Homebase Reviews

It has a really easy interface for everyone to clock in and out with their passwords when they start and end their shifts. It also allows all our employees to download an app to their phone that will remind them to clock in/out and also will tell them how much they made that day! Love that.

As an administrator it doesn't allow me to schedule a shift for my employees and have them clock in and out for their lunch or breaks. In order to account for lunch break, the only way to do it is to do multiple shifts for that person for the day. That part is kind of annoying, but not a deal breaker. It is also not an easy interface to use templates from previous weeks or rename then. It says you can do it once the schedule is published, but it doesn't direct you to there once you have done so.

The interface/importing with QuickBooks Online. Easy to add time and track PTO, holidays, OT and more. Customization for our business hours was perfect. The cost is lowest I have found for the amount of features. T-Sheets in QBO is too pricey for us. Also the remote clock-in features and mobile app is a big hit with employees.

Importation of hours into QBO Payroll needs to be adjusted and checked, but having HomeBase open after importing employee time cards makes it simple. Just match 1 to 1 and your good. Also the initial holiday set-up can be a bit tricky but HB customer service is excellent and guided us through it.

Very easy to use. The user interface is very simple and easy to navigate.

I feel like this is a beta software that should not have been rolled out yet. We have been using it for a week and have had issues every day since we started using it. Basic things that you think should just work doesn't work.
Example: All my employees have a 1 hour, unpaid lunch everyday. They clock in and clock out on this required one hour lunch but Homebase is still counting it in their total hours. So know I ma getting alerts that they all have overtime but they actually don't because Homebase is not calculating hours correctly.
So there have been several little things (Bugs) that I have found every day since using Homebase. I contact customer support and they tell me that they will pass it on to their product team.
This may sound harsh but the product team really should have tested this software more before rolling it out. Makes me question all the reviews I am seeing on here. All the bugs have been on basic functions.

I like the ease of use and many people are familiar with the software so it makes it easier for onboarding procedures.

Some of the functions don't work unless you want to pay an additional fee

Quite honestly, one of the first things I recommend to businesses that want to schedule employees and know their labor costs that are up to the minute.

The one feature that I do wish was available, would be a calendar view that showed the entire department or business, so that it could be displayed on a monitor or web-based application.

I love the ease of communication Homebase allows with employees. No need to exchange personal numbers and all of the communication is one place. Also allows employees to clock in and out from their devices which is awesome when your the point of sale is also the clock and out spot. This way, we don't have to interupt the workflow to clock in and out. Also really like how Homebase shows your earnings per shift. No guess work at what your hourly paycheck will be!

My biggest complaint is just that there seems be a lag between the time you check a notification and the time it takes to refresh. So the app will show that I have a new notification when it's actually something I have already checked on. Not a huge deal, but makes me feel like I'm missing something when I'm really not. I could also live without a notification asking if I have clocked out of my shift any time I work past by specified hours. For Example, shift ends at 11:30 but I don't clock out until 11:45 - I get at least one if not 2 text asking if I forgot to clock out.

Being able to use the software anywhere and have the ability to change the schedule, communicate with staff, find coverage and my staff to always be up to date with what's going on.

Sometimes staff tell me they don't get notifications of schedule change when I post it.

This makes scheduling our bar staff extremely easy and helps to track other payroll accounting data like start dates, hours, etc. It also helps to communicate with staff and provides a good source of applicants from a tailored database of hospitality industry applicants.

It could have more features for team communication and collaboration. The dashboard navigation is pretty straightforward but could be improved.

I have been looking for software that combines payroll and schedule seamlessly. I love seeing the payroll cost per hour on my schedule!

I haven't found a feature I do not like yet. If I have to be super picky, having a visual of individual teams on the schedule would be great!

App is so easy to use.. you just open it up and look at all shifts and pick the one you like

Don't really have any cons, unless the shifts I want are already gone.

Asking for time off is simple for my employees, the message option is convenient.

Homebase since the beginning is constantly lagging. Whether it be to load pages, send or receive messages, especially sending images. Whether I am using the url on a desktop, or the app on my iPad or iPhone, it is extremely slow. I get message notifications long before the messages actually show up. It is like this for all my employee's that use the app.

The iPad version is difficult to use, it is as big as the size of a small phone screen, I don't understand why the app can't take up the entire screen of the iPad, like every other app I use on my iPad.

