ZoomShift Time and Attendance Review

Zoom Shift Review
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Pros

  • Easy to set up and use
  • Competitively priced
  • Excellent user satisfaction
  • Well distinguished features
  • Great customer service
  • Best choice for SMEs requiring value for money

Cons

  • Incompatible with Windows mobiles
  • No in-person training
  • There is no resource management functionality

ABOUT

A couple of developers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, became responsible for helping thousands of managers sleep better, thanks to the tool they developed that helps staff with scheduling problems. The idea behind Zoomshift took root in 2009 when Ben Bartling met the co-founder, Jon Hainstock, at 94labs. The rest is history.

A significant number of firms now rely on Zoomshift to streamline schedules and organize their teams, helping them function better. The tool has helped many organizations: small, medium, enterprise, and has impacted the work lives of thousands of employees.

Who is Zoomshift For?

Employees working anywhere claim that procrastination is the worst enemy of productivity. A scheduling tool is what a business needs to ensure minimal procrastination and maximum efficiency. Zoomshift is one such tool that helps you stay on top of scheduling and also lets you organize your workforce.

Some uninformed folks often typecast Zoomshift as a scheduling tool fit only for small and medium-sized firms, while fewer than 50 employees. However, the testimonials from prominent firms, such as Greencab, which had mentioned that the Zoomshift app has no problem scaling up and was helpful when the firm expanded, have proven otherwise.

Products

Zoomshift is a SaaS application that offers four products:

1. Work Scheduling

This app helps create employee schedules in a matter of minutes. Besides conventional scheduling, the app also improves the accountability of the staff and reduces labor costs.

2. Time Clock

The time clock is primarily to prevent timesheet errors and run payroll in a matter of minutes.

3. Timesheets

The timesheet app tracks time spent by employees from the phone and employee location via GPS.

4. Mobile Apps

The mobile app, as the name suggests, helps a business keep track of the goings-on at the touch of a button on the mobile.

 

PRICING

Like most Saas applications, Zoomshift gives you a free trial for 14 days.

After you play around with the tool and the features it presents, you can decide on one of the following plans:

Plans/Features Starter Premium Enterprise
Plan Brief Time tracking and scheduling for organizations that are growing Managing workforce for organizations, no matter the size A customized scheduling solution for large businesses
Price $2 $4 Custom
Price category Per active user per month* Per active user per month* Per active user per month*
Employee Schedule Yes Yes Yes
Availability and Time offs Yes Yes Yes
Shift Cover Requests Yes Yes Yes
Timesheets and Timeclock Yes Yes Yes
Payroll Report Yes Yes Yes
Automatic Reminders Yes Yes Yes
Calendar App Sync Yes Yes Yes
Overtime Warnings No Yes Yes
Shift rules No Yes Yes
Timesheet Rules No Yes Yes
GPS Time Clock No Yes Yes
Schedule vs. Timesheets No Yes Yes
Activity Logs No Yes Yes
Priority Support No No Yes
White-Labeling No No Yes
Sub-account Management No No Yes
API Access No No Yes

*If a member is on a sabbatical or is on leave for a month, the manager or supervisor archives the user, and hence, he/she will not count as an active user.

FEATURES​

  1. Automated scheduling
  2. Mobile Access
  3. Payroll Management
  4. Shift Swapping
  5. Messaging
  6. Online time clock
  7. Reporting/Analytics
  8. Schedule Distribution

1-Automated Scheduling

There are inbuilt templates to help you schedule in a short amount of quick time. Choose from the templates, and then drag and drop a schedule on to the right places in the calendar. The app then notifies every employee who is part of the work schedule. This notification reminds your employees about their shifts in advance, and they also learn if there are open shifts available for the taking.

2- Mobile Access

A manager may not always have access to a computer to ensure that there are no red flags on the shifts. Your scheduling app going mobile is the need of the hour. Zoomshift does that and more. With the GPS tracking feature, you can make sure that everyone, and especially the employees working on an hourly wage, makes it to the job site on time.

Note: This feature is available only as part of the Premium plan.

3-Payroll Management

The team schedule sheet shows you how many hours each employee is clocking. And the hourly wages of the employees are fed into the system. This way, the manager gets to know the total wages for the day, week, and month.

There is one more cost component that the manager should pay attention to – overtime! Most managers miss out on this and fail to see why overhead costs are increasing. Zoomshift provides a solution to this issue: it enables you to limit overtime to a particular number of hours. This way, the manager knows the exact cost to the company in terms of wages.

Knowledge of the wages for a month helps set a ceiling on the employee wages for next month. The moment the wages breach this number, the app immediately turns red. This notification not only helps you keep your expenses consistent but also creates tremendous stability when it comes to payroll management.

4-Shift Swapping

Zoomshift allows employees to swap shifts. Brian can cover for Sam on Hanukkah, and he can return the favor for Christmas. And there is no staving off accountability because of every employee’s ability to see this change. This transparency ensures that all the concerned employees are kept in the loop, ruling out any kind of miscommunication. And of course, every swapping request goes through only after the approval of the reporting manager.

So, how does this work on the app? The employee sees who needs a swap for the said day on the Team Schedule portal, which is visible for everyone. He then requests permission from his manager and the other person to swap. The other person involved in the swap acknowledges the notification and requests permission from his particular manager. Once it is approved, they go through with it hassle-free.

5-Messaging

People who are busy during the day, especially the ones handling logistics, could miss a meeting or two, which could prove crucial to productivity or the lack thereof. Zoomshift understands that most of the employees who work on a shift basis are busy most of the time. The app hence sends schedule notifications ahead of time to your mobile to remind you of your next schedule. You can send these messages with a simple push notification. Of course, you can modify the message that you send.

