Overview
What is HotSchedules?
HotSchedules is a cloud-based scheduling, labor and communication management software solution serving the restaurant and hospitality industry.According to the vendor, key benefits include:Build & Communicate SchedulesThe scheduling and labor management software reduces the time it takes managers to create and…
HotSchedules support is slow
Easy to select a shift at any time.
HotSchedules - Restaurants
HotSchedules
Great resource if everyone has a smartphone
HotSchedules: Hospitality Focused
Nathan Miller's Review of HotSchedules
Great commumication tool
HotSchedules Solutions Work!
Perfect Scheduling Choice for Restaurants
Changing the Scheduler's life!
HotSchedules has changed the way our organization does business!
Managers Want Easier Ways to Clock-In Employees
HotSchedules review
HotSchedules review
Awards
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Pricing
What is HotSchedules?
HotSchedules is a cloud-based scheduling, labor and communication management software solution serving the restaurant and hospitality industry. According to the vendor, key benefits include: Build & Communicate Schedules The scheduling and labor management…
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
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7shifts is a restaurant workforce and scheduling management application, which also features collaboration features, from the Canadian company of the same name.
What is Lightspeed Restaurant?
The Lightspeed Restaurant POS, from Lightspeed in Montreal, is a restaurant POS and management system designed to enable users to sync the user's menu with major food delivery apps, manage all orders and and reach new customers.
Product Demos
HotSchedules Demo: The Employee Experience
HotSchedules Demo: Creating a New Schedule
Demo of Red Book Keep
HotSchedules Demo: Navigating the Schedule
HotSchedules Demo: Employee Shift Release & Pick-Up
HotSchedules Demo: Submitting Time-Off Requests
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is HotSchedules?
HotSchedules is a cloud-based scheduling, labor and communication management software solution serving the restaurant and hospitality industry.
According to the vendor, key benefits include:
Build & Communicate Schedules
The scheduling and labor management software reduces the time it takes managers to create and communicate schedules. All scheduling and employee information is stored in one central location, so managers have access to time-off requests, availability, skill level, and certification compliance.
Work Schedule AppThe HotSchedules mobile app lets employees check their schedule, request time off, swap shifts, manage availability, and send messages. All shift requests require a manager's approval.
Forecasting and ReportingWhen integrated with the POS, the tool pulls time and attendance, sales and guest data into the system. The forecasting engine shows past sales trends, which makes it possible to build schedules with the right amount of labor. There are also over 40 reports.
Multi-Unit Store ViewThe Above Store Console provides reporting and visibility across stores, anywhere and at any time. It can be configured by region, state, country.
Bilingual App & SupportThe mobile app is available in English & Spanish. Employees can call into the AVS or Customer Support Center to get their schedule in English or Spanish - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
HotSchedules Features
- Supported: Online Scheduler
- Supported: Time-Off and Availbility
- Supported: Work Schedule Mobile App
- Supported: Scheduling Templates
- Supported: Employee/Staff Communication
- Supported: Sales and Labor
- Supported: Forecasting Engine
- Supported: Reporting
- Supported: Point-of-Sale Integration
- Supported: Centralized Communication
- Supported: SMS Messaging
HotSchedules Screenshots
HotSchedules Video
HotSchedules Competitors
- When I Work
- ScheduleFly
- Crunchtime
HotSchedules Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web |
Supported Languages | English, Spanish |
HotSchedules Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(232)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
HotSchedules has become a reliable solution for businesses in various industries, including restaurants, amusement parks, resorts, and retail establishments. Users have reported significant time savings and improved efficiency in scheduling processes. For example, a restaurant manager praises HotSchedules for reducing their scheduling time from over 3 hours to just 30 minutes per week. This software enables employees to cover their own shifts with approval, allowing for better shift management and flexibility. It facilitates communication among team members, ensuring constant checking and trading of shifts in an amusement park setting. Multiple departments at a resort rely on the platform to handle last-minute schedule changes, call-offs, and requests for added shifts.
HotSchedules assists food and beverage departments by providing easy access to availability, time off requests, and labor forecasting. This improves communication between staff and management. The software's user-friendly interface allows for generating and posting weekly schedules effortlessly. It also serves as a means of communication with staff members across multiple locations within a restaurant group.