I don't know if this is an option, but for my restaurant in particular, as I'm sure is the case with many establishments that use your app, we have several different departments. I'd for one like to be able to only see my FOH employee's on the schedule, and have a separate for BOH.

It would also be convenient to not just limit the amount of employee's that can request off for a specific day, but to be able to limit by department. For example, to be able to say, 3 servers, 2 bussers, and 1 hostess is the limit for any particular day, rather than only being able to say 3 employee's in general is the max. I hope I explained that in a way it makes sense.

Additionally, working in a restaurant that is open nights and weekends, your support hours are not reasonable at all. There has been numerous times we've needed support and you have been closed, so we are just hopeless.

I love how you can do the schedule out as far as in advance as possible but no one sees it until you post it. We have used other softwares that we would have to do a spreadsheet first and couldn't enter anything into the system until we were ready for anyone to see the shifts.

I would say the only thing I don't like is that we have trouble with the clock in system at one of our locations. Which is weird because it works perfectly fine at our other 3 locations. It doesn't register clock-ins a lot of times so my employees have to text me to clock them in.
I have reached out support about this several times in the past and they just say to delete the app and then reinstall. It works great for about a day and then acts up again.

I like that I am able to link all of my locations within one application. I can easily schedule someone for multiple sites and assign specific duties, send messages, approve or decline time-off, etc.

I do not like that I can't edit someone's information when they take ownership of their account. I have some that forget passwords and not update their personal information like phone numbers and email addresses.

Homebase has all of the features that our small business needs from scheduling, to forecasting, employee messaging, business development tools, and it is all incredibly intuitive and easy to use! I’ve used several scheduling platforms over the years and we’ll stick with Homebase from here on out!

There’s nothing to not like about this product. The customer service is top notch so if you ever have an issue, it will be resolved to your satisfaction and they’re always inquiring about potential features we may be interested in.

In theory many of the functions were great on homebase. The alerts, allowing managers to handle the schedule, and remote sign in were some of the reasons we went with the product. We also loved the break calculator.

There are features that just done work well. We turned off the text messages but still receive texts about people forgetting to sign out or hitting overtime. Managers can’t see all needed reports. And there were a few times things just completely didn’t work. It would be nice is Homebase reminded people to take breaks at a certain time etc.

I love that the employees can request time off or switch/trade shifts from their phone and I can instantly deny or approve the request. I love the ease of pulling the time sheets, and reading the time sheets. I love the access to be able to edit employees time on a daily or weekly basis. Employees can be horrible for clocking in early unauthorized, not clocking out to walk down the street to the store, etc. This app makes it simple to edit this carelessness from employees without even having to sit them down and talk to them about clocking in and out. Its kind of like, Okay, you want to take 20 mins to walk down to dollar general and you have already taken your lunch previous, oh and you didn't clock out. Well let me fix that mistake for you. The system tracks tardies, which is awesome, bc after 90 days, anyone who has been tardy more than 20% of their shifts, only gets offered a part time position within the company. This system gives us accurate data to show the employees at their 90 day evaluation, and the data can't be disputed bc it is tracked based on their clock in and clock out times.

I don't like the fact that there is not room for multiple clock outs under the edit mode. If we do not clock out for an extra break, there is no where to add it. I always have to add the time employees are gone to their lunch break. It give a false interpretation and false data when we pull data from this system for evaluations. I really wish you would update this to add columns for extra breaks, and reasons for the breaks. Also, I wish you would add a column to give explanation for employees that clock in late, miss a scheduled day, or clock out early. This system does not even track early clock outs, just late clock ins. We often find that employees will leave early to take care of things, and sometimes it can become repetitous. I would like to be able to track the data.

Pros:
*Free option
*Customizable - we're able to use it for employees to log in and out of the different unscheduled departments/roles they do within a scheduled shift. Makes it easy to track manhours and payroll by department when the people working in each department changes throughout each day.
*The app
*Easy to use
*Great additional features like job posting and document storage/sharing, PTO tracking

Cons:
*Getting the PTO tracking to work for us has been a long wait.
*Employees experience a lot of glitches of punches not going through.
*Takes forever to enter a schedule in the separate "available" and "actual" schedules. I would like to take a posted availability schedule and just make it be their working schedule with one click. Scheduling takes a bit of time, but isn't hard.

This is a very simple to use software and it is very easy to train our store managers to use it. It also gives visibility to All team members who is scheduled and for what shift.

