Pros
I like that I don't have to think about it much, love the Slack integrations for my team and how easy it was to transition from our old process into Calamari. It's simple, clear, and for a small team it has everything I need. The customer support team has always responded promptly when I need anything, and we were even able to extend our trial period in the beginning and converted to a paying customer shortly after.
Cons
So the most annoying thing, and this is a small issue, is not being able to select a range of dates on the calendar by clicking on the days themselves. Again, it's a small thing, but it's something I'm used to in other situations, and so I frequently make the mistake of forgetting it's not possible on Calamari. I suppose the other thing is that it's not always immediately clear how to make use of some of the finer features, and so I simply haven't been bothered to find out if they're even there. For example, I spent a little while searching once for whether we could only make it possible for employees to request annual leave in the future if they will have accrued it by the specified date (and not just if they have already accrued it, if that makes sense), but it wasn't obvious how to do so or even if it were possible, so I just kind of left it. These relatively minor complications are the kind of thing that someone in a rush will just leave in the moment, because they've more important things to do, but will be annoying over time.
Overall, Calamari definitely did help our HR team to save tons of time spent on monitoring the leaves manually. What is more, our team members can see their history and current leave status live. We can surely see the difference using Calamari brought to our business.
Pros
Very user friendly interface encourages our team members to use Calamari regularly.
The tool is also very simple to use so all in-house communication is strengtened because of that.
The Success team writes back within minutes and helps with literally everything so the communication between us/ our team and Calamari is great.
Cons
There are still some HR-friendly feautres to add. For now we find that Calamari is more intuitive for team members rather than Administrators.
For example, the ability to see the history of different kind of contracts and calculate the leaves accordingly, or setting reminders about medical check-ups and OHS is something we still hope to see.
Pros
We could build in our leave policies so that Calamari enforces the rules automatically (e.g., who is eligible to take school visitation leave, awarding some leave annually and some by days worked, different minimum durations for different leave types, etc). It offers very granular control over the setup, and is very intuitive and smooth once setup.
Cons
The downside of having such detailed control options is the steep learning curve in the implementation process. Fortunately, the customer support staff are great and really helpful with figuring everything out. I'd like Calamari to implement an "edit" feature for approved leave requests, which would be more convenient than cancelling and resubmitting.
Super easy leave management and clock in/clock out (using beacon).
Pros
It's a new way of absence & leave management. You can plan and track all types of vacation, paid time off, sickness and you can do it without old, annoying paper forms. You'r always few mouse clicks from your dreamed vacations ;) Another wery importand feature is clock in/clock out - it's super easy to use especially with bluetooth beacons support. Place a token in your office reception and install/configure calamari app on our phone. That's all! You can forget about clockin in/out ever again. It will by done automaticaly when you enter/leave your offiice. If you don't want to use beacons or when you'r work from home you can still clock in/out "manual" from mobile app. It's worth to mention that calamari has super helpfull customer service.
Cons
Beacon support for Android phone still need some fine-tunning compareing to iOS version. Except that - it's just perfect!
We were looking for an HR solution for an SME, and we selected this one. We set it up a little over two years ago, and have not really had any glitches since. Once a year, we program the vacations for the whole year, and it does the rest. Employees request leave through the app as well. I highly recommend this software for companies of similar size.
Pros
Manages employee hours, vacations, and sick days without a glitch. Also works great with iBeacon. I purchased and configured an iBeacon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019G0VS64/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), and configured it to work with the free Calamari app on each employees mobile. The result is that the software could keep track of every employee the second they walk in, and their last exit from the office every day.
Cons
I have not really had anything that I didn't like. I had trouble deleting employees who left our company, but the support staff were very prompt, helpful, and friendly.
Camille, Thank you for the feedback!
My review pretty much covers it. Resource planning in the Calendar view. Monitoring leave applications and clock in locations. My HR Managers now have confidence in the timesheet information as they can review it in real time and not just at month end.
Pros
We have decentralized operations, and our managers and HR love being able to see presence and location statuses of our employees in real time, and at a high level.
