7shifts Reviews

Pros

7shifts makes scheduling easy with a copy to next week feature that allows scheduler to mimic previous weeks schedules.

the repeating schedule feature makes scheduling kinder - allowing staff to set a weekly schedule of availability.

the chat and announcements feature lets communication flow without messier emails and texts.

the app-based time off submissions really simplify and streamline a formerly archaic system that was easy to screw up with paper notes, emails, calendars, notebooks.

the shift pool empowers staff to make last minute changes to their schedules or pick up extra work.

Cons

there's a lot of neat features that you have to pay extra for like an events calendar and labor to sales based scheduling.

Pros

What I like most about this software is that it was super easy to use for me and my staff it’s just very easy and it starts off. You can just do the basics and I am as a new business owner. I was just you know priorities come up, so scheduling was just first and foremost, but it has so many features that you can add on them at any time which is great they have help then it’s a wonderful automated system and they’ve just added a ton of new great features. I am excited to use.

Cons

Honestly, I can’t say I didn’t like anything in particular or what I least liked I think with maybe what I least used was something where we would be things that bigger organizations might need to use that or not important or not necessary for my particular business, but there is nothing that was the least liked

Alternatives Considered

Homebase

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

Didn’t know anything about homebase it was used by the previous person. I try to get in there and start using it switching over and it was just a headache so I just looked for a new system start fresh and this one was just doing easier and glad I did.

Switched From

Homebase

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

So there’s a ton of different products out there seven shifts is a reasonable price and it had the features I needed for my industry so I looked at several products, but I focus on what they what features they had and what my priorities were at the time and it matched

Pros

I liked the messaging platform it had for teams. I enjoyed the ease of seeing team member roles. I liked the ease of seeing the daily line up of teams in different departments. I enjoyed being able to flag attendance within the app and reports generated from that.

Cons

I did not like third party app integrations that users would be automatically opted into. Forecasting was a bit clunky also unfortunately.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

We didnt. We went with HotSchedules.

Pros

Ease of access to message staff, see who is punched in, make changes in real time. The announcement feature and the log book feature.

Cons

The budget tool is very confusing and not easy to navigate.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules and Schedulefly

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Cost

Pros

A super all-in-one app that does pretty much everything. Scheduling, to time clocking, to event calendar, to messaging, to task assigning. Price is fair and function is easy to use.

Cons

Messaging within the app is slow and unreliable. Amount of notifications received is too much and not easily customizable. Not having the ability to show a staff’s shift from another department that work multiple departments when printing is kind of a bummer (if I am scheduled to work as a manager in admin department, I will not show up in the restaurant department even though I am assigned and appear on schedule).

Alternatives Considered

MakeShift and HotSchedules

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

I started with Microsoft excel. It’s free, but you get what you paid for. Workarounds after workarounds. Then I tried “when I work”. It’s great, but they charge by the employee, which gets pretty expensive after 50+ people. MakeShift was recommended by our payroll company because our time clock is sync’d with MakeShift so we can effectively use labour forecast vs actual labour. But that’s the only thing good about it. Hate the fact I need to use 3 different apps - 1 for manager, 1 for staff scheduling and 1 for messenging… price is also higher too. 7shifts’s pricing is excellent. Flat fee, unlimited employees was huge. Plus the functions available was almost perfect! It hits every check mark and then some. If our time clock data (ADP) can be uploaded to 7shifts or have an integration between the two, that would be a dream come true!

Switched From

MakeShift, When I Work and Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Price was the biggest decision maker. Ease of use. And the fact the dev team listen and evolve to make the end user’s experience better is the key reason for the switch. I’ve already seen over 10 major upgrades over the past 2 years. No other products out there can do what 7shifts can!

Pros

We have been using 7Shifts little over 2 years now and it has been a great experience.

User interface is very simple. It an app that apple would have build. Very basic but yet very powerful. If you are getting this app i highly recommend getting all packages. End of the day it saves you money and head ache. Advil pain killer is expensive and good for your body

Cons

I dont have any dislike so far in 2 years

Alternatives Considered

Buddy Punch and ScheduleFlex

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

Hard to use, bad customer service, behind todays technology

Switched From

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Easy of use, lots of capabilities, communication with team members very easily, free text message automatically daily reminders to employees for their upcoming shift

Pros

We can maximize profit by scheduling exactly where needed with forecasting
We can create a schedule in minutes verses an hour
We can eliminate scheduling employees on requested days off or outside of their availability
Employees can update availability, time off without bothering management
Employees find a replacement for their shift after schedule is posted instead of bothering management
Managers can monitor labor in real time on phone app dashboard report
We use the 'engage' report as a positive way to eliminate attendance issues (late, no show, sick, change schedule, etc)
Employees can access by phone or computer
Employees can provide immediate shift feedback at end of shift
Managers can distribute hours and tasks evenly and monitor
Managers love the communication notification. One memo can be distributed to all or certain department to inform of last minute specials or even announce an employees birthday

Cons

To be honest, my list has dwindled of items I like least because everytime I bring a negative aspect to customer support, the development team calls and gathers information, then they begin programming and redesigning to improve their product for everyone. My only issue is waiting for them to make the awesome labor dashboard available for lower levels so managers can use it to train team leads without programming them to be in the 'management' category just to get the actual real time labor on their phone.

