is excellent and guided us through it.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Homebase 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

I use Homebase on the daily to manage scheduling for my team of 10. It's incredibly efficient, easy to use, and keeps me and my team organized. Our staff's schedules tend to change on the fly with last minute bookings given our private event business, and Homebase is the perfect platform for me to communicate these changes to my team in real time. It's also a great way to manage time-off requests, monitor work hours for our part-timers and hourly employees, and coordinate shifts that need covering. They also have a very responsive customer service team, with options like Live Chat. I strongly recommend the software to smaller teams with hourly employees or contractors!

Inconvénients

It'd be great to have a 'jump to X date/week' option. I view our staff's schedule on a weekly basis, and while you can jump to a monthly calendar view, I'd love an option to type in a specific date and it cue up the weekly schedule from there.

Avantages

How easy friendly to use, can communicate with staff and changes are not difficult.When I have had issue, the support is great and is done in a timely matter.

Inconvénients

Not being able to print out a 2 week schedule that is easy to see on 1 page.

Avantages

The software does what its' meant to do, keep track of clocking in and out. This helps to supplement the payroll process greatly and is easy to access and use by out employees.

Inconvénients

The scheduling function could be better. Our industry a little different, usually the work is project based. It would be nice to be able to schedule multiple people to one project with just a start time. We usually don't know when exactly a show will end, or when everyone will make it back so adding some flexibility would be very helpful. Even just having the ability to schedule multiple employees at the same time instead of having to click each one would be great.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

I really value the integration with Square POS that allows me to use the analytical tools within Homebase. It's really helpful for me to be able to see my labor estimates and even the weather (coffee is largely dependent on weather). I value the real-time feedback on my labor costs as well. I also appreciate the flexibility of the timecard programming that allows the real world to happen and for callouts to not totally disrupt my timecards. We LOVE your integration with Gusto that makes my payroll incredibly easy. I came into this position expecting to drop your platform for hotschedules, but I've stuck with it because you integrate really well.

Inconvénients

I am currently having problems with your Square POS integration and it's causing me to not enjoy the best parts of your program. Unfortunately your technical support is so backlogged that I get calls late at night when I can't access the program to make a fix.

Avantages

I thoroughly enjoy the Homebase platform and its ease of use. Everything is color coordinated, which is my favorite part. I use this to schedule my employees for all my locations. My employees enjoy it too because they can request time off, trade shifts, and see when they are scheduled on their phone. I also love the stats where I can keep track of sales and labor - and it links up all my locations which is a plus!

Inconvénients

There honestly isn't anything I dislike about the software. I use it mainly for scheduling, but it does so much more than that. I would maybe like to customize admin roles a little more for better security, but that isn't entirely necessary.

Avantages

It allows to communicate to all of my employees or just a select few through their own messaging system.

Inconvénients

That it does not integrate with my current POS system for clock ins. Navigating between different periods is a bit of a hassle and I wish I could manually enter date ranges vs scrolling through with the directional arrows.

Avantages

I love how you can do the schedule out as far as in advance as possible but no one sees it until you post it. We have used other softwares that we would have to do a spreadsheet first and couldn't enter anything into the system until we were ready for anyone to see the shifts.

Inconvénients

I would say the only thing I don't like is that we have trouble with the clock in system at one of our locations. Which is weird because it works perfectly fine at our other 3 locations. It doesn't register clock-ins a lot of times so my employees have to text me to clock them in.
I have reached out support about this several times in the past and they just say to delete the app and then reinstall. It works great for about a day and then acts up again.

Avantages

I like that my team all have access to the schedule as soon as it comes out. The ability for them to request days off on the app is amazing because I do not have to remember all the days, it comes up while I'm making the schedule. The ability for my team to clock in and out on their phones makes it easy and efficient and the ability to track where they did so is very reassuring. Everyone on the team is also able to message on it which means everyone can be in contact even without everyone sharing their phone numbers. The ability for the team to see who they are working with and in what positions is a great bonus too.

Inconvénients

I would love to be able to put on the schedule that we are closed on certain days (for holidays or other reasons) just as a reminder for the team. I would also like an option to remove employees without having to terminate them. In cases with students going back to college but working on breaks or families taking maternity leave, they don't need to notifications from Homebase, but they are still planning on continuing to work later on.

Avantages

Homebase makes my scheduling so easy. I do not have a schedule that repeats itself from week to week for any of my employees. Homebase has made it easy for me to keep track of all of my departments and schedule them with ease. I love that I can create a template to use for my schedules and just assign shifts to my team as needed. It was very easy to implement this when we first started with Homebase. The color coding on the schedules makes it easy for my team to know what they are doing.

Inconvénients

It is sometimes temperamental and hard to clock in and out of on your phone. It will kick you out of homebase where you have to relog in and that takes time. That is sometimes due to our wifi here at our facility, but the geo fence acts up at times too.

