16 Best Work Schedule Maker Apps in 2024

Looking for a work schedule maker to help you assign shifts quickly, send schedules to employees instantly, and ensure coverage?

In this post, we’ve gathered the best work schedule maker apps you can use this year.

1. Camelo

Camelo is a scheduling solution made for shift-based workplaces and hourly workers in various industries.

The Camelo Scheduler, available on all devices, lets you schedule shifts while considering employee preferences, availability, shift needs, and more. You can drag and drop to schedule shifts if you’re using a computer, or assign shifts quickly on your phone if you’re outside.

Camelo supports many flexible scheduling options. Employees can swap shifts, choose shifts they want to work, or let you know when employees prefer to work.

Besides scheduling, you can manage work hours and attendance with the time clock on the smartphone and the kiosk app. Camelo notifies you when someone is late or doesn’t show up, and automatically generates timesheets once employees finish their shifts.

There’s a messaging feature that allows you and your team to communicate and collaborate. Additionally, Camelo provides data, insights, and reports to help you schedule and manage your team better.

Camelo offers a free forever plan with access to essential features for scheduling, useful for small teams. Paid plans are affordable, starting from $1.9/user/month.

2. Google solutions

When people go digital with their employee scheduling, free apps like Google Sheets and Google Calendar are very popular.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets lets you enter shift information, formulas, and calculations into cells. You can treat each cell as a shift block and create a whole schedule for employees. Once you’re done, it’s easy to send a link to your staff, and they can access the schedule with one tap/click.

Google Calendar

If you prefer a calendar interface, Google Calendar seems to be a nice option. You can view schedules by hours, days, weeks, months, and years. You can add time slots and appointments, and view them as shifts. It’s easy to drag and drop time slots around to make adjustments.

But these apps only make the schedules accessible and only work if you don’t manage many employees. You still have to manually create and design cells for shifts. Every time you update the schedule, you have to manually notify employees. It’s hard to keep track of updates and communication. Much of the scheduling work is still on your shoulders.

If you know how to use these tools well, you may be able to set up requirements and extract data for insights. But not everyone is tech-savvy enough to get those insights out of these tools easily.

Besides the free plan, you can upgrade to Google Workspace plans to streamline team collaboration. The pricing can be expensive for businesses.

So even though Google solutions are versatile and flexible, they aren’t making scheduling work easier. There are better options out there.

3. Homebase

Similar to other employee schedule makers, Homebase has a calendar interface for managing shifts. It provides both web and mobile access, ensuring you and your employees can access schedules from anywhere.

Homebase offers an automatic scheduling feature, which generates an optimized schedule if you input relevant information.

Homebase also integrates with other popular POS systems and payroll systems. This helps you forecast and make decisions more accurately while easing the burden of admin work.

4. mHelpDesk

mHelpDesk is a great online work schedule generator for field service businesses. It provides a clear view of who is available for dispatch. You can easily access notes and status of employees and customers, ensuring efficient scheduling without over or under booking employees.

With the ability to integrate with popular platforms like Quickbooks, Google Calendar, and HomeAdvisor, the app is particularly useful for field service businesses.

5. When I Work

When I Work is a scheduling software that is made for many industries. Employers can customize their dashboards to have a quick overview of their business operations.

The drag-and-drop interface is friendly and gives you the freedom to create schedules based on different requirements. Besides manual scheduling, there’s an Auto Scheduling feature that generates schedules once you’ve entered the necessary information.

It’s easy for employees to swap shifts and request time off on the app. When I Work has a built-in time clock and inbox, making team communication and managing attendance easier.

6. HotSchedules

HotSchedules has a calendar interface and a smartphone app for employers to schedule employees and for employees to view their schedules. The app also supports shift swaps and scheduling requests, great for managers looking for ways to manage their time better.

One notable feature of HotSchedules is you can integrate it with your POS (Point of Sale) system. This means you can access a dashboard that provides real-time labor and sales data, useful for labor forecasting, decision making, and calculating competition.

7. Jolt

Jolt is a scheduling app made for restaurants and food service businesses. You can match workers with fluctuating customer demand during peak and slower periods. Each scheduled employee has a color code, role, and notes so you can schedule them more efficiently.

Besides features for scheduling, the app incorporates restaurant checklists and reminders focused on food safety and best practices, which is great for staying compliant.

8. Shifty Calendar

Shifty is great for shift workers who have diverse and self-managed shift schedules. It primarily serves as a tool for employees to view and manage their shifts.

So note that although it simplifies scheduling for employees, Shifty may not be able to replace your current methods of scheduling your workforce.

9. Sling

With the user-friendly calendar interface, you can drag and drop to schedule shifts, click to approve shift swaps, or touch to manage time off requests. The app notifies you when scheduling conflicts such as overlapping happens.

Sling offers a free version for scheduling and communication, which is great for small businesses with tight budgets and basic scheduling needs.

10. Shiftboard

Shiftboard is a robust schedule maker designed to streamline shift-based employee scheduling in mission-critical industries. It offers intelligent scheduling capabilities to optimize operations.

Shiftboard lets you set up custom automations tailored to internal processes and scenarios. The platform allows you to create schedules based on your crew, operational areas, and shift pattern structures.

Additionally, the app features auto-blocking to prevent violations of employment laws, union contracts, and fatigue rules.

11. Setmore

Setmore is a free scheduling app for meetings and appointments. It has a simple interface and a calendar view, which is quite similar to cloud-based calendar software.