Pros

I like that I the functionality of the app and online. It is easy to access and use. The app is free and this makes a big difference with our hourly team members.

Cons

I wish the reporting was more robust. Sometimes I need more data than the reporting is capable of pullin gin.

Alternatives Considered

When I Work

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

HotSchedules was to cumbersome and slow. They charged for the app. They were slow to change and very expensive.

Switched From

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

The team at 7Shifts was always there when I had a question and made the integration process seamless.

Pros

Responsiveness. Ease of use. Employees not complaining for once!

Cons

With scheduling, we have staff that want to have the same recurring shift week to week. This changes often so having a template for a time period versus just a person is proving difficult. Staff keep saying "but I thought that was my shift every week?" What's happening is, they offered their shift to someone else so when we copy the prior week to a new week, the wrong employee gets assigned the shift. This is getting hard to manage.

Need the ability to print out day schedules the same way weekly ones look. We print our schedules out daily and assign breaks from them plus we leave notes about the day. Currently the only option to print a day view is in list mode and that does not show you visually where holes in scheduling are. We did find a way around it by printing the day view from the manager dashboard but that prints out the website not just the schedule.

We close out pay periods but they are still just sitting there as open, so that's confusing.

I wish we could name our group chats and create multiple versions with the same people. We like having group chats around topics to keep messages separate and easy to reference.

Pros

Ease of use, customer service, speed, responsiveness, price, does exactly what we were looking for.

Cons

Can't think of a con...just a great program

Alternatives Considered

Deputy, ScheduleFlex, When I Work and HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

It just seemed like the best product for the price...and again the customer service was great too.

Pros

We're interested in this app for the optimal labor scheduling feature. Unfortunately, we haven't yet used it long enough for this feature to work for us. Being able to manually add projected sales to the schedule to see the estimated labor % as you prepare the schedule is helpful. The reports seem easy to read. The helpdesk has been responsive so far.

Cons

The cost of the second highest tier plan is the same as the highest tier plan on our previous software. I don't know if this is a good value yet since we haven't been using it long enough to access all the features we need. I'm hoping the longer we use it, the better it will get. So far, myself and my team are still struggling to understand and find everything we need.

Alternatives Considered

Deputy

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

We want to access the optimal labor feature in 7shifts. 7shifts seems more geared towards QSR than Homebase.

Switched From

Homebase

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Deputy charges per employee.

Pros

During the time that we have used this software, there have been wonderful developments and rollouts that nicely enhance our operation. Keep up the good work!

Cons

It was very basic to begin with. Coming along nicely and will likely be the best product if they keep it up.

Pros

The best features of this program is all around communication. That includes communication from ownership on down. Everyone always has quick access to the notes and day to day. Management log and scheduling were the biggest attractions for us.

Cons

The biggest con for me so far is the permissions. We can only designate one Administrator and we cannot customize all permissions down quite as much as we need or would like. Sometimes we are stuck with "all or nothing" permissions decisions for some staff members.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

The toast integration option, pricing, trial period, and overall product availability that we were looking for.

Pros

I really enjoy having an app, setup was very easy, the price is right, and the over-all use is intuitive and simple to understand.

Cons

None that I can think - honestly a good product that meets my needs.

Pros

I love 7shifts! It's easy to use, easy to schedule, easy for my staff. I can communicate with the whole team at once, can look at the whole month of requests off, the reports are handy for seeing who has had what time off, etc. The team can trade shifts amongst themselves and everybody can get ahold of each other when needed. I also like that I have quick easy access to things like employee start dates, etc without having to go digging through their file!We do not sync this with our POS or payroll, but I do use it to double check when I have a time clock entry that seems off.It's also nice to be able to easily access the schedule from years prior!All around good product at a fair price!

Cons

I wish that some features of this product were not only available with the more expensive plan. Reminders for important staff dates would be helpful, but isn't worth the extra $$. Same with a manager log book, I'd love to use it with our business, but it's not worth the price difference to unlock these two items.I've only ever had a couple of issues I've run into. While support wasn't always able to correct them or address them head on, they've always done what they're able to &/or have put in feature requests, etc.

Alternatives Considered

Sling and Schedulefly

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

We were a brand new business and had shopped around for scheduling software. I also had previously used several other products, but wasn't necessarily keen on what I'd used before. We opted for a different product, but it didn't have the same usability as 7shifts. Glad we realized this early on! We made the switch and have no intention of changing again!

Pros

The way the schedule is laid out on the dashboard is nice and easy to see and understand.