The Calendar function in the leave module allows for great oversight and enables more efficient resource management and allocation.
The time-sheet and leave reports available are robust and we love the download to excel feature, this perfect tabular format allows for deeper dives on trends, pivot tables etc within Excel.
It really is simple to use for employees and managers. The app keeps things simple to enable clocking in/out and applying for leave.
Really just very easy to navigate, after training our managers, no one has had to come back to us on how to navigate the system.
There are several clock in methods which allows for flexibility, eg smartphone clock-in, QR scans, and browser check-ins.
I must also commend the support team for providing excellent back-end support for our administrators! Keep up the great work and service
Cons
A few improvements could be made, such as allowing for attachment uploads from a smartphone for leave applications and for locations to be tagged when clocking in with a QR code.
Our current HRIS/Payroll system doesn't properly accommodate our unique PTO policies, therefore we had to find an outside solution. Calamari has been wonderful. It was very easy to setup and we've had great adoption from our employees. They use the system every single day.
Pros
I really enjoy the ease of use and how the customization. We have unique time off policies and teleworking policies. The system can accommodate all type of policies.
Cons
The sync or integration with Google was a little challenging. We had to contact the support team a few times to get it fully integrated and working properly. However, the support team was responsive and helpful.
Pure market analysis
Pros
Calamari helps my company handle holidays. It allows me to easily control, monitor all absences and what is really helpful helps me to decide if I should accept holiday request, when someone in my team had requested and this request has been already accepted! That is the core functionality for me :)
I really love integrations that Calamari provides me!
At first: GSuite (by Google) - I do not have to worry about creating new accounts and I can see all of absences in my Google Calendar (this is my favorite) .
Another huge integration is with Slack, which is main messenger in my company. I can just accept and decline requests without login in into Calamari!
On the other hand I really like is Calamari support, those guys (especially Hubert) are fast as lightning, very thoughtful, proactive and they for sure will help you configure your instance. Communication with them is pleasure :)
Once Calamari is configured is maintenance-free, and very very comfy!
I do enjoy using Calamari. It is easy to learn how to navigate around the system and all employees know how to use it with ease.
It is very self explanatory, pleasant layout and I can adjust employees holiday settings or absence requests very quickly.
Support is excellent and always available for me to contact him.
I like the calendar which gives a simple but quick overview of my company whereabouts.
It doesn't take much admin time to set up a new employee or archive an employee.
Pros
However, Kamil is a great help, very patient when I suddenly get called into a conference meeting and is always willing to support and understand your needs.
Cons
The only down side is that it only has holiday and absence on there and nothing else.
It would be brilliant if Calamari explored the market and expanded the systems functionalities such as adding a performance management section, recruitment section and incorporated all HR jobs into one system.
Simple to use software to easily manage schedules, PTO, and accruals.
Pros
We love Calamari! From new users who find the interface very simple to use from administrators who can customize teams, approval flows, weekly schedules, accruing PTO, and reporting, Calamari does it all! There are always new updates which we are loving and find them super easy to implement and make our experience even better. Highly recommend this product!
Cons
The only improvement that I would suggest would be to allow the employee list to be sorted by your preference. Such as the ability to put the last name first; Smith, John.
Thanks, we really appreciate your feedback. Happy user is the greatest reward!
Hassle-free leave and attendance management system with always smiling customer support team.
Pros
As a startup, I was looking for a perfect solution for leaves and attendance management. By using Calamari,
you can approve your employee’s leaves from your fingertips. And every detail you need is available on their dashboard.
Cons
Having issues sometimes with the attendance management as the beacon system doesn't work with us well yet. Hopefully, they will fix it in future as I have faith in them.
We are using calamari for about a year and are happy for this switch to paperless mainly for the reasons mentioned in the Pros section and also to be able to have all data in one place. In overall, a great tool!
Pros
We like that calamari syncs with Slack and the Google calendar, which gives the whole team a good overview of who´s at the conference, on vacation, working remotely etc. Also, the approval system is easy for managers as they can approve or reject requests via slack. The tool is easy to use and intuitive. I´d like to point out the super fast, friendly and excellent technical support team, namely reps who are always happy to help :-)
Cons
Sometimes downloading reports at the end of the month is slow.