6-Online Time Clock

The online time clock helps you keep track of time when you are online. This tracking is crucial, especially when there are multiple shifts for the workforce. There is Phil, who starts his shift at 3 pm; now, you check the GPS, and you see that he is 3 miles away, around 2:58. You know he’s not going to make it on time. Zoomshift provides you the option to prevent him from checking in. Phil’s manager deducts pay for the time he was not at work. By enabling this option, the moment he logs in late, you will see a red flag notifying you that he was indeed late that afternoon, along with the time stamp.

7-Report/Analytics

Zoomshift helps monitor the productivity of your employees by downloading weekly charts, be it for attendance, employee wages, overtime costs, etc. You can also have the analytics or report exported as excel sheets.

Zoomshift hence helps you answer all the following questions:

  1. How many time-off requests did Dwight take in January?
  2. Should his pay be adjusted, or has he compensated by covering for his colleagues?
  3. How many employees have met the 40-hour workweek?
  4. How many worked overtime?
  5. Is the salary budget for the next month sufficient?
  6. What was the productivity last month vs. this month?
  7. Is team efficiency increasing?.

8-Schedule Distribution

If your office has multiple locations and you want to create a new shift in a particular location for a specific day, you can do so. But that is not the half of it. The most interesting thing is that you can copy the schedule to other weekdays. Not just that, if you think after a week that the shift works well, it can be reproduced to all future weeks without hassle.

9-Conflict Warnings

Conflict warning serves as the backbone of the scheduling app. There are multiple scenarios where a conflict warning is crucial. For instance, most manufacturing firms ensure that overtime for their employees does not exceed 40 hours per week. Should someone’s schedule show a minute beyond that, Zoomshift shows a conflict warning.

There might be a situation where at least x people need to be working in a shift on New Year’s Eve. Maybe three to four people among those who have applied for leave, and you don’t know it yet. Usually, this comes up at the eleventh hour, when you can do nothing about it. Not with Zoomshift! As soon as the app realizes that the ‘h’ hours you set for New Year’s Eve is not reached, you get a conflict warning. Similarly, if there is any mismatch in the schedule whatsoever, there is a conflict warning. This helps you put the fire out immediately as opposed to the situation blowing out of proportion.

INTEGRATIONS

The app can be integrated with 5% of the most popular applications:

  1. Square Point of Sale
  2. QuickBooks Online
  3. Xero
  4. Vend
  5. Workato

Devices Supported

Zoomshift can be easily accessed through a web browser if you have a computer or a laptop operating on Windows or iOS, thanks to the cloud version. However, the application is still working on becoming compatible with Windows Phones and Apple watches.

Desktop Browser App Android App iOS App Windows Phone App Apple Watch App
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Set Up, Ease of Use and Support

Setting up Zoomshift is simple: check for compatibility, go to the website, sign up for the trial, and you’re good to go. The UI is simple, and most of the functionalities are easily understandable. Scheduling templates make it easy for you to assign a new schedule or modify an existing one. All it takes is a couple of drags and drops.

Further, the dashboard differs from one employee rank to another. The view that a manager has as opposed to that of another employee is very different.

How to create a schedule?

In the Manager Dashboard, select Schedule and then Full Schedule. You will see a calendar grid you can format: by day, by the week or by month. You have a whole set of filters where you can modify the view based on locations, positions, and employees. In any view, you can create a shift by clicking an open cell and thereby opening the Create Shift pop up. You can choose the working hours, break time, employee, position, and location. You can also modify the shift rules in the settings menu.

Note: with the ‘rule conflict’ message, you can avoid:

  1. Positions being unassigned,
  2. Overlap of shifts and
  3. Availability conflicts.

Customer Support

If you are not comfortable with the interface or if any of the features are confusing, you can always schedule a demo. The folks at Zoomshift are helpful. Even if you miss an appointment, they are more than willing to reschedule it for you. If you want the demo recorded for future reference, you need only ask for it, and you get the link sent across within the hour.

Besides these avenues, there are:

1-Help Guides

These guides cover the length and breadth of Zoomshift. In other words, the help guides comprise all the FAQs.

2-Instant Chat

You can chat with customer support and get the answers to your questions. If you need help with troubleshooting, you can raise the request here.

3-Status Page

This page is the one-stop-shop for all the issues raised.

More About ZoomShift Time and Attendance

What Do Customers Think?

Zoomshift has happy customers in every industry. For instance, retail customers have felt that Zoomshift has helped save money on payroll, thereby helping them reinvest in expansion.

In the case of restaurants or the Food and Beverage industry in general, Zoomshift has helped with shift management. Managers need to ensure that all shifts are covered, and this is where Zoomshift comes in. Whether they need to extend overtime or cancel it, or even get an employee to fill in for a colleague, the managers have trusted Zoomshift and have been happier for it.

Zoomshift has not only helped folks in the retail and food and beverage industry but also big names in Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, and Entertainment industries, to name a few. While the underlying problems which require Zoomshift as a solution are the same, the real-time application of the tool’s features might differ based on use cases.

PROS AND CONS

PROS

  • Easy to set up and use
  • Competitively priced
  • Excellent user satisfaction
  • Well distinguished features
  • Great customer service
  • Best choice for SMEs requiring value for money

CONS

  • Incompatible with Windows mobiles
  • No in-person training
  • There is no resource management functionality

CONCLUSION

If you are looking for a cost-effective scheduling tool with excellent customer support, Zoomshift is the answer for you. Their customer retention has been remarkable – there are relatively new customers continuing with them for more than three years, which is a rarity in the digital age. It would not be a stretch to say that Zoomshift is a great value add to a growing firm with logistical challenges looking for a solution that goes easy on the pocket. Try out their free trial and see if it works for your enterprise!

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