Cons

I need a way to know employee phone numbers when they are not scheduled. On the iPad app, I currently hover over their name (when they are scheduled) and their phone number appears. My coworker is somehow able to see all employee phone numbers regardless of when the person is scheduled, but we could not get access to that on another device. This brings me to another issue: the ability to use all of the features pan-device. It seems like some employees can get some information on some devices, but we cannot find/use every feature on every device, app or website. In the communication/messaging area, we need to be able to bold, underline, and italicize, just like in an email. We need to be able to search for messages, just like in emails.This software is very slow on every device I have used, and in multiple internet connectivity areas. Sometimes a customer is asking for a particular employee. Rather than physically walking around and searching our 4500 sq ft store and office space that's in a separate area, it would be nice to be able to check 7Shifts to see if that person is even working—alas, I can usually walk the entire floor and check three separate office spaces BEFORE the 7shifts Dashboard loads.

Pros

It is very user friendly. Schedules are easily created and notifications are sent to employees if any changes are made. This eliminates me having to individually reach out to employees. I also love the announcement board for when I need to inform my crew of changes to the menu or any other operational changes.

Cons

When inputting events into the calendar it would be nice to have more formating options. Ex. Type of event, time frame (if it extends past 12am making it so it doesn't show on the calendar for the next day)

Also when employees try to book time off outside of the allotted time frame it would be nice if the admin still got notified since most employees just text you about it anyways. Perhaps the message could say "your time off request has been submitted but it is outside of the scheduling time frame therefore it cannot be guaranteed" or something like that.

Pros

We use 7shifts as the primary tool for communication as well as scheduling. It's easy to set up, add new employees, manage the schedule, shift bids, and time off requests. Employees report that it is one of the most comprehensive and easy to use scheduling apps they've ever used! As the administrator, 7shifts makes scheduling quick and easy which is a huge benefit.

Cons

The availability function can be improved. Employees report that it is the only aspect of the app that gives them trouble. Sometimes there is a lag between what the app shows on my phone vs. computer. For instance, shifts that have been edited and published are showing as not published on the app on my phone. Minor issues that cause little to no problems.

Pros

We have used 7shifts since we started our company. We wanted something that could be easy for everyone to use, and we've seen a ton of efficiency improvements over the years! It has been really easy to have different managers run the schedule with ease, and the analytics are helpful for running payroll as well. Would definitely reccomend 7shifts and 7punches as a combination tool.

Cons

No cons to mention! The improvements over the last few years have really made 7shifts and outstanding product.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Ease of use and easy to setup.

Pros

No glitches ever (previous app we used glitched and made errors to employees' schedules)
Budgeting tool
Ability to put in events
Color coding departments and jobs
Ability to print PDF schedule
Communication (chat and message options)
Employees can trade shifts
Availability and time off request features are perfect
Multiple locations allows you to use employees at different sites, but you can see in lighter color where they are already scheduled to work
Great value for the price
They keep making it better and will let you know when an update has been made

Cons

There's a minimal international fee charged monthly for 7Shifts. But that's all!

Pros

It is pretty easy to use. I like that it has staff ph.#'s and you can call or text through app without having to create a contact in personal account. as long as a staff member is in our employ, we have the important info in an easy to find format. It is easy to request time off and switch shifts through the app as well.

Cons

If someone wants to trade shifts, we have to scroll through all their shifts to see if they are going to go into overtime. It does give you a general hour count, but it is hardly ever accurate as sometimes staff get sent home early, and of course the app wouldn't know that. For me it would be great if you could tap someones name and it would show all their shifts in one place, and you wouldn't have to check every day to know whether or not to approve a change, like you wouldn't want to approve a 3rd double shift in a row, but without double checking every day, you don't know exactly what shifts a staff member has or will work.

Pros

I like that I can use it on my phone or computer!

Cons

Sometimes the publishing gets confusing and I can’t find workers when I need them

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

More user friendly

Switched From

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

We got both

Pros

It is easy to understand, set up and the customer service is extraordinary!

Cons

I wish there were more manager capabilities in the mobile app, but the app has improved already since it was first launched, so I imagine it will only get better.

Pros

I love that my employees are able to communicate with each other and work to fill their shifts if they're ill or issues arise. This frees up my limited time. The templates and metrics that the employees and myself are able to fill in re: how much they'd like to work and when are intuitive and allow me to reduce the time cross referencing. The software is incredibly intuitive and easy to use or find the things you're looking for. Finally, the service and support I've received from the team has been outstanding. They believe in their product and want it to work for your needs.

Cons

My business does a lot of outside events. While there is a section for events, I'd like for it to highlight the entire staff field for the day so I can more easily cross reference that there are major staffing changes that will need to occur.

Pros

The scheduling feature is by far my favorite. When you're having to create schedules for multiple properties it's huge to have everything in one place, on one program. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have 7shifts.

Cons

My biggest issue would have to do with team members forgetting to punch in and out, then having to manually go in and adjust their timesheet. It's a con but there's nothing that can really be done to fix this that I know of since its more human error than anything.