You can drag and drop time slots to schedule your team. Setmore notifies staff and clients, so you don’t have to worry about the distribution process anymore. However, the free version only sends 100 email reminders per month.

Because Setmore is designed specifically for making appointments, it isn’t optimized for shift scheduling. It can be clunky to schedule multiple employees.

12. Doodle

Doodle is promoted as a scheduling app for meetings, but its basic tools can be used for employee scheduling. For small businesses with not so many employees, this can be a modest upgrade from traditional pen-and-paper scheduling.

But note that Doodle has limited functionality. You can’t handle complex scheduling aspects such as shift swaps, time-off requests, or chatting with your team.

13. Calendly

Calendly is another schedule maker app that can be used for scheduling meetings and appointments.

You can set the availability, connect Calendly with your cloud-based calendar, send a link to someone, and let them pick their preferred time slots.

Once there are scheduling conflicts, Calendly sends automatic reminders to your team, so they can easily reschedule.

However, Calendly is made for scheduling meetings, so it can be a bit complicated to schedule multiple employees.

14. Shifty

Shifty is a staff scheduling app with a simple interface. It’s specifically made for scheduling shifts, so it’s pretty straightforward and easy to use. You can assign shifts and tasks for employees by dragging and dropping.

Schedules are sent via emails, so it can be a hassle if you want to make sure everyone’s received their shift details. You can’t manage other aspects of shift work such as time-off requests or schedule employees based on certain restrictions (such as location, skills, etc.).

15. ZoomShift

ZoomShift has a user-friendly interface that allows you to see relevant details about each scheduled employee. This includes their availability preferences—days and hours they prefer to work and can’t work.

With color coding for different positions, you can easily ensure shift coverage. Once you’ve published the schedule, employees can view the shifts via web or app.

The app also lets you manage time-off requests, shift swaps, and open shifts. You can track attendance or get information for labor forecasting.

16. Humanity

Humanity is an employee work schedule maker that caters to the scheduling needs of businesses in various industries.

You can schedule by location, position, skill, or department. Its forecasting and automation capabilities also help you create data-driven schedules easily. Employees can choose when they want to work and view their schedules on the go with the mobile app.

Humanity integrates with some workforce management platforms, making data management easier.

What are work schedule makers?

Work schedule makers are solutions that help businesses streamline employee scheduling. They help you:

• Create and update shift schedules
• Send schedules to employees so they know when to go to work
• Set available hours for work
• Send reminders and notifications for shifts and tasks to keep team on track

Some solutions also come with a time clock, task management, or chat inbox to make payroll and communication easier for business owners.

How do work schedule makers work?

Work schedule maker software makes it easier for managers, business owners, and schedulers to create work schedules and share schedule details with employees.

You can drag and drop hour blocks to assign shifts to employees while having requirements such as dates, times, locations, positions, etc. visible.

These apps are often available on all devices so everyone in the workplace can access their work schedules from anywhere.

Besides simplifying employee scheduling, work schedule makers may also include other features such as:

• Time clock & timesheets: Employees clock in and out using an app. The app automatically records the hours and generates timesheets you can use for payroll.
• Messaging: People in the workplace can send announcements, private messages, or files necessary for work.
• Leave management: Employees can send leave requests using an app. Management can review requests digitally. Approved leaves show on the schedule so you can avoid scheduling someone on their day off.

Benefits of scheduling software

• Have more control over schedules. With scheduling apps, you can easily see who are available and assign shifts to the right people. Employees can view schedules from anywhere. Schedule changes can be notified immediately.
• Collaborate better. Work schedules, tasks, messages, and requests are in one place, so people don’t have to stumble around looking for the information they need.
• Optimize costs. You can receive reminders or notifications for overtime limits and adjust labor costs more effectively.
• Manage time more effectively. These apps reduce time spent on tedious admin work, so you can focus on what’s more important. They also help distribute shifts and tasks more efficiently. They send reminders to help employees stay on track.
• Save time. Functions such as drag-and-drop schedule builder, schedule views, shift templates, limit warnings, etc. help you adjust schedules faster.

Excel vs scheduling software

Businesses often have to choose between using manual scheduling tools like Excel vs scheduling software.

While Excel can be useful for basic scheduling tasks, it may lack the advanced and automated features of scheduling software.

Employee scheduling software allows employers to efficiently manage shifts, track availability, and even calculate factors like shift preferences and skill matching. Businesses can reduce errors and schedule conflicts, and spend less time on tedious admin tasks.

How much do work schedule maker apps cost?

The pricing varies depending on the provider, the features offered, and the size of your team.

Work schedule maker apps often charge per user, ranging from $1.7 – $5 per user per month. This can get expensive for large teams.

Some scheduling apps charge per package, ranging from $20 – $50 per month. This can be optimal for large teams, but small teams may find charge-per-user options less costly.

It’s best to pick some affordable options that provide the features you need, try out their free plans or trials, and decide what suits your team.

Camelo offers a free plan for small businesses of up to 10 employees and a 30-day trial for paid plans. If you’re looking for a work schedule maker online and free, start an account today →.

Ready to try work schedule maker apps?

Finding the right work schedule maker can greatly improve your scheduling process.

Whether you’re a small business owner looking to transition from manual methods or a manager seeking more efficiency, there are various scheduling apps available to suit your needs.

With drag-and-drop interfaces, shifts and requests in one place, and integrations with other systems, technology can help you create optimized schedules while improving communication and reducing admin burdens.

Ready to give a nice work schedule maker a try? Create a free Camelo account now →.

For more resources on how to schedule your workforce better, visit The Camelo Blog.