Best Restaurant Scheduling Software: Top 10 Best Restaurant Scheduling Software (2024)

Restaurant employee scheduling — and staffing in general — has always been a challenge in the industry. But many restaurant operators say that it’s harder than ever before. 51% of restaurant operators report that they’re still short-staffed, even as demand for dining in at restaurants reaches pre-pandemic levels.

Ensuring that restaurants have enough staff to operate at a macro level is one part of the challenge. It also involves making sure that there’s enough staff available to work each and every shift. This means that every day starts with a little bit of anxiety: Will everyone who’s scheduled be able to come in? What do we do if a critical staff member can’t make it and there’s no one else to cover?

Restaurant work is notoriously unpredictable, and employees regularly bear the brunt of having chaotic schedules. Their hours and pay are uncertain, and if their team is running too lean, they’ll have to work 70- or 80-hour weeks. Mental health and work-life balance suffer as a result, and burnt-out restaurant employees are much more likely to leave the team, setting off yet another round of searching, interviewing, no-shows, hiring, training, and fitting a new person into the schedule. 

That’s why restaurants are trying out new types of schedules and scheduling solutions, in an attempt to make work a little more predictable for everyone on staff — including management.

Technology providers have heard the call for better restaurant scheduling software, and they’ve built and leveled up employee platforms that increase team communication, promote better work-life balance, and increase shift predictability.

Top Restaurant Scheduling Software Options

1. Sling by Toast

2. 7shifts

3. Restaurant365 Scheduling

4. Jolt

5. Homebase

6. Bizimply

7. Harri

8. Crunchtime (Teamworx)

9. Fourth + HotSchedules

10. Schedulefly

How to Choose the Best Restaurant Scheduling Software

The right restaurant scheduling platform for you will depend on how many employees you have, what systems you already use for operations, and what your employees are comfortable with. The more your team likes the platforms you choose, the better everyone can work. 

We reviewed the top restaurant scheduling platforms, via the peer-to-peer business software review site G2, to help you choose the best software for your team. Let’s dive in.

How to Choose the Best Restaurant Scheduling Software

The right restaurant scheduling platform for you will depend on how many employees you have, what systems you already use for operations, and what your employees are comfortable with. The more your team likes the platforms you choose, the better everyone can work. 

We reviewed the top restaurant scheduling platforms to help you choose the best app for your team.

Sling by Toast

Sling is a leading employee scheduling, communication, and management solution. Acquired by Toast in July 2022, Sling is now Sling by Toast. This employee scheduling and communication software for restaurants facilitates employee scheduling, time tracking, payroll, internal communication, labor cost optimization, and reporting. By piecing together key parts of daily operations, Sling by Toast helps eliminate inefficiencies for businesses, headaches for managers, and frustration for employees.

Pros of Sling by Toast

1. Streamlines team communication, allowing you to communicate from a single platform

2. Available everywhere you work — on Web, iOS, and Android — so you and your team are aligned wherever you are

3. Allows restaurant employees to easily view and swap shifts, reducing absenteeism

4. Offerings features beyond simple scheduling, such as the ability to distribute tasks across the team to clearly define what needs to be done during each shift

Cons of Sling by Toast

1. Some users share that they would like more customization options for notifications

Price of Sling by Toast

Sling by Toast offers three tiers for pricing: Free, Premium ($1.70/user per month), and Business ($3.40/user per month). 

7shifts

7shifts is a popular restaurant scheduling option, with various tiers available to many kinds of restaurants. If your restaurant has one location and under 30 employees, the free product is a great place to start. For larger operations, The Entree and The Works tiers can support every area of staff management. 

Pros of 7shifts

1. Build schedules quickly and easily on the drag-and-drop interface.

2. The system builds schedules with staff availability, time-off, and regional labor compliance in mind.

3. Use shift reminders, group chats, and team-wide Announcements to communicate with staff at any time.

4. Keep all managers up to speed in the built-in Manager Log Book.

5. Integrate with most major POS providers.

6. Use the Engage dashboard to track employee experience and work towards reducing turnover.

Cons of 7shifts

1. Some functions are available for free, but other modules are available only in paid subscription sign-ups.

Price of 7shifts

7shifts is priced across three tiers: free (Comp tier), $29.99 per location per month (Entree Tier), and $69.99 per location per month (The Works tier).