Moreover, HotSchedules Train formerly Schoox is utilized for employee orientation and training purposes. The software not only helps with controlling labor costs but also offers features like sales forecasting and labor cost analysis. Across organizations, HotSchedules proves valuable by assisting in proper staffing needs and managing labor expenses effectively. In retail settings, the product streamlines employee scheduling while enabling them to view their schedules easily and make shift swaps when necessary.
In conclusion, HotSchedules is highly regarded for its ability to save time, improve communication, increase flexibility in scheduling processes, and provide various features that benefit different departments within organizations. Its broad range of applications makes it suitable for businesses of all sizes across multiple industries.
Users highly recommend signing up for HotSchedules and getting familiar with the application. They also suggest using the convenient mobile app and setting up email notifications for easy access to schedules and efficient shift swapping. Additionally, users highly recommend HotSchedules as a reliable solution for scheduling needs in various work environments. Overall, they find HotSchedules to be a valuable tool for controlling expenses, allocating labor, improving communication, and making positive changes within the service industry.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 79)HotSchedules - Restaurants
- Online/cell phone shift changes.
- Automatic updates.
- Linking schedule with POS system.
- Printouts for daily schedules, older managers had difficulty reading who picked up for who, if the shifts were all picked up.
- Could have more ease of use for the older generation.
HotSchedules
- Scheduling.
- Time off.
- Labor management.
- Pick-up shifts AI management.
Nathan Miller's Review of HotSchedules
- Makes everything paperless.
- Very user-friendly for back office and staff.
- Can really dive deep into data and sales and what you are spending.
- The schedule view was much better before it changed.
Great commumication tool
- Communication with team members
- Enforce time and attendance with POS to control labor expense
- Communication among managers
- Tracking staff performance issues
- Keeping up permits
- Does not tie labor/schedule postings to budget; too easy for managers to override
- Messages are not easily accessible
- Above store reporting tools are outdated; should be able to schedule reports
Changing the Scheduler's life!
- Communication is so simple on HotSchedules. Whether it is communicating a new schedule release, or a quick note about tonight's shift we as managers are able to easily communicate and know that it will reach our team through text notifications, or email notifications.
- The Meal Break planning tool is very useful in being able to help our floor leaders clearly understand and plan for what breaks are needed throughout the shift. This allows them to come up with a strategic game plan quickly and spend more time with our guests.
- Shift Swaps and Releases are so seamless. This is our favorite tool as it makes helping our team cover shifts extremely easy and painless. On the flip side it also makes staff who want more hours be able to find what is available in real time.
- Breaks and Meals: On the time clock we are limited with meals and breaks. If someone has a 4-7.99 hour shift we give them a 20 minute paid rest break. If the employee reaches an 8-hour shift they are given 2 15 minute rest breaks and a 30-minute meal. Meal and Break set up cannot understand changing the breaks. We had it set up to add a 10-minute break to equal 30 minutes when you reach the 8th hour, however, the time clock when they click "Start Break" still gives them 20 minutes on both breaks leaving confusion.
- The Availability module has a few issues we have noticed. When a new employee is set to start a new availability it does not change in the scheduler. The Scheduler still holds the old staff members availability making it challenging for the scheduler to schedule appropriately.
- We believe a late or missed schedule report should be available to print easier reports for time and attendance tracking. Currently having to go through each staff's punch is not as smooth as it could be. This seems to be a simple addition to a great arsenal of reports.
HotSchedules has changed the way our organization does business!
- All the information needed for your employees can all be found in one place. From the availability of an employee to their pay rate to their phone number. It's all just a click away. Before HotSchedules all of this information was kept in different places and the managers would need to open several documents and contact lists to find what they were looking for about a single employee.
- Control over how indepth you use the product. The possibilities of this service are seemingly endless. However if you are solely looking for a specific feature HotSchedules offers you have the ability to soley use that feature. HotSchedules can simply schedule, or it can automatically schedule, or you can assign a specific job to a specific person on a specific day. For us, we have employees who are doing a specific job/task one week and then they are needed for a different job/task the next week. HotSchedules allowed us to narrow down our options starting with department, moving to location, moving down to the job they would be preforming for that scheduled day.
