7shifts Reviews

Pros

You can work from the website or from the app which is convenient if you're bouncing between locations. On the website, I can preset shift times for faster scheduling. You can set multiple roles which is beneficial for staff that do multiple things. You can assign an hourly to each role as well, so you can see an approximation of your labor for the week.

Cons

Unfortunately, the preset shift times do not translate over to the app so you do have to manually do it which takes a little more time. Although I have my preference set to get push notifications for almost all the app features, they don't always come through.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

7shifts was less expensive and much easier to use plus it integrated with our point of sale system.

Pros

We're interested in this app for the optimal labor scheduling feature. Unfortunately, we haven't yet used it long enough for this feature to work for us. Being able to manually add projected sales to the schedule to see the estimated labor % as you prepare the schedule is helpful. The reports seem easy to read. The helpdesk has been responsive so far.

Cons

The cost of the second highest tier plan is the same as the highest tier plan on our previous software. I don't know if this is a good value yet since we haven't been using it long enough to access all the features we need. I'm hoping the longer we use it, the better it will get. So far, myself and my team are still struggling to understand and find everything we need.

Alternatives Considered

Deputy

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

We want to access the optimal labor feature in 7shifts. 7shifts seems more geared towards QSR than Homebase.

Switched From

Homebase

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Deputy charges per employee.

Pros

I liked the messaging platform it had for teams. I enjoyed the ease of seeing team member roles. I liked the ease of seeing the daily line up of teams in different departments. I enjoyed being able to flag attendance within the app and reports generated from that.

Cons

I did not like third party app integrations that users would be automatically opted into. Forecasting was a bit clunky also unfortunately.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

We didnt. We went with HotSchedules.

Pros

I absolutely adore the systems in place in 7shift. It is extremely easy to see your upcoming schedule of work, bid or give up a shift, see who you're working with, and to submit time off requests.

Cons

I would say that I'd like easier access to always seeing whos working each day even if I am not. This may already be a feature im not using, but using an auto sync for your calendar would be really nice as well.

Pros

Setting up availabilities and scheduling is very easy and helpful.

Cons

Sometimes there'll be a notification even though the notification has already been resolved.

Alternatives Considered

Slack

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

Homebase was not as functional and user-friendly as 7shifts appears to be.

Switched From

Homebase

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Cheaper, user-friendly and does a lot of the tasks I wanted to be done.

Pros

EVERYTHING! I like the fact that I can communicate through the application, rather than add or share personal contact info. Other features I use daily are: Scheduling, Labor costs, Tip Pooling, Incident reporting, Task Management and even the weather feature is handy.

Cons

The only problem I am having is with data merge into payroll software. It's a formatting issue which I am confident can be solved. The data transfers, but not to the correct columns in my payroll - I know it will be fixed soon - because my tech support team is working on it with me!

Alternatives Considered

Sling

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

It interfaces best with our POS - which is TOAST.

Pros

team responsiveness if there is ever a question or problem, upgrades, ease of use, GUI

Cons

Some of the features are a little hidden

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

Great features, ease of use, GUI, team, ability to grow my company seamlessly

Pros

Quick and easy to create, copy, and adjust schedules.

Cons

Nothing really. To nit pick 7shifts.com should have the login screen on the home page rather than just be about signing up.

Pros

I love everything 7shifts has to offer. Especially the ability to add tips into the system. The system we used prior to 7shifts didn't allow tip ands isn't connect to our payroll server. This has been a great help!

Cons

I do wish I could see an entire month of shifts instead of just a week at a time. We are a smaller organization so we have less employees than most.

Pros

Easy to use, if I have questions the response is quick

Cons

I don’t feel like there’s anything I dislike at the moment

Pros

7shifts is really geared toward restaurant shift/labour management and communications, whereas so many of the other scheduling softwares out there try to fit the general case and don't handle the high-paced, dynamic nature of restaurant staffing nearly as well. From our perspective, 7shifts literally cuts down 5-10 hours a week of admin time, while also providing us a convenient, central location for communication with staff, basic HR data, etc. We use the free 7punches app to track time punches, which also has some nifty features that help us manage labour costs and keep better tabs on things like lateness. What I'm most excited about now is 7shifts' built-in "Optimal Labor" tool, which combined with our POS sales integration, provides me with HOURLY forecasts for my sales on given upcoming week, then tells me how many servers, bartenders, etc it thinks I should have on based on my sales, labour targets and past scheduling. It's not perfect, but its hugely helpful and lightyears ahead of what we were doing in the past, taking only a fraction of the time. 7shifts is a tech company that really gets restaurants and what we need, I eagerly anticipate every update to the software.

