Is scheduling on paper killing your business? How scheduling software helps

At first glance, the natural organization of a paper calendar or spreadsheet makes sense for creating shift schedules.

Once you take the time to make it, it looks nice and clean. You may even have it color-coded to make it easier to read. But once you put that schedule out into the world, it tends to break down. You don’t know the best way to share it with your staff. Then come the change requests, availability mistakes, and confusion that leads to a missed shift or late arrival.

Your once perfectly organized paper schedule is unrecognizable from when you first made it—and you have to do it all over again next week.

Pen and Paper Frustrations

Below are some common problems with paper schedules that you may know all too well.

It takes too long to create schedules

Paper schedules are free and easy to get started. But even the fastest manager can take upwards of five to eight hours a week to build out the schedule. There are sections to remember and availability to reference. All of that time spent in the back office making staff schedules adds up to hours you’re not spending with your team and your guests.

It’s difficult to track shift swaps and time-off requests

You’ve spent hours creating the schedule, then you have to deal with hours of back and forth with your staff. As soon as you write the final version and send it out, change requests come pouring in from your team. They come from email responses and over text, making them hard to keep track of. And even one edit can domino and disrupt the flow of an entire day or week. Staff make changes on their own without asking you. Shift trades need to involve a separate thread with a manager, meaning more room for error and more time spent on tedious duties.

Entering timesheets into payroll is tedious

Restaurant payroll is a stack of endless documents. Endless exporting and printing out attendance sheets and matching them up with the schedule. What’s worse is that there isn’t an easy way to track late arrivals or no-shows, which can end up costing you money down the line with things like time theft. You may also make costly mistakes by accidentally putting something into the wrong row/column, which leads to compliance issues.

How restaurant scheduling software solves these problems

If any of the examples above feel familiar to you, here’s how scheduling software can help.

Improve team communication

72% of employees say team communication is necessary to their satisfaction at work, according to a survey 7shifts ran in 2022.

Scheduling software makes it easy for your team to request changes in one place. You can also enable your team to make their own schedule and shift changes, like offering up a shift, with your approval, so all you need to do is say yes or no—rather than be looped into unnecessary conversations.

Boost employee engagement and retention

Employee engagement is more than simply having happy or satisfied employees. It goes deeper than that—a fully engaged employee is personally and professionally invested in their work. 56% of restaurant employees say flexible scheduling is a top contributor to their satisfaction at work.

Restaurant scheduling software, like 7shifts, helps reduce manager workload and increase employee engagement by putting employees in the driver’s seat. When managers publish a schedule with open shifts, their staff has the opportunity to ‘bid’ on the times they’d like to work. Employees can also set their availability, request time off, and swap shifts from their phones.

By integrating your POS system, scheduling software can pull sales and labor data to forecast sales. You’ll have the right amount of coverage to make sure your team isn’t overworked or bored, and you’ll keep labor costs in check.

Get time back to focus on what’s important

Restaurant managers can save hours every month by swapping pen and paper for scheduling software. This means more time to coach your staff, wow your guests, and plan for growth.

Scheduling software also lets you pull data from your time clock, check it against the schedule for accuracy, and push it directly to payroll for a seamless payday. No more plugging and chugging numbers from spreadsheets, manual entry, or easy-to-make mistakes that cost you time and money.

What would you do if you could shrink the time you spent scheduling? Would you spend more time on the floor connecting with customers? Would you be more actively recruiting new team members or coaching existing team members?

Conclusion

If you’ve experienced any of the above scheduling problems—or you accidentally delete the entire schedule one too many times—there is a better way.

Scheduling software can help you move on from messy spreadsheets and streamline your scheduling process—saving you money and countless hours that you can put back into helping your business grow.

About 7shifts

7shifts is a scheduling, payroll, and employee retention app designed to help restaurants thrive. With an easy-to-use app and industry-specific solutions, 7shifts saves time, reduces errors, and helps keep costs in check for over 50,000 restaurants. 7shifts integrates with 30+ POS systems, and saves managers up to 14 hours on scheduling every month.

Ready to ditch the spreadsheets? ChowNow customers can get started with 7shifts and save 50% off 2 months.