It is really the best scheduling software. I do not have anything negative to day about it. The only thing that I wish it has, is the ability to have another layer of management report view that would allow my General manager to see that exclude those reports reserved for me as the owner. Current levels are "owner/general mgr", "store manager" and "user". It would be nice to separate "owner" reports from "general manager" reports.

I love the fact that you can see from start to finish your scheduled shifts. I can see my coverage in advance and adjust on the fly. I love that fact that each employee can have their scheduling without having to come into the office to see a sheet of paper. I schedule out every two weeks, so my staff can see their schedules and even trade with each other if they would like. I can also see who has or hasn’t seen their schedule so I know exactly who to call for clarification.

I would like to see a way to have real time coverage bars indicating who is on duty with an option to view their time on shift in a bar setting (like the schedule view) so that I don’t have to look at numbers.

Two months ago, I would have given this software 5 stars all around. I think the software is easy to use and loved that I was unable to schedule my staff during their approved request off time.

The last 2 months have been a huge scheduling struggle. First, when my staff requested off, it would only show the amount of hours on the schedule builder, not the actual times I had to go look up the request off times every week for everyone and write them down to make sure I didn't schedule at times they couldn't work. This was very time consuming. For the last two weeks, the times my staff is requesting off is not what shows up on my schedule builder. Example, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] requested off the evening shift this Saturday, Nov 28th. It showed up on the schedule builder that I approved a request off for the day shift. This has been a huge issue It has taken me so much longer to produce a schedule and I have had to work a lot of shifts that my employees requested off and could not get covered. I am extremely frustrated and am considering looking for other scheduling app options if this situation doesn't get fixed soon. I understand technical issues can occur during updates, but for 2 months?

I like that my team all have access to the schedule as soon as it comes out. The ability for them to request days off on the app is amazing because I do not have to remember all the days, it comes up while I'm making the schedule. The ability for my team to clock in and out on their phones makes it easy and efficient and the ability to track where they did so is very reassuring. Everyone on the team is also able to message on it which means everyone can be in contact even without everyone sharing their phone numbers. The ability for the team to see who they are working with and in what positions is a great bonus too.

I would love to be able to put on the schedule that we are closed on certain days (for holidays or other reasons) just as a reminder for the team. I would also like an option to remove employees without having to terminate them. In cases with students going back to college but working on breaks or families taking maternity leave, they don't need to notifications from Homebase, but they are still planning on continuing to work later on.

We love the software. It allows us to schedule, save info, talk to employees, and hire! I would love to have the pro feature but we simply cannot afford over $300 a month just to schedule and speak to employees. I’m a VERY small business and that takes about all the left over money I have at the end of the month.

The price, it also has been glitching ALOT. Most days I can’t see the schedule I created. The app will appear blank as if nothing has been created. I have deleted and redownloaded the app and still experience issues.
The fact you can’t have multiple managers to adjust the schedule SUCKS. I am always signed in under my husbands profile to adjust the schedule. Please fix this. So many company’s would love this new permission set.

I was looking for something that was easy and convenient to use and most of our employees are contractors and we do not need to track their hours and we do have one employee that we have to pay hourly and this just seemed like the best way to go. It was free to use for what we needed. What could be better than that. Homebase is wonderful and is just what we were looking for. We are a small business and when we grow we of course will use the service more. But it saves me time doing payroll and it is ADP friendly which is another plus .

It was a little confusing at first but after using the features and playing with it a bit I found it to be quite logical so I was able to figure things out with just a little playing around. As i played I thought it to be a wonderful program and I could see what a time saver it could be especially if you have more employees than we do.

The software does what its' meant to do, keep track of clocking in and out. This helps to supplement the payroll process greatly and is easy to access and use by out employees.

The scheduling function could be better. Our industry a little different, usually the work is project based. It would be nice to be able to schedule multiple people to one project with just a start time. We usually don't know when exactly a show will end, or when everyone will make it back so adding some flexibility would be very helpful. Even just having the ability to schedule multiple employees at the same time instead of having to click each one would be great.

Homebase works much like an Excel spreadsheet...but easier and minimalistic. There are not as many services out there as one might think, and most of them are meant to organize hundreds of employees. Homebase seems to have been made for smaller businesses and crews, with an interface that is easy to work with.

Printing. Printing the schedule directly from the program was, at first, a nightmare, and the same can be said for sharing the finished schedule with others. Now, however, Homebase has made their integrations more robust ,and there exist more format features.