Recently I had the opportunity to beta test the FreshShifts employee scheduling software system. When I’m not writing blog posts, and judging from the fact that my last post was in January, that’s basically all the time, I run a medium sized car wash where I manage between 10 and 12 employees depending on turnover. For the past five years I have done the scheduling and timesheets using a piece of paper that I printed out from Excel.

The paper and pencil method hasn’t been bad. The business obviously hasn’t come to an untimely demise from not being maximally efficient in our scheduling. On the other hand, there are some disadvantages. Sometimes people don’t know if they’re opening or not, and since the only place the schedule exists is on the wall in the break room that means they have to come into the shop just to find out that they have to go back home. That’s not great for employee morale, even if it doesn’t have a direct effect on the bottom line.

Swapping shifts is pretty common among the staff, and they typically don’t do it during work hours. This inevitably means that the shift change doesn’t get marked down, leaving me and the accountant confused at payroll time. Last week we had this happen and nobody would have even noticed if one of them hadn’t called in sick on his replacement leaving the other $80 short on his paycheque.

Vacation scheduling is even worse, since it’s often scheduled months in advance. I try to do my best with that Excel spreadsheet but when I get told about a holiday plan at 10pm, odds are that I’m going to forget to turn on my computer and update my notes. There are probably 3-4 days per year when I end up short handed because of this sort of mistake.

Now that I’ve got the FreshShifts system working for me, these sorts of issues are a thing of the past. The shifts are all available over the web as well as through special apps on Android and iPhone. If anyone needs to check when their shift is, they can do with in one click on their phone. If they want to trade shifts with another worker they can do it inside the app, and the schedule will update for everyone, including sending notification SMS messages to everyone involved including the manager. Holidays are highlighted so that everyone can see who is available on any given day.

Overall, I would say that this system covers everything that I need. The days of using pencil and paper to manage my schedules are over. I’ve still got the schedule on the wall in the break room, but now it’s an iPad mounted in a wall bracket.