Small businesses dependent on shift workers and hourly staff require effective scheduling solutions.
In the past, companies relied on manual methods like pen-and-paper or spreadsheets for employee schedules, which proved time-consuming and prone to errors, resulting in scheduling conflicts.
Managers spent significant time creating schedules that were challenging to update, especially in the face of unexpected changes.
Modern employee scheduling software presents a superior and more streamlined approach to assigning shifts. You can effortlessly generate employee schedules that prevent conflicts, handle time-off requests, and cover all shifts.
While Homebase stands as a popular choice for employee scheduling software, alternative options exist that might better suit your requirements.
In this post, we have highlighted the best homebase alternatives for a rather more effective workforce management on your business's end.
.svg)
7 Best Homebase Alternatives In 2024
Let's take a detailed look at what we have in store for you.
1. Xenia - Overall Best Homebase Alternative In 2024!
Xenia is an excellent option for businesses that want to manage their frontline workers and projects efficiently.
It has many useful features like checklists & templates, inspections & audits, and work order management that are better than Homebase.
With Xenia, businesses can easily manage their worker's activities and make sure they complete tasks on time. You can also seamlessly coordinate task execution, facility maintenance, and compliance across your operations.
It also helps manage project budgets, making it a cost-effective solution. It is great for businesses that want to streamline their operations and manage their workforce effectively.
Key Features
- Scheduled Work: Increase productivity by creating clear job schedules and sending mobile team updates
- Task Management: Using images, notes, and templates for task management to replace jotting down notes for enhanced standardized procedures and accountability
- Work Requests and Approvals: Centralise request management, speed up approvals, and keep track of related expenses and resources
- Operations Template Builder: Using customizable pre-built templates and a sophisticated builder, you can streamline manufacturing work processes and inspections
- Smart Inspections: Catch manufacturing errors in action, simplify inspections, automate corrective measures, follow-up inquiries, and upload photos to the cloud
- Incident Reports: Use mobile reporting, remedial actions, and live progress monitoring to improve problem management
- Analytics & Reports: Use thorough work analytics, powerful filters, and configurable data exports to improve decision-making
Pricing
- Free Forever: free trial for up to 5 users
- Starter: $99 / month for 15 users
- Premium: $199 / month for 15 users with unlimited access to all the core features
- Custom: Need something tailored to your organization?
Available for up to 5 users
Premium for $99/month for the first 20 users (with free trial period)
Available on iOS, Android and Web
2. 7shifts
7shifts focuses specifically on the hospitality industry, unlike Homebase, which serves various sectors like restaurants and cafes.
It's more suitable for larger chains than small businesses because its higher-cost plans come with more features and fewer limitations on the number of employees and locations.
Key Features
- Scheduling
- Time tracking
- Payroll
- Hiring and onboarding
- Communication
Pricing
- Free Plan: Available for one location with a capacity of up to 30 employees.
- Entree Plan: Priced at $34.99 per month. Covers up to 30 employees and 50 locations.
- The Works Plan: Priced at $76.99 per month. Suitable for up to 30 employees and 50 locations.
- Gourmet Plan: Monthly cost of $150. Unlimited capacity for both employees and locations. More geared towards corporations rather than small businesses.
3. Deputy
Deputy incorporates AI features, such as an auto-scheduling function that enables the automatic creation of staff schedules to predict labor costs accurately.
For businesses emphasizing budget management, Deputy not only provides AI features but also offers traditional scheduling software functionalities for effective time tracking.
Employers can generate schedules in a grid format which is accessible to staff on both computers and mobile devices. Open shifts are available for pickup with advanced approval.
Despite lacking a free plan, Deputy's paid plans are among the most cost-effective. It's worth noting that scheduling features and timesheets are divided into two separate paid plans. To access both, businesses need to upgrade to the Premium plan.
However, the Deputy's customer support is an area of concern. User reviews on external platforms often highlight challenges with customer service, which is exclusively accessible through a ticket system.
Key Features
- Automated scheduling through AI
- Open shifts for sign-ups
- In-app time-off requests
- Break scheduling for labor compliance
Pricing
- Starts at $3.5/user/month, for Scheduling or Time & Attendance
- Trial: Yes for 31-day
- Free Plan: Not Available
4. Gusto
If you find that Homebase's extensive payroll and HR tools need customization for an international team, Gusto could be a suitable alternative.
It facilitates payments to contractors in over 120 countries. Moreover, Gusto has recently incorporated international hiring and onboarding tools that aid in candidate discovery and background checks.
Furthermore, It offers a versatile solution for businesses requiring global payroll management.
Its user-friendly interface simplifies the complexities of international payments. The platform's commitment to innovation ensures that businesses can efficiently manage their international teams, making Gusto a compelling choice for those with global HR needs.
