Snap Schedule 365 (which costs $900 per year for 25 employees) is a vast and comprehensive employee scheduling and shift planning tool that’s well-suited for larger organizations. Not only does it anticipate the requirements of most large organizations, it offers excellent customization capabilities so those big organizations can built unique workflows. Using Snap Schedule 365’s user interface (UI) quickly reveals that there’s very little that this solution cannot do. However, unlike our Editors’ Choice winners in this space, including Deputy and Paycor Scheduling, Snap Schedule 365’s functionality comes with significant complexity. This isn’t a tool your managers can start using without first devouring a sizeable learning curve.
Still, its deep feature set and excellent customizability will make it worth a close look for big organizations with complex staffing and scheduling needs. It excels in setting up various controls and rules for employees, is focused on handling shift changes, and provides clear documentation and tracking.
What may overwhelm many users at first glance, is that Snap Schedule 365 crams as much information as possible on the screen, which can be confusing. However, you’ll also find some innovative features, including deep integration with its mobile application, which employees can use to punch in. The geofencing feature grabs GPS data from an employee’s device when he or she punches in or reports attendance; it helps to determine if they are within a prescribed area.
Pricing Tiers
Snap Schedule 365 costs $900 per year for 25 employees, which works out to be a monthly subscription cost of $3 per employee per month. Each Scheduler costs $450 per year and allows a scheduler to schedule an unlimited number of employees. However, this doesn’t include the employee access add-on, which costs $36 per employee per year.
That high a cost might be troublesome for many small to midsize businesses (SMBs), but then Snap Schedule 365’s target audience is midsize to large enterprises that have hundreds of employees or more. Typically, you’ll find most software in this category in the same range as Shiftboard, which begins at $45 per month for 50 employees, $120 for up to 75 employees, $276 for 125 employees, $476 for 200 employees, and $976 for 350 employees. Flexibility becomes a consideration for smaller organizations that may not have a large base of employees. Employee access is optional and costs $36 per employee per year. Moreover, the employee access add-on is only sold in packs of five employees. Volume discount pricing is available for more than 50 employees.
Interface and Dashboard
Logging into Snap Schedule 365 brings up a dashboard with an overview of all employee activity and hours assigned. This is presented with colorful graphs and charts that quickly convey the big picture. Closer inspection reveals a detailed overview of how many staffers have been scheduled, how many hours they’ve been assigned, their hours by location, data for time-off requests, and even looming certification expirations. Any of these charts can be sorted to show similar information. For example, Scheduled Hours by Location can be converted to Scheduled Hours by Position. This dashboard is a unique, well-designed, and helpful landing place for anyone responsible for maintaining scheduling workflow within an organization.
As you dive deeper into the software, you’re able to navigate via the Admin, Manage, Reports, and Schedule tabs. The Schedule tab is where various calendar views, time-off requests, and shift approval requests live. The Manage tab gives you access to all of your people, places, and teams as well as the various policies you and your employees have established for scheduling. The Reports tab is where you’re able to produce an exhaustive amount of scheduling data, including things such as labor costs, projected labor costs, and time-off history. You can create custom reports but you’ll have to work with Snap Schedule 365 on the back end to assemble the data, which will likely increase overall costs.
If you’re crazy about reports, then you’ll want to go with a tool such as APS Online , which ties all of your human resources (HR) and payroll data into your scheduling tool. However, among standalone shift scheduling tools, Snap Schedule 365’s reporting is pretty solid. The Admin tab is where you’ll control how the software is configured and who has access to the master schedule.
Expert Features
Among the many helpful and unique features you’ll find in Snap Schedule 365 is its Schedule Example tool, which gives you an overview of how you might want to create schedules based on how other industries set up their schedules. For example, if you run a restaurant but you have never created a schedule for service staff, then the tool will create an example of what a typical restaurant with your similar parameters would do. Regardless of how you choose to create a schedule, once your calendar is locked in, you can copy a schedule from any date range and take all assignments from that time frame and paste it forward.
You can also auto-schedule employees so that they always work together, which is great for employees with complementary skills, for student employees who are on the same schedule, and for pairing new employees with veteran employees. These features give you the ability to manage the schedule rather than having to create a brand-new schedule every single cycle.
Another useful feature for new users, and for users who are likely to import new employees en masse, is the ability to import employee data using Microsoft Excel. This might sound like a ho-hum feature, but your interns will thank you for not making them manually enter hundreds of new files with multiple fields each. Unfortunately, unlike tools such as Shiftboard (which lets you upload schedule templates via Microsoft Excel), you’ll have to create your templates within Snap Schedule 365.
The software is wildly configurable so you’re not beholden to things such as set fields or a set number of shifts. You can build out custom fields to capture any kind of data that can then be automatically factored into how you automate your schedules. For example, if Eve, one of your truck drivers, is allergic to corn, then you can record her allergy in the system so she won’t be given shifts related to corn delivery.
Snap Schedule 365’s search capability was also easy and robust due largely to its excellent filtering. You can sort by employee and shift, and you can any create custom filters so that you can scan employees by any criteria you have added to the system. You can also create premium shifts for things such as holidays or overnight shifts, which lets you automate labor cost calculations. Other software, which requires you to treat Christmas Day shifts the same as any other day, for example, won’t calculate the fact that Christmas Day workers might be getting paid extra for taking a premium shift.
Fitting in All Shifts
Snap Schedule 365 is loaded with lots of useful fields that help you capture a seemingly endless amount of data. Unfortunately, this comprehensiveness makes the software feel crowded and dense. The tool is chock-full of long drop-down menus and abstract button icons. Unlike Editors’ Choice winner, Paycor, which features left-hand navigation, Snap Schedule 365’s upper navigation occupies too much screen real estate. That comes at a premium, especially when you’re in your daily or weekly Calendar view.
Conflict flagging, one of the most important elements of any shift scheduling tool, is done via tiny red flags that would be easy to miss if you’re just scanning the calendar. Some tools, such as Shiftboard, trigger a pop-up window when you create a conflict. Snap Schedule 365 just gives you a tiny, only slightly discernible, flag icon.
The Daily View by Employee dashboard is incredibly cluttered. You can space it out and clean it up depending on how much data you remove. But, if you have a large staff and a lot of shifts, then you’ll start to feel claustrophobic. Daily View by Shift is also extremely cluttered. It is colorful but names are scrunched. If you didn’t know to look, then you wouldn’t even notice the helpful but miniscule tabs that auto-calculate the number of assigned employees and hours, which are located at the bottom of the screen.
Using Shift View is a much better way to manage your schedule. You can see all of your shifts in one day. All of the employees assigned to a shift are on top of one another within a column. You can clearly see all of the data as well as the assignment stats at the bottom of the page. If your shifts stay relatively the same, then you can copy this schedule and then view it into perpetuity. Right-click this view, add in some query data, and the tool will proactively find available employees who can work that shift. Click the profile you want to select, click “Assign,” and the person is added to the shift.
Customizable But Complex
Snap Schedule 365 is one of the most comprehensive, customizable, and sortable solutions in the employee scheduling and shift scheduling category. It has no shortage of viewing options but does suffer from a sometimes overwhelming range of control. For a larger workforce, it can be a formidable tool to help tame cumbersome shift scheduling challenges. Its comprehensive data can become a bit overwhelming, though. Since we last reviewed it, pricing is still a contentious issue for smaller businesses that may struggle to find a Snap Schedule 365 tier that offers good value for their needs.
With this in mind, it is worth giving Snap Schedule 365 a try by using its free 30-day trial. This is the best way to determine if its feature set and deep customization capabilities suit the needs of your business.