I'm a techno-geek at heart, with my own tech industry experience, and by working with the 7shifts people and products, I immediately see a really healthy, creative tech culture at the company, which are poised to keep moving at a phenomenal pace and quality of output.

Cons

I wish we could get the Machine Learning auto-scheduler feature at "The Works" package level, even as a priced add-on. Currently the only way to get it is to sign up for a massively more expensive package that is really designed for franchise chains with many locations to handle. We have just one location, but really want the auto-scheduler (it's absolutely brilliant).

I love the 7shifts web API and use it for quite a lot of our own software, but the documentation is really incomplete/out of date and I have to do a lot of reverse engineering either from their website or by making educated guesses. I can imagine that this might cause some friction or limit the abilities of third parties to integrate with 7shifts.

Third party integrations have not been as robust or full-featured as I'd hoped, at least the TouchBistro/7shifts integration, but I think that's more due to the other side of the integration than the 7shifts people.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Time

Reasons for Choosing 7shifts

7shifts is really a suite of extremely well-thought-out and heavily integrated tools that work in concert to form a single application/website where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Their user and administrator documentation is great, they have mobile apps for both major platforms, and their scheduling software directly addresses common restaurant use cases in ways that just make sense for both staff and management. 7shifts integrated with our TouchBistro Point of Sale software. Finally, this was the only scheduling company I could find that applied Machine Learning algorithms to scheduling/shift data to create an auto-scheduling feature. That was the starting point of my search for scheduling software, as scheduling is a really great use of this type of AI tech.

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

We looked at about a dozen other scheduling platforms, most of which I can't remember any longer, but like I said earlier, 7shifts is not just a scheduling platform -- it is 100% geared towards restaurant use, where most of the others are generalist platforms. Out of the scheduling platforms that did focus on restaurants, 7shifts lead the pack by miles in terms of its capability (like 3rd-party integrations), robustness, and thoughtful approach toward solving problems in ways that make both staff and management happy. At the time, 7shifts was the only platform I could find that would apply machine-learning artificial intelligence workflows to restaurant scheduling, which was something I am passionate about and really want to see at our organization.

Pros

During the time that we have used this software, there have been wonderful developments and rollouts that nicely enhance our operation. Keep up the good work!

Cons

It was very basic to begin with. Coming along nicely and will likely be the best product if they keep it up.

Pros

The best features of this program is all around communication. That includes communication from ownership on down. Everyone always has quick access to the notes and day to day. Management log and scheduling were the biggest attractions for us.

Cons

The biggest con for me so far is the permissions. We can only designate one Administrator and we cannot customize all permissions down quite as much as we need or would like. Sometimes we are stuck with "all or nothing" permissions decisions for some staff members.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

The toast integration option, pricing, trial period, and overall product availability that we were looking for.

Pros

I like the ability to schedule, edit and communicate on the go!

Cons

Sometimes there are glitches with the app, such as....a staff member being scheduled once, but appears twice on the schedule for the same day.

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to 7shifts

7-shifts is simple, straight forward and easy for anyone to use.

Pros

I do the scheduling for a staff of 60+ so the ease of copying shifts to another week/day is great

Cons

The integration between this and Toast is great but could still use some work. We primarily use it for the purposes of seeing when staff have clocked in or not and as a manager it would be great to turn this feature on and off for the different departments ( front of house, back of house, bar). It would also be great to turn the feature off for clocking out vs clocking in at the end of the shift vs beginning. As a front of house manager I’m not as concerned with back of house clockins but still get 12 notifications for their staff a day, and I am more concerned about front of house staff clocking in but not as concerned with them clocking out

Pros

It saves time by allowing the employees to add their own availability, request time off, and switch shifts with each other. This software is a huge help and has solved scheduling problems and prevented some mistakes.

Cons

It only prints a week at a time, there is no condensed version to get a monthly schedule printed. The month-long format that they do have is horribly unorganized & does not print well. This isn't a big issue, it just uses up more paper and space than our previous scheduling method.
The absolute worst part about this software has to do with the roles that employees can be assigned: there is no "training" option under the roles that I created. This makes scheduling new employees very difficult. The work-around is tedious; remove their current roles, schedule them for the time they would train and write their role in the notes of that shift. This is inconvenient because it is difficult to track "unassigned" shifts. It would be great if there was a training option under each role so that when I run the report, I can track how many training shifts an employee has had.

Pros

The programme is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. We appreciate that they consider our suggestions and make adjustments when necessary. It's simple to coordinate team communications and monitor employee feedback. It makes life very simple because it connects to my POS system, and the combined reports from both platforms help me better understand my business. Toast is integrated into our system, so I can also compare schedules to actual labour. Ask every possible inquiry about any software platform to ensure that it is a good fit for your company. We really like 7shifts, and we want to keep using it and looking into the additional add-ons they offer.