If you face challenges in coordinating payroll and HR tools across borders, Gusto's international capabilities could provide the tailored solution your business requires.
Key Features
- Time tracking
- Payroll
- Benefits management
- HR consultation
- Recruitment
Pricing
- Simple Plan: Priced at $40 per month plus $6 per employee. Inclusive of single-state payroll, recruitment tools, and benefits management.
- Plus Plan: Priced at $80 per month plus $12 per employee. Encompasses all features in the Simple Plan.
- Premium Plan: Comprehensive package, including all features in the Plus Plan.
- Custom: Includes additional offerings such as compliance alerts and performance management.
Gusto offers a tiered pricing structure to cater to various business needs, providing flexibility and scalability for payroll and HR solutions.
5. QuickBooks Time
QuickBooks Time, formerly known as TSheets, serves as a user-friendly time-tracking and employee scheduling software developed by Intuit.
It simplifies the process for managers to create and modify employee schedules through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
The color-coded system helps in identifying various job types or employee roles, and customizable shift patterns and templates cater to businesses with intricate scheduling needs.
An integral aspect of QuickBooks Time is its seamless integration with other Intuit tools. Users can effortlessly link the software to QuickBooks Online or Desktop, streamlining the synchronization of employee hours, payroll, and associated data.
Despite its strengths, QuickBooks Time has some drawbacks. The user interface, though generally intuitive, may become cluttered and overwhelming when dealing with numerous employees or multiple locations.
Customization options may also be limited for businesses with unique scheduling needs, necessitating workarounds or alternative solutions.
Key Features
- Easily replicate schedules from previous weeks.
- Notify employees about schedule and shift changes.
- Conveniently make schedule adjustments using the mobile app.
- Utilize the GPS feature to locate workers.
Pricing
- Starts at $20/month + $10/user/month
- Trial: Yes for 30-day
- Free Plan: Not Available
6. ZoomShift
ZoomShift emerges as a compelling alternative to Homebase, featuring a clean and intuitive user interface with a calendar view for easy schedule assessments.
The drag-and-drop functionality, as compared to Homebase, simplifies shift assignments for managers.
Efficient organization is facilitated through the software's capability to filter schedules by job, location, and employee.
Users benefit from the accessibility of a mobile app for both Android and iOS, allowing on-the-go schedule management.
Noteworthy is ZoomShift's automation prowess, which enables managers to create templates for consistent scheduling. It can automatically generate schedules based on employee preferences and availability, streamlining the process.
Communication features include a built-in messaging system and email/text notifications, ensuring employees stay informed about schedule changes, thereby reducing confusion and the risk of missed shifts.
However, ZoomShift may not meet the needs of all businesses. Some users report limitations in advanced functionality, such as scheduling multiple employees simultaneously, making it potentially less suitable for organizations with complex scheduling requirements.
While the software offers various integrations with third-party platforms, users might find the list of available integrations to be somewhat limited.
Key Features
- Automated template scheduling
- Alerts for schedule changes
- Built-in messaging
- Mobile access to schedules
Pricing
- Starts at $2/active team member/month
- Free Trail is not available.
7. BuddyPunch
Buddy Punch competes with Homebase and incorporates biometric tracking, using facial recognition to monitor employees.
The employee scheduling system is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive and features a drag-and-drop interface that allows managers to effortlessly create and adjust schedules.
Its key strength lies in the software's capability to handle shift rotations and pattern-based scheduling, streamlining work-hour assignments for businesses with diverse operational needs.
Also, Buddy Punch integrates seamlessly with the time and attendance module. It empowers managers to track employee work hours in real time.
The platform also offers options for automatic notifications, ensuring employees stay informed about their schedules.
Despite its strengths, Buddy Punch's employee scheduling capabilities could benefit from improvements. Notably, the software lacks advanced features like skills and certifications tracking which are crucial for businesses in highly regulated industries.
This limitation may pose challenges for managers in making informed decisions when assigning shifts, potentially leading to scheduling unqualified employees for tasks beyond their expertise.
Furthermore, Buddy Punch's scheduling module falls short of providing robust reporting options.
Managers seeking in-depth insights into employee scheduling trends may find the limited reporting functionality somewhat lacking. Strengthening the reporting capabilities would undoubtedly enhance the software's overall usefulness.
Key Features
- Biometric recognition
- Automatic notifications
- Integration with time and attendance modules
- Real-time employee tracking
Pricing
- Starts at $2.99/user/month + $19 base fee/month
- Free Trail is available.
What is Homebase?
Homebase serves as an employee scheduling system designed for small businesses employing shift workers.
