Homebase Reviews

Pros

I really liked the scheduling feature and the onboardinh payroll features. Also the chat was great.

Cons

Having to sign into a desk top for some management features.

Pros

I really appreciated the user-friendly interface of Homebase. It made scheduling and time tracking incredibly easy and efficient. The ability to communicate with my team directly through the app was also a huge plus, as it streamlined our workflow and reduced the need for multiple communication tools. Additionally, the customer support was always responsive and helpful whenever we had any questions or issues.

Cons

One area where Homebase could improve is the occasional lag in the app, which sometimes made it difficult to update schedules in real-time. Additionally, while the app offers many features, it can feel a bit overwhelming for new users to navigate initially.

Pros

In 2018 everything was so great and at an incredible price, by my second year as a monthly subscriber I upgraded my plan, in spite of the problem integrating homebase timecards with my QuickBooks payroll, and had to manually enter the data personally. I loved being able to see the total hours per employee when creating a schedule, until one day it disappeared. Still undeterred, I loved the ability to access the app from any mobile device and desktop. Only androids & Desktops access the app easily and iphones or ipads come with headaches. I fell in love with the ease, simplicity and it's sexy platform look of this time tracking/management app, until one day everything changed and I lost my ability to view time cards all on one screen. Little issues were just an alert in the far upper right corner like a nudge. Now they scream in double size that takes up half the monitor, leaving only an inch or two to view time cards accompanied with a lot of scrolling. Nowadays I'm afraid to login and be greeted by a scowling dashboard with a list of issues nagging to be resolved. Issues caused by employees that can't log in or out and got tired of uninstalling and reinstalling the app as a temporary fix. I knew my relationship with homebase was reaching a bitter end when without so much as a "heads up" warning there would be an increase to my subscription (almost $20.00 more). When I said "Oh h#!! NO!" and lowered it to essentials...

Cons

I was denied the ability to manage my PTO mandated sick leave pay feature that never matched QuickBooks anyway, and the feature to assign different roles/rate of pay for different jobs among my existing employees. I now have a default pay rate/role homebase deems as "fitting". After a 5 year relationship with all the little things I loved, I can have back if I pay $20.00 more a month. Out of some "disturbed" sense I felt I owed to Homebase, I emailed support with an offer to pay a small increase but not at their ridiculous price with it's 15 features included that I would never use. If they can't find my request reasonable and let me pay only for what I use, I will fly into the arms of another app that gives me the basic features for free. The email was sent last week and long past the "24 hour" promise to respond. I never called out their promised "money back guarantee" after 5 years and the inability to integrate their application with my payroll system......Seriously? How much alimony is it worth? No, it's too late now. I'm divorcing homebase from my company forever.

Pros

It's been a valuable tool for being able to use historical sales data to decide how many employees to schedule on any given day. It helps me budget wages accurately.

Cons

Some functionality is clunky with too many steps, occasionally we have problems with the time clock, geolocation doesn't work.

Pros

Homebase provides scheduling, payroll, and time clock support. It is very user friendly and offers multiple features in one platform.

Cons

Least likeable feature is the lack of capabilities for employees to pick up shifts outside of their scheduled hours.

Pros

It's easy for my employees to use and it takes the hassle out of keeping up with hours manually

Cons

Getting employees to use the available/unavailable dates properly. I hire a lot of students that have differing hours of availability that changes often

Pros

Easy to manage time clock in and out for multiple employees without having to buy expensive hardware.

Cons

None it works great like it’s supposed to.

Pros

What I love most about Homebase is its functional usage. The website is very easy to navigate whether you are scheduling employees or are a scheduled employee.

Cons

The only thing I would change about Homebase is the reviewing part of the schedule when you are posting a newly published schedule

Pros

Easy to use! Excellent customer service. Free for companies under 20 employees.

Cons

There really isn't anything I don't like. We only use it for scheduling. We do not do through payroll.

Pros

Homebase not only makes employee scheduling easy, it also comes with amazing onboarding features.
Despite offering lots of features, using and understanding Homebase is easy.

Cons

Well, Homebase has not disappointed as a business tool.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Homebase

Reasons for Switching to Homebase

Pros

Asking for time off is simple for my employees, the message option is convenient.

Cons

Homebase since the beginning is constantly lagging. Whether it be to load pages, send or receive messages, especially sending images. Whether I am using the url on a desktop, or the app on my iPad or iPhone, it is extremely slow. I get message notifications long before the messages actually show up. It is like this for all my employee's that use the app.

The iPad version is difficult to use, it is as big as the size of a small phone screen, I don't understand why the app can't take up the entire screen of the iPad, like every other app I use on my iPad.

I don't know if this is an option, but for my restaurant in particular, as I'm sure is the case with many establishments that use your app, we have several different departments. I'd for one like to be able to only see my FOH employee's on the schedule, and have a separate for BOH.

It would also be convenient to not just limit the amount of employee's that can request off for a specific day, but to be able to limit by department. For example, to be able to say, 3 servers, 2 bussers, and 1 hostess is the limit for any particular day, rather than only being able to say 3 employee's in general is the max. I hope I explained that in a way it makes sense.

Additionally, working in a restaurant that is open nights and weekends, your support hours are not reasonable at all. There has been numerous times we've needed support and you have been closed, so we are just hopeless.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Homebase

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

User friendly, highly functional, efficient and effective mobile platform, great customer service!

I've never had an HR or work app that employees and management unequivocally love ... but Homebase hits the mark for everyone!

