Paycor Scheduling (formerly Ximble) is comprehensive and powerful employee scheduling and shift planning software that also offers small to midsize businesses (SMBs) and larger enterprises time tracking functionality. Paycor Scheduling (which begins at $1 per user per month for the Core plan) is a template-based solution that’s still quite dynamic in operation and should serve most human resources (HR) professionals’ needs, provided they can work within its parameters. Unlike our other Editors’ Choice winners, Deputy and Humanity, Paycor Scheduling relies heavily on master settings that shoehorn users into specific fields, options, and notifications.
As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, Paycor Scheduling is fairly nimble, especially for things like last-minute schedule changes and for sending quick alerts to managers. For companies that can work within Paycor Scheduling’s fields, options, and notifications, the solution does cover the most commonly encountered shift management tasks. What’s impressive about it is its style, usability, built-in chat functionality, and some very attractive pricing.
Paycor Scheduling also features outstanding mobile applications for both Android and Apple iOS that have almost the same functionality as web user interface (UI). Certain aspects of Paycor Scheduling, such as some settings, reports, and approvals, are accessible only on the web client because they make more sense there.
Three Pricing Tiers
Paycor Scheduling comes in three price tiers: Core, Advanced, and Enterprise. The Core tier is available for $1 per user per month for an unlimited number of users. Included in this package are Android and iOS apps, email notifications, exhaustive reporting, and 24/7 support. For an extra dollar per month per user, you can add time-tracking functionality to the package. The Advanced tier costs $2 per user per month (or $3 with time tracking added, which includes facial recognition capabilities). With this Advanced package, you’ll get all of the Core features plus payroll integration.
Compared to other tools we reviewed, Paycor Scheduling is affordably priced. Here’s how it compares to some other software in its class: Deputy also only costs $1 per user per month for scheduling, announcements, tasking, and 24-hour support. It can be upgraded to $3 per user per month for payroll integration and reporting. The Enterprise plan, whose pricing will depend on a businesses’ needs, features customized pricing, and gives you access to customized roles, permissions, and extensions, and also provides a dedicated account manager and custom development for larger organizations. Meanwhile, Snap Schedule costs $900 per year for 25 employees, which translates to about $3 per employee per month, which is typical for most software in this category.
Dashboard and UI
Paycor Scheduling is one of the cleanest and most modern UIs of any product we reviewed as part of this roundup, unlike clunkier-looking tools, such as APS Online and ShiftBoard, which can become quite cluttered in the calendar views. When you log into the system, you’re greeted by several widgets that display the shifts you’ll be working for the day, the members of your team who have clocked in; your daily, weekly, and monthly labor costs; and your monthly and weekly employee, hour, and labor cost tallies. You’re also able to view all of your recent notifications, team announcements, and scheduling requests. Any of these widgets can be collapsed to clear space for the information you’re more keen on viewing. Paycor Scheduling makes great use of the screen, and manages to clearly and cleanly convey the most important data.
The software features left-hand navigation, which is a neat stylistic choice that dramatically opens up the Schedules view. We found that most of the dashboards, such as those in Snap Schedule and even Editors’ Choice winner, Deputy feature upper navigation, which occupies more real estate than most users would like.
Inside of the Schedule tab, you’ll see your personnel and their associated shifts for the day, week, or month depending on how you sort your information. Regardless of which calendar you choose, you’ll be pleased by how much space and color coordination is given to each employee and their assigned shifts. This is easily the cleanest and most palatable schedule we’ve reviewed.
If you’ve paid the extra money for timesheet functionality, then you’ll find the Time Clock tab beneath the Schedule tab. Here, you’ll be able to clock in and out, assign tasks to time slots, and notify your team that you’re breaking for lunch or beginning a new work process. Administrators can use this tab to access payroll reports, team timesheets, and any associated team pay codes.
The Employee and Reports tabs take you to run-of-the-mill landing pages that give you access to user profiles and prebuilt reports. I’ll discuss reporting in more detail later. What’s important to stress now is that the left-hand navigation keeps both of these tabs and their respective pages out of the way so that you don’t need to dodge clicking on them while you’re working on your master schedule.