My overall experience is great. It accomplish what promises and has help us a lot. By the other hand, we are still working in finding solutions with a non user/cost model.
Pros
- Easy of use
- Interface
- Functionalities
Cons
- Price (do not like user/license model because if you are in the limit of users and you have a flexible number of employees it is a pain in the ass to pay more if you are going to have more than 50 only for several months and you want to pay for the whole year subscription).
- Lack of customising (if you have very concrete situations, you do not have too much freedom to customize)
We can precisely track the working hours and each employee can organize his/her time. We use it for holidays, home office, working hours, special holidays requests.
Pros
It covers many fuctions and it is flexible in case of special working hours conditions or special holidays requests. We use it for example for the normal holidays as well as for home office, unpaid holidays, sickness of the child of an employee, spcial days off due to a master or a course, etc.
Cons
If a contract of a employee changes during his period at our company (for example from a 40 hours contract to a 32 hours one), it is difficult to modify the terms in Calamari. It is possible though, so it is still fine.
It improved absence management and leave transparency significantly
Pros
Calamari is easy to implement, administrate and use. The customer support and the flexibility of the team is outstanding. The tools is feature rich but clean in design. New features and improvements are added on a regular basis and the roadmap is made transparent. Integrations to google, slack or other tools are in built. Customizing to specific needs is possible. Calamari increased management and transparency on absence/leaves significantly.
Cons
Nothing in specific. If something was missing or did not work as intended we always found a quick solution
Thanks Ulf! We love to work with Mindcurv :)
Pros
Transparency, choice between different groups and the approval flows. Easily adding new employees to the system and editing employee data. Easy transfer of data into excel tables.
Modeling the types of absences is very easy and transparent.
Everyone is equally accessible.
We like the quick response of the Calamari Group!!
We recommend this software to all types of companies!
Cons
The price could be slightly more optimal, otherwise it is OK. We would like to have a chance to insert collective holidays, to put all employees in the calendar at the same time. However, the Calamari group always helps.
Thank you Anja for a great review!
Smoother HR in leave application and approval and also reduction of paperwork and head count in HR.
Pros
Calamari is an easy to use HR system, with easy and simple setup for any organisation. It convenient and easy to access as it is a web-based system. The system can cater for both local and international organisation with option to customize according to the country's holiday requirements.
Cons
They still lack in their mobile application but they are improving with each update. They have bug fixes off and on but their customer service are swift to tackle the bugs in the software.
Hey Aaron! It has been great to work with you. Thanks to your suggestion. We are in touch! Ewelina
We were using a spreadsheet to track employee leave before we switched to Calamari - we're a small organization, so the spreadsheet worked for a time, but this was a huge upgrade. It has everything we need and more to keep track of leave. Very easy to use, and I love the incredible level of support they offer. Can't wait to check out the time tracking upgrades they are planning to roll out.
Pros
The customer service is some of the best I've experienced. I took a video tour when I was considering the software, and the person who helped me with that was great, following up with me and going out of her way to make sure I had all the information I needed.
The software is easy to use, and if you get stuck they are happy to help you out. They also do a lot of the setup for you, which is wonderful. The pricing is very reasonable, and the leave tool is more than we need for our small organization.
Cons
The time tracking software didn't have all the features I was looking for at the time I was comparing tools, so I only chose to use Calamari for the time tracking tool. I want to reevaluate next year though, because they are adding more features and it'd be great to have everything all in one place.
Pros
1) Pretty easy to figure out and set up in the Clock-in module.
2) Excellent support! For things that weren't so intuitive, the Calamari team was more than willing to assist.
3) Once I figured out how to set up our vacation accrual things were great!
4) Very accommodating in adapting the program to meet my needs.
Cons
1) Tutorials and knowledgebase could have a few more examples of different scenarios that the administrator might encounter when setting up more complex leave policies. That being said, the Calamari team was more than willing to guide through anything I wasn't sure of.