Avantages

Homebase is easy to use, quick, and effective. There is practically no learning curve for new employees. Scheduling is a breeze, as is running reports for payroll. It gives me quick reporting to see my business performance, even when I'm not there I can see how the shops are performing. Clock-in features work great. Customer service and troubleshooting (not that you'll even need it) are seriously amazing. This team treats you like your problem is their main priority.

Inconvénients

I wish the date selection feature still said the day of the week like it used to. It says July 10 2019, but it used to say Wednesday July 10 2019. I mean... that's all I can think of that I would change... and that's kind of a non-issue.

Avantages

It has a really easy interface for everyone to clock in and out with their passwords when they start and end their shifts. It also allows all our employees to download an app to their phone that will remind them to clock in/out and also will tell them how much they made that day! Love that.

Inconvénients

As an administrator it doesn't allow me to schedule a shift for my employees and have them clock in and out for their lunch or breaks. In order to account for lunch break, the only way to do it is to do multiple shifts for that person for the day. That part is kind of annoying, but not a deal breaker. It is also not an easy interface to use templates from previous weeks or rename then. It says you can do it once the schedule is published, but it doesn't direct you to there once you have done so.

Avantages

I like that it informs you of your schedule. It's a great time recording app. I really loved the customer service that is involved on the app. They make sure you are number 1 priority.

Inconvénients

I haven't had any problems with this time app.

Avantages

I like the time clock feature, but that is basically all that we use in our "plan" because most of the other features don't apply to us.

Inconvénients

I wish you could customize your different pricing options a little bit more. We could really use the vacation tracking along with customizable breaks, but can't justify paying significantly more for the next level as we won't use ANYTHING else that is included. For example, for our company we would use the scheduling calendar, the time clock to track hours & breaks, along with being able to add 'Holiday' hours so they would show up when we print the time sheets along with PTO or vacation time. It would be SO easy for us and our employees to be able to keep track of their vacation and make sure that they're getting paid, but again, we cannot justify paying for the "Plus" plan because we wouldn't use ANY of the other features besides the Time Off Policies. We don't even use HALF of the features that we pay for with the "Essentials" plan because they're not applicable to our business.

Avantages

I could post schedules with ease and it wasn't hard to learn the program. My staff loved if because they could download the app on their phone, see their earnings, schedule and could request time off or switch shifts. Once the staff requested off or changed shifts it gave me the opportunity to approve or deny the request. Also once I uploaded a schedule it would text or email the entire staff or just the ones I made changes to.

Inconvénients

They did update the system and it is a little bit or a learning curve. It also changed how the staff sees their schedule and dashboard.

Avantages

The scheduling aspect is great. Ready to swap shifts, create schedules, view schedules, etc.

Inconvénients

Too much extra stuff that no one needs or uses as far as I can tell. Time clock? Not necessary and can even complicate things.

Avantages

I love the many options this software provides to manage my team. Scheduling, time tracking, communicating, candidate search, and a time clock that I can limit the clock-in distance from the property is fantastic!

Inconvénients

I was hoping for a little more reach when finding candidates for positions, but I do like the option to share the post it provides.

Avantages

Ease of use, nailed key functions needed, intelligent navigation, visually uncluttered despite having a lot of functionality.

Inconvénients

It is not a shortcoming of the software but of non-technical users. The biggest problem I have had is bringing along the technophobes who are used to working with...wait for it...paper calendars and personal journals to keep up with. They yearn to be able to use something so powerful but blanch when they open the home screen and see what is available. It is about as user friendly as can be imagined but some still are so intimidated that it is hard to get them to dig in. When they do, they begin to appreciate the value that is provided.

The key is bringing the shy types along S L O W L Y. This software will sell itself once it is given a fair opportunity to shine. Just grit your teeth and work with them. It's more than worth the effort.

Avantages

I run a large salon and using Homebase to schedule support staff has been a game changer! Saves me time every month.

Inconvénients

I only use Homebase as a scheduling software and time clock but the price is tiered in a way that requires me to pay for the mid tier even though I only use about 50% of features. If you want staff to be able to swap shifts, you have to go up a tier.

Avantages

Very easy to use. The user interface is very simple and easy to navigate.

Inconvénients

I feel like this is a beta software that should not have been rolled out yet. We have been using it for a week and have had issues every day since we started using it. Basic things that you think should just work doesn't work.
Example: All my employees have a 1 hour, unpaid lunch everyday. They clock in and clock out on this required one hour lunch but Homebase is still counting it in their total hours. So know I ma getting alerts that they all have overtime but they actually don't because Homebase is not calculating hours correctly.
So there have been several little things (Bugs) that I have found every day since using Homebase. I contact customer support and they tell me that they will pass it on to their product team.
This may sound harsh but the product team really should have tested this software more before rolling it out. Makes me question all the reviews I am seeing on here. All the bugs have been on basic functions.

Avantages

Scheduling is made very easy. The software has prevented miscommunications resulting in missed shifts. Staff has enjoyed monitoring their hours and have been able to add hours for any extra that was worked. My staff is overall happier with the entire process. As owner, I am able to input payroll very accurately every pay period with very little to no communications with staff required.
Great communication with all staff, all of the time with the messaging portion of the software. Very easy to ask for time off and to also trade shifts. Shout outs and messaging has really strengthened my team.