Restaurant365 Scheduling

Restaurant365 has accounting products, store operations products, and workforce products — and the scheduling app falls into the workforce category, along with their Restaurant HR product. It’s offered as part of their product bundles and cannot be purchased as a standalone scheduling solution. 

Pros of Restaurant365 Scheduling

1. Employees can swap shifts and request changes in the app.

2. Employee types and levels can be set so that only employees with similar roles can swap shifts.

3. Employees can submit their availability right in the app.

4. Managers can monitor overtime easily.

5. Schedules can include blackout dates where no changes can be made.

6. Managers can use a reporting dashboard in the app to track metrics like labor cost and employee performance, and the product can integrate with 70 different point of sale systems.

Cons of Restaurant365 Scheduling

1. Cost. Restaurant365 is more expensive than most other scheduling software options, because scheduling is only offered as part of their product bundles.

2. Billing. Restaurant365 has their pricing set up so that the baseline prices of their Essential and Professional packages are billed annually, which may be difficult for restaurants that are still getting their footing. These plans are more expensive if restaurants take the option to be billed quarterly.

Price of Restaurant 365 Scheduling

Core operations, which is the most affordable plan, includes Scheduling, Inventory, Invoice Capture, and POS Connect, and comes in at $289 per month, per location. The Essential package, which includes many more features, is $399 a month per location, and the Professional package is $489 a month per location.

Jolt

Popular with major nationwide chains like Burger King, Subway, Dairy Queen, and Zaxby’s, Jolt is a restaurant operations software and hardware company that makes many different products, including an employee scheduling system.  

Pros of Jolt

1. Drag-and-drop interface means quick scheduling of employees.

2. Employees can log in and swap shifts as needed.

3. Analytics platform shows metrics like labor cost and projections, and can show various different metrics to different roles. 

4. Different apps for employees and managers (can work for some teams but not for others).

5. Time off requests and availability can be input through the app.

6. Works on any device with internet access, so employees without smartphones can still access the information they need.

Cons of Jolt 

1. Different apps for employees and managers (can work for some teams but not for others).

2. Somewhat outdated interface.

3. Cost can be prohibitive to smaller businesses. 

Price of Jolt

According to Technology Evaluation, Jolt’s Standard plan, which includes scheduling among many other tools, is $99.99 per month per location, or $89.99 a month, per location billed annually. The Enterprise plan, which also includes scheduling among many other tools and is catered to major chains, is $199.99 a month per location, or $159.99 a month per location billed annually.

Homebase

Homebase is an accessible but well-made employee management system including an employee scheduling system. It helps make communication with employees easier and shows when employees have seen the most recent version of a schedule in order to increase accountability and reduce no-shows. 

Pros of Homebase

1. Multi-channel notifications ensure employees never miss an update — when you publish a schedule, your team is instantly notified in text, email, and the app.

2. Schedule changes also send alerts to staff.

3. Read receipts let managers confirm that staff have opened and seen the most up-to-date version of the schedule, helping to prevent no-shows. 

4. Templates and auto-scheduling helps move scheduling along more quickly.

5. Managers can avoid scheduling errors by tracking employee availability and time off.

6. Managers can also post open shifts for employees to claim.

7. Avoid overtime with alerts.

8. Free tier has a lot of features in it and paid tiers are more affordable than many competitors.

Cons of Homebase

1. Adding on integrated payroll capacities, which can make a big difference in how much time managers spend on employee management overall, is a big jump in price ($39 a month per location more).

Price of Homebase

Homebase has four pricing tiers, starting with a very robust free tier that includes time and attendance, managing one location with an unlimited number of employees, an employee mobile app, job posts and applicant tracking, time clocks, and scheduling beyond 10 days. The tiers with more features and for more locations than one cost $20, $48, or $80 a location per month.

Bizimply

Bizimply is a scheduling, time tracking, human resources and shift management tool meant to simplify staff management at any restaurant, retail business, or healthcare environment. They offer workforce, HR, and operations bundles that can be combined.

Pros of Bizimply

1. The Bizimply employee app allows employees to clock in from their phones (based on their GPS location) and receive their schedules wherever they are, at any time.

2. The Bizimply managers app shares shift feedback and metrics and allows managers to contact employees through the team directory.