Cons

When making and printing a schedule, I wish there were some extra features, as well as a choice to display details for events that day. In comparison to its rivals, the pricing is exorbitant, and the extra fees for add-ons are inconvenient. In the past, there have been technological issues that cause us to lose our log-in information and struggle to regain it. The addition of screen rotation functionality would, in my opinion, present the app with its greatest opportunity.

Pros

The longer we use 7shifts the better it gets. I use it for scheduling, employee newsletters, our employees use it to chat back and forth with eachother and the owners, shift swapping, time-clocking (with PUNCH) and payroll. It basically replaces the need for an HR position. Because we've used it now for a few years, I can quickly scroll back to last year and see our sales trends over time to predict sales and predict staffing requirement. Sometime I forget when we changed our hours last year, so I can easily check that through 7shifts. Also I can play around with future schedules to analyze when we need to hire a new employee or if it's worth it to add or delete days from our schedule.

Cons

Nothing I don't like...but here is an idea for a new feature. I wish I could get an immediate alert (to the owner) if the sales go higher or lower than set parameters for a certain time period. This would tell me that something is wrong (like no sales for 2 hours...uh oh...did we close? is something broken?) or the restaurant needs help (like 3 hours worth of sales in 45 minutes...oh no, we're slammed and need extra hands).

Pros

We use 7shifts as the primary tool for communication as well as scheduling. It's easy to set up, add new employees, manage the schedule, shift bids, and time off requests. Employees report that it is one of the most comprehensive and easy to use scheduling apps they've ever used! As the administrator, 7shifts makes scheduling quick and easy which is a huge benefit.

Cons

The availability function can be improved. Employees report that it is the only aspect of the app that gives them trouble. Sometimes there is a lag between what the app shows on my phone vs. computer. For instance, shifts that have been edited and published are showing as not published on the app on my phone. Minor issues that cause little to no problems.

Pros

I love that everything is in one place so you don't have to worry about forgetting that someone sent an email or text message requesting off for a 2 week vacation 6 months ago (which is the system we previously had in place!)

Cons

I didn't like that you had to wait to enter employee raises until they were set to go into effect - although 7shifts has recently improved this feature so that you can set a specific date for an employee's new wage to begin!

Pros

No glitches ever (previous app we used glitched and made errors to employees' schedules)
Budgeting tool
Ability to put in events
Color coding departments and jobs
Ability to print PDF schedule
Communication (chat and message options)
Employees can trade shifts
Availability and time off request features are perfect
Multiple locations allows you to use employees at different sites, but you can see in lighter color where they are already scheduled to work
Great value for the price
They keep making it better and will let you know when an update has been made

Cons

There's a minimal international fee charged monthly for 7Shifts. But that's all!

Pros

While 7Shifts was the first and original scheduling app we tested, we did try 2-3 others. But we kept coming back to 7Shifts. At the center of this decision was the ease of use, and nice design that allowed for easier scheduling. A scheduling app has to do that and work for us. Without this ease of use scheduling can be a a tedious task. 7Shifts makes this a breeze.

Cons

I think 7Shifts has a very good core product (scheduling). And I only wish we had more time to test other features. But that is more on us, than the app. The one feature I wish we had back, as an administrator I wish I had the ability to quickly help employees with their password management. Resetting the passwords used to be easy some years back, whereas the admin was able to set-up a password for the end-user. That feature went away some years back.

Pros

I love basically all the feature of this program. We use the event management to communicate events with three different departments, as well as restaurant specials and features. It has been user friendly for all staff and managers, the shift swap feature has been a real game changers for staff to communicate swift swaps while still keeping the manager in the loop.

Cons

I wish we could tie into our POS system, having a unique software system it is difficult to find something that will tie in.

Pros

It is easy to understand, set up and the customer service is extraordinary!

Cons

I wish there were more manager capabilities in the mobile app, but the app has improved already since it was first launched, so I imagine it will only get better.

Pros

7shifts makes scheduling easy with a copy to next week feature that allows scheduler to mimic previous weeks schedules.

the repeating schedule feature makes scheduling kinder - allowing staff to set a weekly schedule of availability.

the chat and announcements feature lets communication flow without messier emails and texts.

the app-based time off submissions really simplify and streamline a formerly archaic system that was easy to screw up with paper notes, emails, calendars, notebooks.

the shift pool empowers staff to make last minute changes to their schedules or pick up extra work.

Cons

there's a lot of neat features that you have to pay extra for like an events calendar and labor to sales based scheduling.