Scheduling software solutions for restaurants are useful cloud-based software products designed to assist restaurants in organizing and managing the schedules of its workforce. When it comes to client-dependent industries such as restaurants, you need to have a steady and consistent employee rotation.
This is to ensure better handling of your employee’s schedules while also providing better customer service. In these types of businesses, you have a larger number of staff members involved. In restaurants, specifically, you have chefs, waiters, managers and employees. The challenge most restaurant owners face is managing everybody’s schedules, especially when they apply for leaves and ask to swap shifts.
With restaurant employee scheduling, you should give your employees fixed working schedules while also allowing for flexible room to apply for leaves or time off requests. This considerably improves worker experience while improving your business as well.
In the current market, several software providers offer scheduling tools to assist a variety of industries. However, with the differences and variations in their features, it’s recommended to pick one that is meant for your specific business.
Restaurant scheduling applications’ most common functionalities include time clock integration, reporting, POS integration, optimal schedule creation, availability and certification tracking and mobile access.
A multitude of software vendors are created with these specific features. Examples are 7shifts and When I Work. Most of them are deployed via on-premise or through the cloud. Their prices differ accordingly but the majority offer free trials for you to explore their interface.
7shifts is an employee scheduling platform for restaurants that reduces labor costs, streamlines communication, integrates with your POS and ensures labor compliance. Build a more efficient restaurant with perfect schedules, an engaged workforce and complete labor compliance through 7shifts.
With scheduling software, employee shifts can be managed and amended through intuitive visualizations and changed through the drag-and-drop feature. Using this type of software ensures that employees have access to shift schedules and any information that they may need from anywhere, eliminating the need for more conventional methods of shift scheduling.
7shifts includes functionalities and features that are most suitable for restaurants, bars and hospitality venues. It offers an easy-to-navigate interface with the ability to create effective schedules for your team members. It encourages better communication between employees and managers as all are notified of updates and changes regarding the schedules. This makes it easier to keep track of each employee’s work hours.
.Other features also include forecast and budget analysis, built-in manager logbook and multi-location support.
Other software solutions have similar features in their systems, including:
This feature gives businesses a visual representation of your employee’s schedules through an online calendar. Through calendar management, any changes in the fixed schedule immediately notify the managers in charge in order to approve it accordingly. Additionally, the rest of the workforce become aware and responsive to any sudden changes. This can be easily integrated with Google Calendar.
Having a complete record of your employee database means being able to schedule their shifts according to their demographics, available hours and position within the restaurant. This ensures that scheduling is done fairly and quickly.
Before, employees had to manually request for shift changes, which can take up days for it to be approved due to several steps in the approval process. With the shift swapping feature in the restaurant employee scheduling software, workers can immediately request to swap shifts online. Managers also have an easier time finding people to fill in, as they can see the availability of the other workers.
This feature is essential in managing employee’s attendance and labor costs. Through a time-in and time-out functionality in the software system, managers and employees can now efficiently track the hours they’ve worked. Later, these hours are used to calculate and adjust salaries and overtime pays.
Staff members are given their fair share of leaves and absences. To optimize the process behind requesting and approving leave requests and vacation periods, managers make use of scheduling solutions.
The drag-and-drop is a useful feature often used in calendar management applications. It gives you easier access to add appointments, change assignments, notify staff members of any overlaps and see the full schedule at a quick glance. Overall, it makes you better equipped to manage and handle the dynamic nature of your employees’ total hours.
Restaurants work better when the entire team is present and cohesive as this can improve the efficiency of the establishments. To ensure the availability of all your staff members, you need to make sure their timeline and schedules are clear with no overbooked sessions and overlapping slots.
This is better visualized through a shift scheduling software solution, where you are given the option to color code the shifts and drag-and-drop them accordingly.
The main reason why restaurants make use of scheduling software solutions include:
Compared to the paper method, scheduling solutions have automated processes to make your job easier and faster. Managers no longer must worry about manually inputting data, such as time logs and attendance as the system automates this process for users.
The number of errors you make when changing shifts will be reduced significantly as the system notifies managers about staff changes. It also provides you with a list of available employees to cover for the ones who aren’t around.
The software ensures that standard labor laws and strict regulations and rules regarding overtime pay and wage are adhered to properly. This type of software gives real-time reports on scheduled hours and compensates your workers based on labor costs.
By having a centralized location for all the details regarding schedules and shifts, you improve the communication within the workplace. Since the system works within the cloud, managers and employees can view the color-coded schedule on the calendar and coordinate with each other regarding potential changes.
Restaurants depend on cloud-based software solutions to manage their employees to correctly calculate salaries and wages based on time worked and hours spent clocked in and out. This ensures accuracy and employee satisfaction.
Scheduling software solutions for restaurants are effective scheduling tools and eliminate the need for more conventional methods. Instead, you can now focus on other important tasks, such as improving your customer service, planning new marketing strategies and optimizing software solutions to increase sales.