3. Drag-and-drop interface makes for easy schedule creation.

4. Managers can also track live time and attendance, and forecast labor costs.

5. Different apps for employees and managers (can work for some teams but not for others).

Cons of Bizimply

1. Not built specifically (and only) for restaurants and hospitality businesses.

2. Different apps for employees and managers (can work for some teams but not for others).

3. Pricing is based on number of employees, locations, and which products you choose, but range information is not readily available online.

Price of Bizimply

According to the Bizimply website, “Pricing depends on the number of employees, locations and products that you would like to buy.”

Harri

Harri is a hospitality employee management platform with a scheduling product made to help restaurants, hotels, and other service-based businesses unlock the potential of their schedule, and meet the challenges of staffing in today’s difficult environment. 

Pros of Harri

1. Harri collects and uses employee attendance and performance data to generate position-based, skill-based, or performance-based schedules automatically.

2. The system also takes into account sales predictions formed from historical sales data, staff availability, labor laws, the weather, and other factors.

3. Staff can swap shifts, and the schedule can take into account staff preferences as well as firm unavailability. 

4. Harri highlights unassigned shifts and flags them to managers.

5. Harri helps management teams calculate labor cost per employee, as well as many other important labor metrics. 

6. Harri integrates with most major POS systems and payroll providers. 

7. Stay on top of labor laws and compliance issues with guardrails built into the scheduling platform.  

Cons of Harri

1. Lack of transparency on software prices on Harri website.

Price of Harri

According to Capterra, Harri starts at $99 a month, but reliable pricing information is not easily found without speaking with a salesperson.

Crunchtime (Teamworx)

Crunchtime is a restaurant operations and staff management system that does a little bit of everything: inventory, staff training, analytics and reporting, and staff management through their platform called Teamworx. It’s best suited to multi-unit restaurants.

Pros of Crunchtime (Teamworx)

1. On Crunchtime’s employee app, Teamworx, employees can offer up their shifts, swap shifts, pick up open shifts, update their availability and request time off for manager approval.

2. Can be used on browser or in free Android or iOS apps.

3. Managers can view and approve employees’ time worked and evaluate schedules and shift performance.

4. Employees working multiple locations can use one system for all locations.

5. All transactions and requests can be fully audited.

Cons of Crunchtime (Teamworx)

1. Lack of transparency on pricing — no information is available about pricing or bundles of features and services. 

Price of Crunchtime (Teamworx)

Crunchtime’s pricing information isn’t publicly available, but you can set up a demo to request pricing. 

Fourth + HotSchedules

Fourth, which recently merged with HotSchedules, is a restaurant operations and management system that now includes HotSchedules. 

Pros of Fourth + HotSchedules

1. Managers can approve shift transactions with one click, create schedules with templates, and use historical data to forecast based on sales and budget.

2. The system is also built to provide next-level analytics and insights, like showing  variance between forecasted, scheduled, actual, and optimal hours worked and scheduled.

3. Managers can also message team members and broadcast notifications, and receive mobile alerts for when overtime is approaching or when it’s time for an employee to take a break or a meal.

4. Employees can swap, pick up and release their shifts, and request time off, right in the app. They can also message teammates and managers from the app.

5. Work schedules can be integrated with Google Calendar, helping to reduce the number of apps they need to juggle in one day.

6. Employees can also clock in and out and view their pay with Time & Attendance.

7. Free trial available lets restaurants try the system before they commit.

Cons of Fourth + HotSchedules

1. Lack of transparency on pricing — no information is available about pricing of their bundles of features and services. 

Price of Fourth + HotSchedules

No information is available about pricing of their bundles of features and services without requesting a demo. 

Get the best restaurant scheduling platform

Part of what makes a software great is how well it interacts with all the other pieces of the puzzle involved in your business. The less time spent exporting, downloading, and parsing through spreadsheets of employee data and labor spend, the better — and integrating your scheduling system into your POS system means data will sync seamlessly across both platforms. 

Sling by Toast takes the features and functionalities of best-in-class restaurant scheduling platforms and integrates it right into your point of sale. Keep the lines of communication open with staff, work towards improving team work-life balance, and build your business with smarter insights with Sling by Toast.

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This content is provided for informational purposes only. The included software solutions are ranked using an algorithm that calculates customer satisfaction and market presence based on reviews from the G2 user community. All claims are pulled directly from user reviews on G2 that were published in the past two (2) years; the views expressed in the content belong to the software users and not Toast, its affiliates, or employees. Some user reviews may have been edited for clarity.