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HotSchedules

HotSchedules

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…

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Learn from top reviewers

Easy to select a shift at any time.

Rating: 10 out of 10
July 1, 2020
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
With HotSchedules it has been possible to maintain clear communication throughout the company since you can manage the available shifts without requesting it in a book and upd...
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Penelope Brown
Manager - Other
Dining Room Manager
Kohler Co.
HotSchedules2 years of experience

Great resource if everyone has a smartphone

Rating: 6 out of 10
December 14, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
The organization I used to work for utilized HotSchedules for scheduling servers and hosts. It was how we traded shifts, received weekly schedules, and called off shifts. It m...
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Kate Knight
Employee - Customer Service
Server
Steel City Sammiches
HotSchedules2 years of experience

HotSchedules Solutions Work!

Rating: 9 out of 10
August 6, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Being used across the whole organization. Helps us address scheduling, labor controls, and communication.
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Abe Ruiz
C-Level Executive - Corporate
Chief Executive Officer
Eat Here Brands, LLC
HotSchedules6 years of experience

Perfect Scheduling Choice for Restaurants

Rating: 10 out of 10
August 6, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
HotSchedules is used by our restaurant operators for scheduling forecasting, communication and training.
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Shannon Scally
Manager - Corporate
Manager of Learning & Development
Oregano's Pizza Bistro
HotSchedules2 years of experience

HotSchedules: Hot and Ready for Action!

Rating: 10 out of 10
January 31, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We previously used HotSchedules when implementing 4 shifts across our production and packaging groups. We went from 1 shift M-Th, to 2 shifts M-Th, then added 2 additional 30 ...
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Shannon Carpenter
Director - Corporate
Member and Managing Director
Gramercy Bakery, LLC
HotSchedules1 year of experience
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Pricing

View all pricing

Essentials

$2

Cloud
per month per employee

Plus

$4

Cloud
per month per employee

Quote-Based

Quote-based pricing

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://connecteam.com/reviews/hotsched…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $2 per month per employee
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Product Demos

HotSchedules Demo: The Employee Experience

YouTube

HotSchedules Demo: Creating a New Schedule

YouTube

Demo of Red Book Keep

YouTube

HotSchedules Demo: Navigating the Schedule

YouTube

HotSchedules Demo: Employee Shift Release & Pick-Up

YouTube

HotSchedules Demo: Submitting Time-Off Requests

YouTube
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Product Details

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 App

The 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 Reporting

When 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 View

The Above Store Console provides reporting and visibility across stores, anywhere and at any time. It can be configured by region, state, country.

Bilingual App & Support

The 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

Screenshot of Time-Off, Availability, Employee Hours, Sales Volume are all available in the scheduler.Screenshot of Employees are able to swap and pick-up shifts from the HotSchedules Mobile App. All shift changes or requests require a manager's approval.Screenshot of Managers and employees can communicate with each other from the mobile and web apps - from anywhere and at anytime.Screenshot of Employees can submit a time-off, request - paid, or unpaid - and can request to work or request off right from the mobile app.Screenshot of Managers can view sales and labor data from their phone.

HotSchedules Video

HotSchedules Competitors

HotSchedules Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web
Supported LanguagesEnglish, Spanish

HotSchedules Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

HotSchedules starts at $2.

When I Work and ScheduleFly are common alternatives for HotSchedules.

Reviewers rate Usability and Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of HotSchedules are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 79)

Maximize Your Time with HotSchedules!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
March 13, 2017
SM
Simeon McEachin
Bar Manager
Kilroys on Kirkwood (Restaurants, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HotSchedules
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I'm involved in the hiring, scheduling, and training process for our three Kilroy's venues in Bloomington, IN. HotSchedules is an amazing tool for our business. It has greatly helped with our entire training process for new employees and promotions. We have a very in-depth training program and within the last 6 months, the Schoox online training academy has helped us extend that training process even further. Our employees are now able to get their feet wet before starting their physical training. I have set up curriculums for security staff, bar back staff, server staff, kitchen staff, and our bartending staff. These tools have helped out tremendously in terms of time management, preparation, and execution in all tiers of our establishment.
Pros
  • HotSchedules provides a great solution to time management. It can be a some what difficult managing over 500 employees across three different venues. With this program in place, we can easily prepare schedules and trainings weeks in advance which gives an abundance of time for shift management, creative thinking, and execution.
  • It's a great communication tool! The ability to communicate with all of your staff through one source is very unique! We never have problems now with shift maintenance. Employees are actually able to communicate with themselves when a problem arrives in terms of their schedule. Employees can easily trade shifts with a managers approval.
  • The Schoox training website is a must have!!! Very impressed with its capabilities. I love that you're able to setup lectures, courses, and curriculums for however you business model is setup. I'm constantly hiring, promoting, and training new employees. Our training process is one of the essential keys for us to make sure our employees accomplishing their duties how we see fit.
Cons
  • So one problem I have with HotSchedules is the ability to link multiple venues within the same app. From a manager's perspective, we have to constantly log in and out of our HotSchedules application so we can see who is scheduled for that particular venue for that day. It would be extremely convenient if you could log in once with one administrative hotschedules username instead of having to memorize three usernames to sign into three different venues. We use an application called "Pulse" that allows the user to view yearly, daily and hourly sales. A really unique feature that "Pulse" has is their swipe functionality. With a simple swipe to the left or right, we are able to see all the sales for a certain venue. This would be extremely helpful if that was implemented.
  • Another feature that would be great to add to HotSchedules is some type of notification system for the training process. It would be nice to receive some type of text or email to notify when an employee has completed a certain course, lecture, or quiz.
  • Another feature I think would be awesome to have is the ability to turn off a scheduling process until the curriculums have been fully completed. We are constantly hiring tons of security staff, and some times there's a few employees that slip through the cracks without us realizing that they haven't completed their online training process.
Likelihood to Recommend
Our Kilroy's venues are rather large in terms of square footage. HotSchedules has a great system in place in terms of dividing specific sections of your business. On most really busy days we can have up to 60 to 90 employees scheduled to work. If we don't set up their hotschedules to where the employee knows exactly where they will be for the day, shift management would be a nightmare. This keeps us very organized.

