(650) 332-8623The 6 Best Employee Scheduling Apps for 2025
Looking for an employee scheduling app for your construction business? We’ve reviewed 7 of the best apps on the market to help you!
Disorganized shift scheduling in retail businesses often results in employee burnout. For field-based crews, however, the stakes are higher: 55% of negative customer reviews are due to delayed services caused by inefficient scheduling.
With the right scheduling app for employees, your team will always be ready to meet customer demands without burning out your staff. In this article, we’ll explore the best employee scheduling apps built for different types of businesses–including construction and field service companies.
Let’s dive right in!
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Manages group and one-on-one meeting schedules.
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Customizable scheduling with shareable booking links.
Speed up scheduling with Workyard’s digital team calendar
Click here to know how
9.1 
14-day free trial (no card needed)
5.8
14 days (no credit card required)
5.5
7 days (no credit card required)
8.6
14 days (no credit card required)
8.1
14 days (no credit card required)
7.3
15 days (no credit card required)
Final Thoughts
While construction companies can still manage a cowboy-ish, schedule-as-you-go method of assigning shifts with a whiteboard or other manual processes, nothing beats the convenience of having all your scheduling needs met by one useful app.
The time you save automating the cumbersome task of scheduling can be a game changer, and it will continue to pay dividends for years to come.
Construction and field service companies manage multiple crews across multiple locations. And as unique as their scheduling needs are, there are equally unique scheduling software specifically designed for them.
Workyard offers an easy way to schedule tasks and assign them to field workers wherever they are. Its job tracking features ensure scheduled tasks are completed on time while updating managers every step of the way for transparency purposes.
Learn more about how Workyard can help improve task scheduling in your organization. You can also sign up for a 14-day free trial and start testing its features right away.
Our Scoring System Explained
Our 8-part scoring system was created to help you understand the potential value of any software we review simply and fairly.
We created it after reviewing dozens of software products, which we covered in depth, but without providing a direct and simple way for readers to compare products on their merits – without spending a lot of time looking through our articles for the information they needed to make an informed decision.
Every app we review will include Customer Support and Company scores, which we’ll explain in more detail below. Many of the factors reviewed in this article will also be consistent across most (or all) of our software reviews, with some differences:
The 8 factors assessed and their contribution to a product’s overall score may differ slightly from product to product based on various factors, such as the use case we’re reviewing for, the type of business these products are tailored to, and other considerations. However, all reviews will feature an 8-part score, weighted and combined to calculate each product’s overall score.
How We Score Software
All factors in our reviews are scored on a 10-point scale – technically 11 points – from 0-10. However, we only give products a score of 0 if it does not include an essential feature at all, and we try to avoid giving out 0 scores if a product can demonstrate any functionality in line with the specific factor being reviewed.
In general, the 0-10 range translates as:
- 9.0 – 10 – One of the absolute best in its category (amazing).
- 7.5 – 8.9 – Very good, but with some minor issues (very good).
- 6.0 – 7.4 – Mediocre performance with notable shortcomings (average).
- 3.0 – 5.9 – This feature is not ready for prime time (borderline).
- 1.0 – 2.9 – This feature actually makes its product worse (unacceptable).
- 0 – The product doesn’t include this important feature at all.
How We Calculate Overall Scores
The 8 factors reviewed are weighted based on an overall total of 100%:
- Ease of Use: 20%
- Time Tracking Accuracy: 20%
- Scheduling Features: 15%
- Job Tracking: 15%
- Integrations: 10%
- Customer Support: 15%
- Company: 5%
Methodology for Each Factor
Ease of Use
We evaluate a product’s ease of use based on three main considerations:
- How easy is it to set up this app?
- How easy is it for managers to use the backend dashboard?
- How easy is it for frontline workers to use the (mobile) app?
These three considerations cover the main ways you and your team would use the software being reviewed – when you first obtain it, when someone (a manager, executive, team leader, or similar role) needs to use it to manage people, money, data, and other things, and when workers you’re tracking use the app (usually a mobile version of the software designed for frontline and/or field team members) to clock in, clock out, record time worked, or address other day-to-day needs.
Time Tracking Accuracy
Every minute matters when you’re trying to control payroll costs. This factor accounts for various features and common needs in time-tracking apps, such as…
- How accurate or precise is its GPS tracking capability?
- How accurate – and how customizable – is its geofencing feature?
- How accurate is its travel and mileage tracking (if available)?
- Can it automatically clock workers in and out based on the above?
- Can you set and/or restrict rules for clocking in and out?
- Can the app continue tracking workers while offline?
- How easy is its mobile app and/or kiosk for frontline workers?
Scheduling Features
Many construction businesses prefer to manage as many aspects of employee labor activity as possible in a single app, which is why many time-tracking apps also include worker scheduling as a core feature.
