7shifts is a restaurant workforce and scheduling management application, which also features collaboration features, from the Canadian company of the same name.
$0
Deputy
Score 8.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Deputy is a web-based workforce manager solution. Deputy is designed to help users simplify their scheduling, timesheets, HR, payroll, tasking, employee communication and administrative tasks. It includes various apps and one click payroll integration that aim to make workforce management easier. The Deputy platform enables users to schedule in line with demand, prepare accurate payroll, and communicate more clearly. Deputy streamlines employee admin, so teams can…
$5.50
per month per user
Homebase
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Homebase in San Francisco offers restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and retailers their employee scheduling and time tracking tools with scheduling optimization and team messaging for coordinating shifts; service includes a free time tracking app.
Deputy has a lot more features. The auto scheduling feature is much better with Deputy and the ability to incorporate task management with scheduling/communication has been great. I also like Deputy's "newsfeed" style with the communication. In Homebase, it was more like a long …
I tested Homebase and Deputy at the same time. I gave up testing Homebase when I found Deputy immediately more user-friendly and, as I thought, more ingeniously designed. However, I did not do in-depth testing of Homebase. I simply jumped to Deputy when I realized it would do …
7shifts was not able to provide the integration we needed for our payroll system and no support to integrate with our HR system. It also did not have the ability to create custom reports or create reports in a format that we could use for payroll. The user interface was a bit …
Feature and functionality wise they are very similar. I liked the UI for both platforms. The main reason we ended up choosing Deputy is because of their good pricing, Deputy was significantly less costly, thus we are getting more value. The other reason was that I liked the …
I felt Deputy had the best pricing and functionality as well as the ability to set up the scheduler by myself. I found it easy to use for both Administrators of the product and end users. I looked at a number of other solutions, but needed an immediate solution and Deputy fit …
Deputy had more functionality and a lower price than most of the other placed I considered. Many other solutions require a continually growing subscription fee to add functionality. Deputy provided all needed functionality up front.
7Shifts is ideal for a broad number of restaurant clients, whether it is a single unit, independent location or multi-unit, multi-jurisdiction group like ours. Pricing is very reasonable, and as mentioned earlier, a lightweight and intuitive platform makes it easy to implement and maintain, and scalable for growth
[My own feeling on the subject is] that large teams will probably enjoy the features much more than a smaller team. [In my opinion] I would not have signed up with Deputy had it not been for the integration with my payroll provider. [From my point of view] the cost is not worth it for a small team. [I've found] it has a lot of features geared towards big teams and those are not things you can "opt-out" of from a cost/tier standpoint [as far as I'm concerned].
Homebase is a very cost-effective program that does a good job tracking employee hours as well as what employees are working on. It is extremely easy to use and has a lot of self-service features, which give employees information at their fingertips. Homebase integrates well with our payroll provider.
When creating schedules I wish there was a way to remember the last schedule you were on instead of ordering them in alphabetical order.
When working on a schedule, again when you revisit it, it alphabetizes the employees instead of keeping them in the order you add them. This is pertinent for our business because we're reservation-based and work off of a rotating schedule where the lowest ones are called off if there are not enough reservations.
The messaging features in Homebase are not consistent across the platform. In the app you can mass message everyone, however using the website you cannot, at least not at the price point that we are using.
The roles for employees and how to navigate them can be confusing especially when trying to schedule one employee in two different departments.
The separation of departments is a bit rigid and makes it difficult for universal employees to be scheduled easily.
The basic functionality and overall efficiency it provides is enough to renew. I still would like to see improvements in reporting and leave management, but overall it is absolutely worth it to have the program. I especially like having remote access and supervisors scheduling and approving time sheets of employees
Deputy is user-friendly and easy to understand for users with basic to moderate computer knowledge. The Employee is simple and easy for employees to understand. Employees get push notifications when shifts are scheduled and can clock in and out easily directly from the phone or kiosk, or using the website. The only challenge we’ve had is the ability for management to assign leave to employees who have not yet requested time off.
Homebase is very easy to use. Not a lot of training or direction is needed to get it going. Easy feature to track employee hours. Able to use centrally located tablets for employees to clock in and out. A very cost-effective system that also saves time when processing payroll. Employees love its features.
I would say everyone at our store really appreciates the fact that we have 7shifts. We would be lost with out it. It would be hard to find anyone that does not support the software.
Every time I have contacted support they have answered my question within the hour and solved every problem we have had. They follow up to make sure we are satisfied with our results which has been great when we are busy and get distracted
It took me a bit to get all my staff input from our previous scheduling software. However, once all the information was there, everything went smoothly and we were able to start implementing Deputy right away. It did not take long to train my staff and have them comfortable with using the system.
For me, 7Shifts has the same amount of functionality, but for a much better price. The app functionality of 7shifts was easier to navigate and allowed me to do more than HotSchedules. I've recommended it to several other local businesses who have implemented it as well and had great luck.
For years we used TimeTrax systems but they were hard to use and required manual downloads of punches, networked setups, and we needed separate setups for each location. When evaluating cloud-based solutions we first tried TSheets, but the higher cost and lack of features made us choose Deputy. Our main complaint about the actual TSheets system was the IPads did not store punches when it first launched so if you lost internet it couldn't store the punches. When we were evaluating the system they were building a police station next door that resulted in intermittent internet outages and the kiosk app basically became a brick until the internet came back on.
Homebase is simpler to use. Easier to navigate and is much cheaper than other alternatives! We had trouble when I worked as they were harder to reach our ROI. Deputy was too expensive and it was the reason we decided on Homebase! Employees also find it easy to use on their end!
We have gone from using deputy simply to schedule a couple of members of staff on coffee shop shifts, to also scheduling staff in the retail unit part of our business, to now also scheduling team days and having remote working staff start on schedule shifts to track their working hours.
Positive: Less call outs/ and missed communication due to internal conversations that were never communicated. For example, employees tell manager A they are not coming but Manager A does not tell manage B and C.
Positive: Manager log book has helped multiple departments stay in touch and on the pulse of the floor operation. Departments like HR, events, reservations, AP/ AR, etc. are not empowered to be more proactive
Labor and sales are tracked and can be forecasted which has helps us schedule SMARTER
Hundreds of man-hours saved monthly that previously was spent on recording hours work.
Holiday management is very clear and support fair treatment of staff.
The 100% accuracy of timesheets is amazing. Once approved thousands of timesheets just land in our payroll system thanks to the export/import functions.
Homebase has made the day to day management of employees easier, freeing up time for management to work on other things that help secure customer satisfaction.
It has also made payroll easier since it's implementation and allowed for fewer mistakes than the previous manual method, leading to less monetary mistakes and happier employees.
Homebase has made monitoring hours and overtime, as well as completion of internship and volunteer hours, much easier to monitor, leading to less confusion and more satisfied volunteers, interns, and payroll managers