The App Center tab is where you’ll find Paycor Scheduling’s 13 built-in, third-party software integrations. This is the type of easy integration marketplace that you’ll find in more mature software categories but Paycor Scheduling is an outlier in this class. That’s not to say that its competitors don’t offer similar integration functionality as most do via open an application programming interface (API). But Paycor Scheduling displays its integrations in an easy-to-find and modern manner.
Functionality and Usability
Your schedules are easy to sort and filter via extensive and clearly marked drop-down menus located at the top of the calendar. If you’d like to see where employees are scheduled, what they’re doing, who isn’t scheduled, or all of the above, then you simply press the drop-down menu and tick the categories you’d like to peruse. The tool’s drag-and-drop UI makes moving blocks over to schedule easy.
Your schedules also include hourly wages and total spend for the day, all of which are inconspicuously located at the bottom of the page. We’d prefer to see Paycor Scheduling make these fields stand out a bit more as they’re easy to overlook given how colorful and vibrant the rest of the UI is. Any changes made to the schedule trigger notifications that are always sent via email, but can also be sent via SMS for an additional 55 cents per user. You can also schedule reminders in advance and adjust preferences for when people get messages (e.g., a new shift becomes available or an employee is added to a shift). Push notifications can be triggered for the mobile apps for any setting in the system, unlike other tools that limit your push notifications to only what the manufacturer deems worthy of push notification.
The software lets you save all of your shifts as templates, which is a nice feature if you accidentally stumble into a shift configuration that you’d like to replicate into perpetuity. You can also copy a shift and paste it over to the next day or week. This feature lets you save not only the hours and locations as a template, but you can also copy over the employees and their hours if you’d like to make your copies exact.
Paycor Scheduling’s reporting is decent but not exhaustive. You’re given access to payroll, scheduling, employee, and location activity, each of which can be generated within a few seconds after toggling to your preferred fields.
Team Chat Widget Speeds Up Communications
One of the additions to Paycor Scheduling that makes perfect sense for employee scheduling and time tracking is Paycor Scheduling’s Team Chat functionality. It’s available within the web client as well as on mobile. Previously available only to subscribers of the Advanced plan, having Paycor Scheduling Chat available to all users can be seriously useful. Simulating the quick and convenient functionality of apps such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, Paycor Scheduling’s chat widget “Team Chat” enables team members and managers to quickly message each other for scheduling and shift changes.
Team Chat looks straightforward but is actually robustly configurable thanks to various permissions levels. Team Chat lets managers create chat channels, and it’s even possible to share links to various types of files and document types.
Since Team Chat is designed to be used on desktops, mobile phones, and tablets, it optimizes its UI for what works best on whatever device or orientation it is being used. The best feature of Team Chat is that it’s so easy to use. This is one of Paycor Scheduling’s best features and employees will need no training whatever to start using it.
A Few Downsides
Paycor Scheduling does have a few downsides. For example, unlike other tools in this space that offer a comprehensive list of prepackaged templates, Paycor Scheduling offers none. Instead, you’ll have to import your existing schedules from Microsoft Excel or a CSV file, and then save them as a template if you’re keen on not creating a new template within the tool itself.
Another issue with the tool is its reliance on prebuilt master settings. Because you can’t customize the tool and the fields associated with your employees and their schedules, you’re not able to add out-of-the-box settings or special needs for employers and schedules. For example, if you have a truck driver who is allergic to corn, then there’s no way to customize the tool and the schedules to automatically restrict that driver from making corn deliveries during his or her shift. In other systems (namely, Snap Schedule), you can create as many fields as you like, and each of these fields is factored into the automatic scheduling and scheduling conflict override.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Paycor Scheduling is a force to be reckoned with in the shift scheduling space. It’s the cleanest, most modern-looking UI you’ll find, and it’s very easy to use. Plus, it’s one of the more affordable products you’ll find. Add the multifunctional Android and iOS apps and a sterling team chat implementation and Paycor Scheduling really shines as a superb option for SMBs.
However, the tool is missing several key elements that help you automate schedules. Because of these missing features, it might fall short of some businesses’ expectations. This is one instance in which trying out the 30-day free trial is key to determining if Paycor Scheduling can do what your business needs.