Cons

Homebase costs us more overall than any other products we've used but it's worth the money.

The "time off" tracking functionality is really basic and not as robust as I wish it was.

Pros

I like that I am able to link all of my locations within one application. I can easily schedule someone for multiple sites and assign specific duties, send messages, approve or decline time-off, etc.

Cons

I do not like that I can't edit someone's information when they take ownership of their account. I have some that forget passwords and not update their personal information like phone numbers and email addresses.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Homebase

Pros

Pros:
*Free option
*Customizable - we're able to use it for employees to log in and out of the different unscheduled departments/roles they do within a scheduled shift. Makes it easy to track manhours and payroll by department when the people working in each department changes throughout each day.
*The app
*Easy to use
*Great additional features like job posting and document storage/sharing, PTO tracking

Cons

Cons:
*Getting the PTO tracking to work for us has been a long wait.
*Employees experience a lot of glitches of punches not going through.
*Takes forever to enter a schedule in the separate "available" and "actual" schedules. I would like to take a posted availability schedule and just make it be their working schedule with one click. Scheduling takes a bit of time, but isn't hard.

Pros

We decided to go for Homebase because it mostly resembled what i was doing in as spreadsheet before. The timeclock is rather solid, we have set up a dedicated tablet to clock in and out. This is the main reason i got homebase for my team - so that they would have a schedule and be able to clock in and out. Also nice is the fact that custom national holidays can be setup and automatically be shown in the schedule. The Homebase team has over the years implemented a few nifty features to save me time as an admin.

Next is checking timesheets and correcting them when it comes to payroll - however this is where we stop with using homebase. We don't use any other features.

Cons

We don't utilize the payroll feature at all - everything can only be set in dollars. Overall, the software feels like it is made for the US market - not internationally. I have feature requested over a year ago that custom currencies should be implemented and even the way time is displayed (24h instead of am-pm). To no avail. Even from their content marketing strategy it is clear that Homebase is only focusing on the US market, with no interesting content for me as a hotelier on the other side of the world.

It is also sad to see that they have recently started adding a lot of fluff to their product like hiring, instead of making the core experience easier and faster to use. The new timesheets section looks nice, but i am 5 times faster with the old one (which could be faster still). I would love to see much more emphasis on a fast and easy to use product, with lots of features to get my work done quicker. Homebase is a classic example of software which gets better the less i have to use it. I would like to see the product move in this direction.

Pros

Allows volunteer ambulance team members to communicate & monitor schedule on the go. If an emergency happens we can communicate with each other remotely.

Cons

Messages are at times delayed. I don't "blame" Homebase due to the quality of our cell service in our area has been poor the past few months.

Pros

Homebase is extremely easy to set up employee time clock which happens to be free if your business has a single location and with a single location you may set it up for unlimited employees. For a small business owner where every dollar and cent matters, it’s a no brainer. A business owner may assign or allow the employee to set up their clock in and out code. Also, it may be set to take a photo of the employee during the clock in and out sessions to help or eliminate other employees from clocking in and out for them. Homebase offers an iPad, iPhone and an android app. You may also use your device's browser. We downloaded the app, installed it on an iPad for our employees to clock in and out on. The administrator has 100% access via web browser login. There’s also a feature which allows employees to clock in and out in the field which would geo-tag the location of the clocking activities.

Cons

Not a lot a negative things to say. This software is best if you have multiple employees who may have a staggered schedule. Example: an employee opens, then you have a mid day shift, then a closer. You also have many employees that may be out in the field. geo-tag is not the best choice for a single entrepreneur who’s trying to track their time, set up easier ways to do so.

Pros

I love the fact that you can see from start to finish your scheduled shifts. I can see my coverage in advance and adjust on the fly. I love that fact that each employee can have their scheduling without having to come into the office to see a sheet of paper. I schedule out every two weeks, so my staff can see their schedules and even trade with each other if they would like. I can also see who has or hasn’t seen their schedule so I know exactly who to call for clarification.

Cons

I would like to see a way to have real time coverage bars indicating who is on duty with an option to view their time on shift in a bar setting (like the schedule view) so that I don’t have to look at numbers.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Homebase

Reasons for Switching to Homebase

Pros

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.

Cons

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?

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

The ease of use for my employees to clock in and out. Geofencing

Cons

Three are arbitrary rules in place such as:
1)I cannot select a timeframe longer than 30 days to run payroll for a 31 day month.
2)I cannot clock an employee in earlier than 8 hours a scheduled shift. I have to alter their initial shift to allow for the time slack
3)I cannot have a salaried employee on the schedule without dealing with many issues about them missing their shifts or the annoying other messages after I resolved that issue (I keep them on the schedule so I know when they are supposed to be in as well as an accurate accounting of cash burn)
4)The programming on the front-end seems to be hastily made with many lags and timeouts when updating time cards or trying to perform functions that require the javascript (i think, I haven't opened the developer console on it yet) to perform quickly. basically the server or some other reason keeps it running slow and my function is logged but times out quickly.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Homebase

Pros

Honestly, streamlining the process of scheduling of employees was my major challenge as a newbie. With time and the help of Homebase software, I have made this one of my pillars in building a popular business in the market with the increasing need for a more efficient way to schedule employees. It simplifies the process and lets you handle all your scheduling needs in one place. It also helps in improving visibility when it comes to staffing by replacing traditional methods which were notoriously inefficient.

Cons

In project management, I have realized that it is hard to see the available members for optimization of team's utilization. Otherwise, I like the tool.