SocialSchedules Review: Is It Right for Your Business?

To get started, you’ll need to input employees, create positions, set labor rules, and import sales data. You may also need to integrate SocialSchedules with your POS, payroll, or HR software.

Once you have a good schedule, you can save it as a template, or you can copy and paste shifts and drag and drop them to arrange a good schedule for the next week. Scheduling also takes into account employee availability and certifications where it has the information.

SocialSchedules has a colorful shift scheduling interface that is easy to use.

You can add additional information, such as tagging shifts by sections or leaving day notes, so that your staff knows which area they’re working, sees off-site addresses if any, and learns about upcoming events or important tasks for that shift. You can also lock days so employees can’t change shifts or take that day off. This is a good tool when you have important events like company-wide training, a wedding party at your restaurant, or a project deadline that must be met.

Employees can create several availability sets to show when they are not able to work, such as school schedules, second jobs, or planned events. Availabilities can be set to repeat weekly or every two weeks as well. You can require that changes need approval so managers are not taken by surprise.

The SocialSchedules time clock app is available as a kiosk for all plans, but you need the Premium or Enterprise plan to take advantage of the mobile time clock.

There are many settings to help you get the most from your time clock app.

The time clock allows your employees to easily clock in and out of their shifts. You can set rules to prevent early clock-ins or use the time snap function to “snap” the time to the correct shift start or end time when the employee clocks in or out within a certain number of minutes. You can require photos to prevent buddy punching, apply geofencing to prevent punching in from a different location, and require they clock out for breaks. There’s also a function for recording sales or tips at the end of a shift, a great feature for restaurants, retail, or service industries.

Communication functions start with the essentials: sending out schedules, setting reminders, sending and receiving time off requests, receiving availability notifications, and viewing and approving shift swaps. However, SocialSchedules goes further with individual and group messaging, announcements, and disclaimers.

You can send group or individual messages through the program or the mobile app.

Messages include broadcast messages, push notifications, or one-on-one texts. You can also share images and documents and require read receipts. This is good when you have fast training, such as a review of a procedure that you need to document.

Shifts include a notes section, where you can put task lists or special considerations, such as a reminder of a deadline or a required extra duty in anticipation of a distinguished guest’s visit.

There’s a manager logbook for supervisors that also includes notifications, document sharing, images, and the ability to reply to messages and send read receipts. Like the group chat, you can use this for training, giving heads-ups, reporting or tracking problems, and maintaining a history of your business.

The mobile app allows employees to see schedules, request time off, make changes to availability, swap shifts, and talk with each other in private or group messages. Of course, they can clock in and out, as well as take required breaks.

Managers can use it to edit live timecards, see and approve time off and shift swaps, and send messages. Like employees, they can see who is on a specific shift, and they have access to the Sales vs Labor Costs reports.

Preview of shift details on the mobile app

The mobile app gets good scores overall for both Android and iOS. Users said it was easy to use and did what they needed. There were requests for some additions, like a dark mode, and a couple of people had trouble logging back in after an update.

User Scores

• Android: 3.9 out of 5 stars with about 400+ reviews
• iOS: 4.6 out of 5 stars with more than 500 reviews

SocialSchedules impressed us with the way you could use its tools to keep yourself compliant with both labor and wage laws and industry regulations. It offers functions not only for rule setting but also alerts and tracking to keep you on the right side of the law.

Some of the functions include:

• Setting pay rates for overtime, holidays, and special shifts
• Receiving alerts when a break is due or an employee is approaching overtime
• Getting warnings when you are about to publish a schedule with a compliance breach, such as scheduling a back-to-back shift
• Viewing reports on breaks and other activities to ensure you are staying compliant with state laws

SocialSchedules ensure compliance with overtime, availability, or certification requirements.

The software lets you add rules for overtime, breaks, special pay, and forbidden hours (such as for minors on school days). Overtime is not just by hours per week but can be tracked daily, weekly, or by consecutive workdays. Break functions include tracking missed breaks and applying penalties as well as preventing employees from clocking back in early from a break. You can also group employees to apply certain rules to them. Use this, for example, to ensure all minors are not scheduled for restricted hours.

The time clock feature can let you set disclaimers at clock-in or clock-out.

You can set disclaimers, which are announcements that employees must read and confirm when they sign in. Use this to enforce compliance to given rules, ensure employees know about new rules, or make special announcements. However, you can use this feature only if you have administrator access and are subscribed to a Premium or Enterprise plan.

You can also track employee certifications and training.

Use SocialSchedules for tracking health and safety certifications, professional certificates, special training, or any other kind of skill that needs oversight. Create and name the certification, set due dates, note if it requires a certificate, and manage who needs to hold that certification. The software then tracks it for you. If you have a position that requires a specific certification, the scheduler will warn you if you try to schedule an unqualified person as well as let you know if someone’s certificate is about to expire.

SocialSchedules has integrations with accounting, payroll, and POS systems. Some examples include ADP, Coastal Payroll, Harbortouch, POSitouch, Restaurant Manager, Future POS, and Square. These integrations let you import employee data, create sales projections, view real-time data, create labor vs sales reports, import time cards into payroll, and more.