HotSchedules, you're the best around!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
May 05, 2017
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
HotSchedules is being used in our individual venues with an Above Store Counsel set up for our corporate execs. We have 5 restaurants and 2 hotels in the division I work in. HotSchedules is mostly used for its scheduling, log book, staff journal, and sales/labor forecasting. Since implementing HotSchedules, it has allowed us to maintain labor budgets, and ultimately, function much more efficiently by way of staffing and increasing managerial communication.
Pros
  • Manager Log and Staff Journal -- increases more effective communication as well as keeps corporate folks in the loop and able to identify problem areas much more easily (and proactively).
  • Sales and Labor Forecasting - allows us to maintain appropriate labor levels according to budget.
Cons
  • I really wish we could upload PDFs in the staff journal. We would likely replace much of our HR practices if we were able to upload reviews and progressive discipline documentation.
Likelihood to Recommend
It promotes more effective manager communication and operations.

I've used HotSchedules for 10 years. Here are my thoughts!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
January 31, 2017
Verified User
Manager in Other
Food & Beverages Company, 51-200 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
HotSchedules
10 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We used hotschedules for scheduling purposes by the food & beverage department at our country club. We have a fine dining, casual dining, men's locker room dining, and banquet operations team that all get their schedules from HotSchedules. We wanted to have an easily accessible option for staff to keep up to date on their schedule and to notify them of any changes.
Pros
  • I like the template tool for scheduling. When running a restaurant, you often want to have a similar number of servers scheduled on a week by week basis and the templates made scheduling much easier. It also helped with forecasting labor for budgets.
  • I think the digital log book is a wonderful tool that when used appropriately can be a game changer for management communication. Its a great place to keep track of daily operations as well as any staffing issues that occur.
  • Obviously, having an app that makes accessing schedules, requesting off, logging notes, sending messages, etc, makes HotSchedules much more powerful. It is easy to use, and has all the tools needed at your fingertip.
Cons
  • One of the minor things that I found many staff complained about was the charge for the App. Although $3 doesn't seem like a big deal, many of our staff do not even have a credit card to be able to purchase apps. It seems like the cost for the app could easily be folded into the monthly charge for services to not add that burden to the staff.
  • I think the time off request tool is not very user friendly and confuses a lot of people. I definitely think it could be fixed to make it easier to understand and easier to complete.
  • Although the scheduling works great when you use templates, manually entering in shifts is a big ordeal. I wish that was an option that was easier.
Likelihood to Recommend
Hotschedules is wonderful for a restaurant that has lunch and dinner shifts and has consistent business allowing them to use templates for scheduling. It's great if the staff is younger and tech savvy. If your staff is allowed to trade shifts and does not work set schedules, this is a great company to use because of how easy it is for staff to pick up and give away shifts. If you have a staff that has a set schedule and rarely changes, or a staff that is not particularly tech literate, it might be easier to stick with a paper schedule that most people never look at.

Hotschedules for the non resturant work place.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
January 25, 2018
Verified User
Manager in Other
Sports Company, 51-200 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
HotSchedules
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
The entire organization uses the product to manage ski area employees. I used it in my department. It addresses the employees ability to know their schedule as well as trade shifts and communicate with the manager. it did help keep folks accountable to their schedule and lets me deal with other issues that before we used the app, had to be addressed by me to find replacements for shifts.
Pros
  • 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.
Cons
  • 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
It seems well suited for the employee user end, so they can work with their manager and be accountable for their schedule. I think you can better adapt it to non-restaurant settings by increasing the ease of use for the scheduler with lots of employees. The difficulty is for the person making the schedule if it has been adapted to a different setting. Universal shift parameters which can be set up by each scheduler on their own, without having to have the app provider make the changes on their end to meet each need is what would make it really great to use. I did like it, it really helped me save time and put shift trades back on the person who was working the shift.

Efficient

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
February 13, 2017
Verified User
Manager in Other
Restaurants Company, 51-200 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
HotSchedules
4 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Hotschedules for both front of house and back of house scheduling. It helps with making sure the staff know their schedules and are updated immediately when there are any changes made. Everything is online so I can approve or deny shift swap requests with my mobile phone. I can also look up my staff's phone numbers to call them if they don't show up to work.
Pros
  • They have a mobile app for most functions on the go
  • Easy to use
  • Great communication tool to send messages to staff
Cons
  • It would be great if I could make changes to the schedule with the mobile app.
  • Sometimes [there are] glitches when changing through days on the roster screen in the app.
  • Loads slow sometimes.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's is well suited for companies with many employees. It helps when I need to send out information to everyone. May not be needed for small companies, but it would still help.
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