- The ease of changing/releasing shifts. If an employee wants more hours they can go in and select shifts that are up for grabs or request to work on a specific day at a specific time. The opposite is also true. If an employee is worried they will have too many hours that week, they can release their shift and put it up for grabs by a different employee. And of course, all of this is fairly customizable to what you want your employees to have the ability to do, with or without your intervention and approval. In our case, if a shift lead releases a shift we only want other shift leads to be able to pick up the shift. HotSchedules allows us to do just that.
- Clocking In and out can be a little slow. It takes longer to clock in then our previous method. Before we just had a card you swiped and it would clock you in. Took 2 seconds. Now with the Hotschdules method we use it take 30 seconds or so. Not a huge issue but it can add up if you have one computer and a line of employees waiting to clock in.
- Time Cards. It does not allow you to view someones current time until the "punch" has ended. If the manager would like to check what time the employee clocked in/out from lunch they have to wait until the employee has clocked out for the day before the record is generated. As a shift lead you may send and employee to lunch but forget to note what time you sent them. Awhile passes and you feel like they should be back by now, so you want to go in and see what time they left for lunch but it does not show you that punch record because the employee is still "clocked in" they are just on their "Meal Break"
- The ability to customize the restrictions for Clocking in and out. You can set it up so that employees can only clock in from a specific location, however if you have a manager who is allowed to work from home they would not be able to clock in without being at the same location as set in the software. It would be nice to see it able to be customized per user.
HotSchedules: Hot and Ready for Action!
- HotSchedules tracks our labor hours and dollars. Being able to do quick labor analysis helps us make sure our pricing is in line with our estimates for clients.
- HotSchedules tracks our employee trainings. Because we are a third party audited food manufacturing facility, we have both formal certifications (CA Food Handler Cards) and monthly trainings on subjects such as Food Safety, GMP's, Pest Control, Allergen Control, HACCP and Sanitation. Being able to have a record easily accessible for each employee to prove to our auditors and keep those employees up to date with training is invaluable as an organizational tool.
- I find that the system of assigning jobs and rates is a little tedious, but understand the need for it.
- I'm not familiar enough with the copy and setting the next week's schedule, but it's not necessarily hard to use.
- The whole assigning welcome letter and with log in and password is difficult with the Spanish speakers even though you have a Spanish version.
- Many of our employees do not have email or smart phones, so I find that HotSchedules is not as useful to them or us.
Great Program!
- Well Organized
- Easy Setup
- A better layout for the employees to view their schedule
HotSchedules Review
- Provides employees with an effective mobile application to view their schedule whenever they need to.
- Allows employees to add availability and request days off.
- Allows other employees to see other co-workers schedules so they know who they work with.
- Allow companies to set up different departments within hotschedules, without constantly having to give employees different hotschedule logins.
Hotschedules for the non resturant work place.
- It helps with schedule shift trades and publishes the entire schedule for each day so folks can tell who is on shift and when. It enables a staff of mostly teenagers to be able to contact me and help them with any issue regarding scheduling and HR issues they needed to approach me with from time to time.
- It enables the manager to force the employee to be responsible for their attendance.
- Saves time in dealing with shift exchanges and various requests dealing with time off and so on.
- It is extremely difficult to use for my weekly set up. because our shift times differed from the other two resorts that used it, the time slots for when shifts started were different due to different operating hours. Because I had to put in different availability times I had to drag and drop each employee (73 of them) on to the shifts. Because they were not seen as available the program would not show them in the drop down to easily select them as being available for the highlighted shift box
- If I was able to set up my own shift start times for a.m. and p.m and those parameters for myself versus having to have our rep be contacted to see if the change was possible. On our end, the call never was made and I had to spend a lot of time dragging and dropping each week. I did re-use schedules but with so many folks needing different days each week it ended up being less of a shift change and hey you forgot ..... fight that I dragged and dropped each week.
- I think simplifying the system for availibilties and letting the user set them up themselves (like campground master reservation system) would have been great. the time I spent each week would have come from the initial set up phase and would have saved time down the road.
