Hello Scheduling is employee scheduling software that was released commercially in September 2011, after 9 months in beta. It is regularly being updated to suit the needs of its customers to offer better features, as it strengthens its place in the strong competition in the market. While it does lack a complete mobile app, as of this review, the app is slated to be released in 3 weeks (August 2012). Hello Scheduling releases new features every 2 weeks.

This webapp is best suited for businesses having more than twenty employees and is highly functional for those with around or over 150 staff members. It is very easy and simple to use and can be accessed by all the employees through email logins if created. With this, your employees can swap shifts, request time off, see schedules, bid for vacant shifts, and even break times from a mobile device or a computer having an internet browser. It works for all kinds of businesses, ranging from clothing boutiques to car washes to restaurants to rehab centers.

There is an excellent quick set-up wizard, an option to import employee lists with help of your support staff and online schedule postings to name some really good features of this software. Set up takes just about fifteen minutes, which is considerably fast compared to others. You are provided template options from the beginning. You can also export data using this app.

Hello Scheduling is great at optimizing staff resources for you. It does not give you too much flexibility though. There is an auto-scheduler, where you have to choose the shifts to be filled with the positions and skills of those who are to fill it and the rest will be done for you. Changes to the schedule are quick and easily made both by you and by other managers.

You can plan meal times and breaks for your staff easily. To define multiple locations and departments is a little more complicated; however, you can create as many departments as you would like. You have to pay for this software monthly and the payment increases with the number of employees in your company. You can also save your own time during work timings by letting employees log in, select their work timings and request for swapping of shifts. They can also bid for vacant shifts declared by you. You have the full control and every change needs your approval in the end.

The scheduling data can be found and organized in many ways with Hello Scheduling. It can store employee information like pay rates, email addresses, phone numbers and addresses. This information can be accessed with a few mouse clicks only. Also, daily, monthly and weekly schedules can be viewed, printed and posted online. There is a rare feature called payroll reporting, which tells you the cost of each shift. This software is very easy to use with its modern and clean interface, auto scheduler and easy set-up wizard. Other great tools are labor cost calculator, shift templates and schedule conflict warnings. The help and support is very useful too.

Good: Excellent help options, payroll listing and easy to use

Bad: Lack of features like a mobile app, although that will be released soon

Visit this site at http://www.helloscheduling.com/ and post your reviews as comments.