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.

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

• “It is helpful with schedule planning on the fly.” source
• “Shift updates are instant. Staff can see changes immediately and they can request time off via the app.” source
• “Simplifies scheduling. (Works great for business owners AND employees like it too!)” source

Cons of Sling by Toast

• “A few features can be hard to locate on the dashboard and the functionality can be difficult to decipher.” source
• “It is a bit difficult to filter conversations if you have a lot of messages going on with a lot of different people at one time.” source

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

• “The ease of use is great.” source
• “Helps streamline scheduling, labor, and reporting.” source
• “Easy app access for the staff lets them do everything from their phone.” source

Cons of 7shifts

• “There is no undo feature with setting a person’s time.” source
• “Sometimes copying schedules can be a little cumbersome.” source

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

• “The permission sets allow us to decide who on our team has access to what.” source
• “Amazing support system.” source
• “The data is organized and presented in a very useful manner with great drill-down capabilities.” source

Cons of Restaurant365 Scheduling

• “One thing we really dislike is the amount of training it takes to be able to just use the software.” source
• “The mobile app leaves a lot to be desired.” source
• “It can move slowly at times.” source

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

• “Any employee of any level can learn the back end.” source
• “Customer service has been outstanding” source
• “The system has been reliable and we haven't experienced downtime.” source

Cons of Jolt 

• “The design could be better.” source
• “It could be more customizable.” source

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

• “It's very customizable.” source
• “I like how easy it is to send schedules to employees and how we can give shoutouts to people that went above and beyond.” source
• “I appreciate the customer service.” source

Cons of Homebase

• “They keep increasing the price.” source
• “I wish that you could make group messages with all employees easier.” source

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

• “Easy to use and very straightforward.” source
• “Easy to train new people on it.” source
• “I can log in anywhere and create or edit a schedule.” source

Cons of Bizimply

• “Too many downtime emails and it can be a little clunky sometimes.” source
• “Not being able to connect with other systems.” source
• “I wish staff had the option to see the hours they clocked in each week for more transparency.” source

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

• “Onboarding documents are accessible and easy to find.” source
• “Simple to use and intuitive.” source

• “It makes things simple and very self-explanatory.” source

Cons of Harri

• “Updates make adding the schedule complicated.” source
• “Poor support (often email only).” source

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)

• “All in one shop for back office.” source

Cons of Crunchtime (Teamworx)

• “UI needs some updates to make it easier to use.” source
• “When making schedules you have to use a separate app when other apps have on the same system.” source

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

• “User-friendly.” source
• “Mobile app available.” source

Cons of Fourth + HotSchedules

• “Set up is difficult.” source

Price of Fourth + HotSchedules

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

Schedulefly

Schedulefly is a simple scheduling software built for hospitality businesses such as restaurants, bars, breweries, coffee shops, and boutique hotels.

Pros of Schedulefly

• “Easy user interface.” source
• “Emails shifts to employees and sends a daily schedule to the managers.” source

Cons of Schedulefly

• “Can't get ahold of anyone.” source
• "Inflexible and cumbersome. Too many clicks to anything." source

Price of Schedulefly

Schedulefly offers simple monthly pricing with no contracts, fees, or hassles. Pricing tiers are based on the number of staff members: For 19 or fewer staff members, it’s $30/mo. For 20-39 staff members, it’s $40/mo. For 40-59 staff members, it’s $50/mo. For 60-79 staff members, it’s $60/mo. For more than 80 staff members, or if you run a seasonal business, you may request a custom quote. 

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.