HotSchedules Review
- Makes scheduling easy and simple
- Integrates well with other systems
- Can easily be used to set up sales forecasts based on previous weeks and or years
- Deleting old employees is more complicated then it needs to be.
- Often times it won't allow employees to log on, saying it has an error
Amazing HotSchedules
- Payroll Budget
- Sales Forcast
- Cash handling
- Sales target
- HotSchedules App
- Missed punch alert to employees
- Blocking employees for a full 30-min break
- When employees clock in late the manager should be notified via SMS
HotSchedules - Mobile Clock-In
- Very user-friendly
- Customer service is very nice, patient, and willing to help right away
- Hotschedules is a very slick looking site/application
- I don't like that even as the admin in the above store console that I don't have access to turn on/off all features. Even for users below me. I need to contact customer service and they have to do it which just creates a lag.
- I don't know the features that are available sometimes because they aren't activated right away for some reason, and to my point above, I have to reach out to someone else to see what they are/activate them.
- The automated reporting isn't very robust, I really need to be able to have an automated report that can give me individual employees' hours for a week not just by job code.
Hot Schedules
- Easy to read schedule any time you need it
- Can change availability for schedule writer whenever I want
- Ability to swap shifts or pick up days with other team members
- We do not use the clock in function
- Sends a lot of notifications
- No way to limit how much team members can swap around
HotSchedules in a hot minute
- Group communication
- Certification tracking
- Employee accountability
- Schedule layouts can be difficult to read
- Slow response when editing schedule blocks
- Messaging center could be more elegantly designed and user-friendly
Hot Schedules was probably GREAT......10 years ago
- The app works well for employees
- It is easy to copy and use schedules
- Hot Schedules is too complicated for a 1-3 shop environment
- It defaults to not having an ending time on a shift....who does that??
- It is not easy enough to delete some of the layers---i.e. we have a manager who is scheduled on the floor and we want others to be able to see her hours and when she is working, so we can't use multiple schedules or else the supervisors would not be able to see her
- In my "day" job, we operate over 50 franchise restaurants and I always wanted to use Hot Schedules which is why I tried it for this consulting gig I have.....unfortunately, it seems they have not stayed up with the technology currently being offered in this category
HotSchedules is the new Hotness in Labor Management
- Ability for field employees to clock in and out on their phones
- Easy management of staff and timecards by managers
- Easily altered options for various levels of staff
- Robust reporting options
- Reliance on internet connections can sometimes be an issue with HotSchedules, given our rural location, this is an issue with all SAAS suites however.
- We have only one account for our many departments, which means we occasionally run into issues using some features, as each department operates differently but our options in HotSchedules must be the same.
- A minor pet peeve, but I would love it if, when I was altering employee's punch in/out times, that the date/time would not reset until I hit the "submit" button. Sometimes a man just wants to make changes in his own order.
- Support for a card-based timecard solution.
- Ability to host a local instance on our own servers
Hot Schedules...Worth It
- The app is very user friendly.
- Once you create your schedule templates, scheduling becomes increasingly easier.
- The chat feature is very valuable.
- We have 30+ locations. We sometimes “borrow” associates from location to location to cover shifts. As of now the borrowed associates do not always show up on the schedule. This has caused associates to miss shifts.
- We do not utilize it yet, but not being able to clock in unless you are on the schedule seems like an issue waiting to happen.
Hotschedules is great!
- Hotschedules is very easy to navigate making it usable by everyone!
- Hotschedules makes staying organized easy!
- We can reach every single employee at any given moment with important information through hotschedules!
- We just had an update to our time clock and we don’t like it. It takes longer for our management and team to clock in and out and has added steps that could be more simplified, though we do like seeing hours worked so far.
Hot, Hot, HotSchedules!
- The template system for shifts that occur every day at our location and that I can drag and drop them to ensure that I am meeting our company’s staffing guidelines are a huge plus for me.
- The ability for employees to handle shift change on their own with my approval so I am kept in the loop but not having to constantly log on every time an associate calls me with an unexpected need to change their schedule is a nice feature.
- The mobile application is ten times greater than the previous program we were using to generate a schedule. It is very interactive and allows me to do almost everything from the convenience of my smartphone or tablet.