It empowers managers to create employee schedules, monitor workers' on-the-clock hours, and automatically notify them of upcoming shifts through text messages.
The Homebase app provides employees with the capability to clock in and out, as well as to trade or cover shifts, subject to managerial approval using their mobile phones.
Moreover, managers can use Homebase to include notes on shifts, offering instructions and reminders. The app also utilizes GPS to verify workers' locations and incorporates controls for monitoring labor costs.
Despite Homebase's convenience and utility for businesses across various sectors, an increasing number of individuals are choosing alternatives.
Homebase Features
- Employee Management Tools: Homebase provides robust scheduling and time-tracking tools that require less time and attention to ensure accuracy.
- Payroll: Homebase can automatically calculate and process all business-related payments which is essential to prevent staff stress and potential fines.
- Recruitment: Small establishments like shops and restaurants often hire seasonal staff during peak periods. However, coordinating interviews and training alongside regular duties can be challenging. Homebase provides hiring and onboarding features to streamline this process.
- Range of Integrations: Businesses typically use various apps alongside HR software, such as point-of-sale and inventory management tools. This software seamlessly integrates with popular business software, enabling automatic data sharing and reducing the need to use multiple tools.
- Affordable Pricing: While cost shouldn't be the sole focus, finding software that aligns with your budget is essential. Homebase provides affordable plans and you can upgrade as you grow.
Homebase Pricing
- Free Plan:
Suitable for one location and accommodates up to 20 employees. Offers basic scheduling and time tracking features, a team chat tool, point of sale (POS) integrations, and email support.
- Essentials Plan: $24.95 per month per location.
Includes everything in the Free Plan. Adds payroll integrations, performance tracking, advanced scheduling, time tracking tools, and access to live support.
- Plus Plan: $59.95 per month per location.
Encompasses all features in the Essentials Plan. Includes hiring tools, time off controls, and departments and permissions.
- All-in-one Plan: $99.95 per month per location.
Comprises all elements of the Plus Plan. Offers HR and compliance features, onboarding tools, labor cost controls, and business insights.
Customers can enjoy a 20% discount on any of these plans by opting for an annual commitment. Also, there's an option to include payroll at $39 per month plus $6 per active user.
Conclusion
Homebase has been a widely-used scheduling app, but numerous users have reported glitches and difficulties while navigating the platform.
Also, some reviewers find Homebase to be relatively expensive for the features it offers.
In that sense, it's always best to go on a trialing spree by signing up for free Homebase software alternative accounts on different platform.
See what they have to offer and match the programs' features against your business requirements. Afterward, you can also upgrade to a paid plan.
Unify Team Operations, Maintenance and Safety Compliance with Xenia
Xenia unifies daily operations, maintenance management and quality assurance to help ensure teams and facilities are effective and efficient.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
Operational Execution
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
💪 Team Task Management
Assign work digitally to defeat pencil whipping and disorganized teams. Complete tasks, chat with teams on any device, track time, collect photos, and ensure high quality work.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Centralize team communications with in task chats, one-on-one chats, team messages and company wide announcements
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
Maintenance Management
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
🧰 Preventive Maintenance
Create a preventive maintenance calendar to ensure asset uptime is not compromised. Attach images, templates, videos and notes to every task and assign to a team or individual for completion.
📲 QR Codes
Generate and attach QR codes to equipment and facility locations to enable fast and accurate inspections and data logs.
⚙️ Work Order Requests
Receive, approve and assign work order requests from tenants, regular customers and vendors. Enable requesters to submit, track, and communicate with your team, without access to operations templates or unrelated work orders.
📁 Equipment Work History
View work history for every asset and sub asset in Xenia. Review performance data and enable corrective actions to improve your operation.
Safety Compliance & Quality Assurance
👍 Concrete Brand Standards
Put your brand standards in a clear and operational checklist to be attached to work assignments.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step. This allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Analytics and Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
Centralized Facility Management & Maintenance Activities
When it comes to mobile facility management activities, Xenia unifies daily operations, maintenance management and quality assurance to help ensure that everyone's on the same page.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
💪 Build Inspections, SOPs and Logs Within Minutes!
Take the lead on your church facility management activities by creating detaild templates with unlimited steps and diverse reponse times.
📆 Plan Ahead With Scheduled & Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Dedicated Mobile App
Download and install Xenia's official iOS and Android app on your smartphone to centralized your on-site facility management activities.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Centralize team communications with in task chats, one-on-one chats, team messages and company wide announcements
🛠️ Work Orders Management
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
.svg){kind=icon}
.webp)
%201%20(1).webp)
.svg)
%201%20(2).webp)
%20For%20Businesses%20in%202024.webp)
.webp)