When we consider a product’s scheduling features, we look at:
- Its dashboard customizability (daily, weekly, or monthly views).
- Its project-based scheduling and visibility.
- Its real-time updates and notifications for workers.
- Its real-time map views of worker locations for best-fit scheduling.
- Its recurring schedule (copies to subsequent weeks, etc.) functionality.
Job Tracking
This factor helps you understand if the software can also provide insight into specific projects, which is particularly handy when your business deals with many customers or clients who generally need shorter-term work. Effective job tracking typically also includes accurate job costing functionality for construction companies.
We assess several things when calculating a product’s job tracking score:
- Its project-based tracking for multiple projects per day/week/etc.
- Its ability to track multiple / many projects simultaneously.
- Its use of (and your ability to customize) construction cost codes.
- Any built-in job costing views.
- Any integrations for cost coding (QuickBooks etc.)
Integrations
No business can operate on a single app, which is why integrations with other apps and tools are such important aspects of modern business software.
To calculate a product’s integration score, we’ll examine:
- How many native integrations (the simplest connection) does it offer?
- How effective and easy-to-use are its integrations with payroll software?
- Does it have robust data import and export features?
Customer Support
Learning how to use a new app can be frustrating, even if it’s meant to be the most user-friendly app around. That’s why great customer support is so essential when considering which time-tracking app to use.
Customer support scores are calculated based on:
- Live support channels available (phone, email, chat, etc.).
- Live support hours (business hours only, 24/7, etc.).
- The strength of the product’s online help center and/or FAQs.
- What other users say about support in online reviews.
Company
A great company with a highly customer-friendly approach can often make up for shortcomings in their software products – at least up to a point.
When assessing this score, we’ll examine:
- Transparency (easy-to-find pricing, etc.)
- Trial period (duration, feature availability, credit card requirements, etc.).
- Subscription flexibility (contracts, required durations, etc.).
- Ease of cancellation or pausing subscriptions.
- Customer perceptions (online product reviews).
- Website (a minor consideration, but great companies tend to have great websites).
Any questions about our scoring system? Have any suggestions on how we could make it even better? Click here to send us your feedback – we’d love to hear from you!
There are plenty of free employee scheduling apps available. Some are free forever but have extremely limited features, while other apps allow users to try one of their premium plans within a limited trial period of up to 30 days.
The free scheduling app you’ll choose depends on a variety of factors, including the industry you’re in, the number of your employees, and the specific features you’re looking for.
Workyard offers a free trial version, but its features are more suited to construction and field service businesses. Calendly and Acuity Scheduling both offer free versions of their app, but they’re not robust enough to handle the more complex shift scheduling.
On the other hand, Sling allows users to complete simple scheduling tasks even on its free plan. It may not be as user-friendly as other scheduling apps, but it’s a great alternative for those who want to reap the benefits of automated scheduling without breaking the bank.
An ideal employee scheduling app must have the following basic features to make it worth its price:
- Intuitive visual calendar: A visually appealing calendar that also excels in usability can make the scheduling app a great asset for any type of business. Look for one with drag-and-drop scheduling blocks, a bulk editing feature, color coding, and other customization options designed to make scheduling as effortless as possible.
- Auto-scheduling: Modern scheduling apps harness the power of artificial intelligence to generate shifts and automatically assign them to employees based on carefully chosen metrics like availability, seniority, location, and skills, just to name a few.
- Real-time scheduling notifications: To prevent no-shows and scheduling confusion, the app must be equipped with multiple ways to send alerts to employees, notifying them of newly assigned shifts or recent changes to existing shifts.
- Open shifts and shift swapping: These two features ensure shifts are equally distributed and no task or shift is left abandoned. Open shifts allow managers to offer unassigned shifts to anyone who’s available, while shift swapping makes it easier for anyone who won’t make it to his original shift to pass it on to someone else who is willing to take it.
- PTO management: Time off is part of scheduling, so an app that makes it easy for employees to request it and for managers to approve it can go a long way toward maintaining adequate staffing.
- Scheduling reports: A detailed report you can request, download, and print anytime allows decision-makers to identify critical scheduling trends in the company and make important business decisions based on them.
Both Calendly and Acuity Scheduling simplify appointment scheduling. They do this by allowing meeting creators to create a scheduling link and easily share it with all the participants through email or social media.
While Acuity offers more design customization options, Calendly has plenty of robust scheduling tools to accommodate any meeting type.
For small business employee meetings, you can use Calendly to schedule a standard group meeting or let all the participants vote for the best time for everyone. Calendly also supports multiple time zones, so whatever the final schedule turns out to be, Calendly will convert it to your own time zone.