- My biggest complaints are just bug fixes that were supposed to be pros of the product. Right now there is a bug that has gone on since we rolled out the product at our company that does not allow us to share employees between locations for employees needing to cover a shift or transfer to another location for an extended period of time.
- I would really like to see them add the actual schedule creation into the mobile application or at least be able to create the schedule on a mobile browser to eliminate the need to use my home computer. If I could generate a schedule from my phone or tablet, I would be able to make any necessary changes on the fly and it would not necessarily interrupt my time off or when I am not at the location.
HotSchedules making it easy!
- Ease of setting a schedule.
- If the schedule is repeated week after week, it is easy to copy it with out rewriting the whole thing.
- Fast, easy reference to who is clocked in. Easy to check my weekly hours for my team and keep it under control.
- Messaging feature was very handy.
- Ability to delete old employees and reuse the assigned sign in number at the end of a fiscal year.
- Really had few complaints.
Easy to contact staff about a change in hours or availability of extra shifts.
Improving schedules one day at a time
It is used in a multiple departments as a way to efficiently schedule about 180 employees. It helps address the accessibility of the schedule to our employees and allows for quick response to covering shifts and broadcasting essential information to our employees. It has reduced the amount of time needed to complete schedules as well as in finding coverage for shifts.
The logbook is also a very important aspect of HotSchedules that we use on a daily basis to convey messages between Managers and record the days events.
- The release/swap function is really a well thought out idea that allows employees the freedom to adapt their schedule if necessary and managers the control to see what is going on with the shifts and where things can be improved.
- The Logbook is one of the strongest attributes of HotSchedules because it allows all the information of day-to-day operations to be in one spot and can be accessed by all management.
- The not allowing of shifts to be picked up if there are overlapping hours is very problematic and should be at the discretion of the manager to watch for these things, not the system.
- The app should have the ability for managers to see and edit schedules. It would improve the versatility of the app and allow for better access outside of the office.
- If a manager could add jobs, locations, and schedules to an employee while in the scheduler instead of moving out the scheduler and to the staff list to edit the availability it would make for a more flawless application of the scheduler and the jobs.
HotSchedules is well suited for a business that has more than 15 employees and wants to improve their staffing. It gives the employee ready access to their schedule on their phone instead of having to call in to work or find a printed schedule.
It would not be as well suited for a smaller business that sees the majority of its employees on a daily basis and can convey major topics with them in person.
Good but not enough....
- Schedule posting and organization, obviously
- Integrates with Micros so I can lock the schedule and avoid punching in early by employees
- HotSchedules interface could stand to be more pliable. I run a twenty four hour business. My business day starts at 8am one day and ends at 8am the next day. It is virtually impossible to schedule overnight employees because the system recognizes the shift as the next day. Before the recent upgrade, it was much easier to schedule. When I inquired about going back to the old software, I was just told no. Now I'm looking for alternative programs
- The budgeting tool is a mystery and is very rigid. It's based on a single type of schedule based on days of the week and business levels.
- Any requests for training gets routed back to the online videos which neither provide any real training and there's no ability to ask questions in real time.
- No up-to-the-minute information. You have to wait until the next day to see who is approaching overtime. I would love to get a text whenever an employee is approaching overtime, not based on a report.
- No on-boarding software. No tip integration. No payroll intergration.
HotSchedules is Knot approved!
- Shift swapping
- Picking up house shifts
- Able to access schedule from just about anywhere that has internet access
- I don't work with the scheduling anymore so I have not used it since that last couple of updates. I now just manage accounts.
MIddle of the road and honest.
- Mobile access to schedules is key for the FOH employees.
- As an owner who does not do the scheduling, I do appreciate being able to bring up my phone and look at the roster to know who is working and when.
- Tracking availability schedules and food handler certs are certainly very helpful.
- HotSchedules should move away from being connected to companies that promote stealing other employees. Jobsabi was not appreciated by this employer whatsoever.
- Reporting - especially the posted schedule - is hard to read and doesn't have many options for different layouts
- Give us the ability to hide past employees in the employee listing. It's ridiculous to have to see terminated or inactive employees.