2) Wish there was a way to set weekly work hours rather than have to set specific working hours daily. For e.g. I have part-time employee who doesn't necessarily have to come in at any set time each day, they just need to log a certain amount of hours each week. (Calamari team indicates they are working on it)
3) Wish the program better facilitated employees who switched from part-time to full-time without having to make an entirely new profile for that employee. (Calamari team indicates they are working on it)
I enjoyed it and will continue to use it.
Pros
Great value for the money, easy to learn, easy to manage
Cons
Could use more functionality, such as "batch editing" of employees so that I can select 10 employees at once and edit them all to the same "schedule"
We've been using Calamari for 4 months now. It's easier to plan work and manage absences since then.
Pros
Calamari has everything you need to manage attendance efficiently.
1. Fisrt of all you can configure it according to your needs. For example I have created 13 approval flows for leave requests. Other solutions I'd tried before Calamari allowed me to create up to 4. During the whole set-up process I had an impression it was custom made. Unbelievable.
2. When you see absence calendar of all employees it is so much easier to plan work
3. You can add as many types of absences as you need
4. It is possible to integrate it with Jira - our Project Managers just love it! It makes their work much easier
5. There's a mobile app.
6. Reports - essential for payroll team, the board and HR
7. Calamari Team - fantastic and very helpful professionals
8. The price! Great value for money
Cons
I can't think of any cons at the moment.
Calamari helped our team automate the PTO request and approval process, eliminating a lot of manual work.
Pros
A couple of features that really made a difference for us were the integrations with Google calendars and Slack. The reports available for managers and administrators have also been a big help for our team!
Customer rep did an amazing job with setting up the account, and he really helped us customize items that were important to us. In addition, the Calamari team was able to build and change a few features that were essential to our team. It is clear to us that this platform is always evolving, and that Calamari is committed to delivering what customers need. We are very happy with what we have seen so far!
Cons
The only thing we would really like to see is an integration with Google Team Calendars. We rely heavily on Slack to warn teams about absences, and unfortunately, this is not something that can be done via Calamari at this time.
Thanks Tatiana for this stellar review:) and as you mentioned at Calamari we are committed to delivering what customers need.
experience is good.
Pros
easy to use. very user friendly. good service on supporting on purchasing.
Cons
Technical support.
but minor things need to be improved:
1. Functionality: leave application
- can't modify application submitted to the system. (feedback you are under development)
- easy to continue with default leave type(eg: annual leave is the default type). expected: default leave type is NONE, it's up to user to select.
2. Technical support
Any question clarification have to reply on email, if call can be set up or video conference (similar like conference before purchasement) will be more helpful.
I use calamari leave software since 2015.
As IT company I was thinking of developing my own leave module to manage employee absences. But calamari came just in time and saved me money and stress of developing my own tool. Calamari has all I want and need from leave management system. It is easy to use and continously equiped with new features and enhancements. And their technical support is just great. I wish other software supliers were so fast. One remarkable example: I had an issue on 31st of December. A few hours before New Year's party. I have posted an issue to calamari team and even didn't expected to have any answer before 2nd or 3rd of January. But I got an anwer within 30 minutes!!! Just great! I really do recomend the software.
Pros
easy of use. Fast technical support if needed.
Thanks Daniel! We are thrilled working with you, and other customers from Poland! Happy customers are the greatest reward!
Overall its been a pleasant experience and i know there is more room to grow such as the GPS tracker should apply to breaks and be able to click on the map rather than just a snapshot of the location.
Pros
For our company i found Calamari a simple easy to use application to help track employee attendance. The application is simple to install and link with GSuite which is an asset for us without having employees go through a sign up process. Leave requests are to the point and being able to edit/remove/add erroneous entries is a big plus.
Cons
My main issues is with the lack of flexibility regarding report exporting as the information is dumped into an excel sheet without having an option to include/exclude certain data. Furthermore, breaks should have the option to either include in the total hours worked or deducted automatically as it happens that employees forget to use the app when taking their breaks. Also its important that any administrator that does any changes to an entry should have their name indicated or logged as the modifier.