Inconvénients

It is not directly integrated with my payroll software. I still have to manually input from Homebase into my payroll companies input page. It does however give me a way of keeping the employees pay structure private.

Avantages

It is nice to choose the apps that will work for your type of business. We are a sports bar, and it was perfect for us. It feels so good to not have a bunch of added items you dont use on your POS!!!

Inconvénients

It seems to slow up at times, but it resolves quickly.
I don't like that we purchased a tablet and that will be outdated so it no longer is supported or provided updates. The tablet is convenient, easy to use and we use it for training new staff!

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

I love the scheduling and time and attendance features. I like the flexibility and the abilities of my team to control their own schedule and time off.

Inconvénients

I dislike that the only feature I require from the next tier (+$20 per month) is different job codes so I just don't use it. I renegotiate payrate and time to achieve payrate differential for alternate job descriptions. It it was a weekly issue, I would switch products... that's how serious of a flaw it it.

Also, Shift Ratings are a good idea but the functionality to retrieve their comments is clunky and I only remember to search it out once a month. It just makes it a throw away feature.

Avantages

Easy to use and mfg staff can see their schedules

Inconvénients

none that I know of at this time after two plus years using.

Avantages

I can use many sections on this platform to control the employees time clock and payroll needs.

Inconvénients

I don't like when if you want to work early it wont let you clock in but that is what the software is meant to do so employees don't do any other schedule but what is set.

Avantages

I love that there is an app connected to the schedule and other features! A huge plus is my team being able to put in their own time off, and request shift trades or covers through the app as well.

Inconvénients

The scheduler can run slowly, and it would be nice to be able to organize job applicants a little better.

Avantages

Very easy to set up. Very easy to use. I just had to add on another location we just opened and it was so straight forward. I had it set up in minutes.

Inconvénients

I've brought this same concern up for over two years when I talk to support specialist.
When I do my annual reviews, I want to quickly be able to get to the data that shows how many times an employee was late, left his shift early or called out sick. I need that for a 365 day period.
Also, we have 7 locations and approximately 130 employees. About 10-20% of those employees move from store to store on a regular basis. We internally call them "floaters". I'd like to be able to just pick a
floater and see what his overall track record is. Printed on one page with the stores he worked at listed.
Also, because we have multiple locations and we have floaters, it would a nice feature if we could work on 2 locations at once on the same screen. Jumping back in and out of locations takes a little extra time.

Avantages

Easy to learn, easy to use, especially the scheduling part of the software. Scheduling managers are up and running on it within 30 minutes.

Inconvénients

Better integration with payroll software with companies that have multiple locations. Adding multiple locations also requires an additional level of subscription which can be pricey. Homebase has some difficulty talking to Square POS and has gotten disconnected a few times recently.

Avantages

Tracking time is so easy with Homebase. I didn't use any of the scheduling features as my team works a standard schedule, but they definitely look easy and simple.

Inconvénients

I'm not sure how I feel about this one but I wish they had different options for pricing. I'm probably the minority here because homebase has one price no matter how many employees you have on the platform. That said, I only needed it for time tracking for 2 employees (rest are salary) so I didn't like paying the same as someone with 50 employees. But if I was tracking more employees time, that would be a pro for me.

I also think Homebase needs to work on their positioning because companies like Gusto and Zenefits are starting to integrate time tracking into their app so for people like me with regularly scheduled employee's, there's no benefit to using another system outside my payroll software.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Homebase

Avantages

As a small nonprofit museum, the best part of the software is the availability of a free version. It has all the basic necessities of a digital time clock, plus it is integrated into our Clover register and employees can download the app to clock-in for remote work.

Inconvénients

Our pay schedule isn't normal. Instead of being weekly or bi-weekly, we run payroll twice a month (on the 15th and the last day of the month). THANKFULLY, there is an option for this in the settings, but the dates that our payroll periods begin on isn't the same from one month to the next. So, every pay period I have to go into the settings on a web browser and update the start dates. Unfortunately, the only solution that Homebase could provide is a more complex algorithm that would take into account what the last day of the month is, as well as adjusting the date if it falls on a weekend since our payroll company process the pay run on Friday instead of the exact date if that date falls on a Saturday or Sunday.

Avantages

Messaging is the biggest plus of the app. I no longer need to have a master list of everyone's phone number in excel and then constantly having to update it. Scheduling is obviously great, but honestly what keeps me hooked is the messaging.

Inconvénients

I'm a free user, and have had the paid subscription in the past. It would be awesome to have multiple managers to approve time off on the free tier.

Avantages

cost and initial functionality for what we needed

Inconvénients

Out grew it. Seems like it is more for food services industry instead of Technology Consulting services. We got away with stretching the functionality for our needs (like having to make everyone a manager). It was good for the year we used it with about 8-10 people, but now that I have rolled out company wide, it just wasnt the tool for us going forward