Homebase Erfahrungen

Homebase is extremely easy to set up employee time clock which happens to be free if your business has a single location and with a single location you may set it up for unlimited employees. For a small business owner where every dollar and cent matters, it’s a no brainer. A business owner may assign or allow the employee to set up their clock in and out code. Also, it may be set to take a photo of the employee during the clock in and out sessions to help or eliminate other employees from clocking in and out for them. Homebase offers an iPad, iPhone and an android app. You may also use your device's browser. We downloaded the app, installed it on an iPad for our employees to clock in and out on. The administrator has 100% access via web browser login. There’s also a feature which allows employees to clock in and out in the field which would geo-tag the location of the clocking activities.

Not a lot a negative things to say. This software is best if you have multiple employees who may have a staggered schedule. Example: an employee opens, then you have a mid day shift, then a closer. You also have many employees that may be out in the field. geo-tag is not the best choice for a single entrepreneur who’s trying to track their time, set up easier ways to do so.

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.

Easy features and great for team communication

Not a ton of features and time tracking can be iffy

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!

We decided to go for Homebase because it mostly resembled what i was doing in as spreadsheet before. The timeclock is rather solid, we have set up a dedicated tablet to clock in and out. This is the main reason i got homebase for my team - so that they would have a schedule and be able to clock in and out. Also nice is the fact that custom national holidays can be setup and automatically be shown in the schedule. The Homebase team has over the years implemented a few nifty features to save me time as an admin.

Next is checking timesheets and correcting them when it comes to payroll - however this is where we stop with using homebase. We don't use any other features.

We don't utilize the payroll feature at all - everything can only be set in dollars. Overall, the software feels like it is made for the US market - not internationally. I have feature requested over a year ago that custom currencies should be implemented and even the way time is displayed (24h instead of am-pm). To no avail. Even from their content marketing strategy it is clear that Homebase is only focusing on the US market, with no interesting content for me as a hotelier on the other side of the world.

It is also sad to see that they have recently started adding a lot of fluff to their product like hiring, instead of making the core experience easier and faster to use. The new timesheets section looks nice, but i am 5 times faster with the old one (which could be faster still). I would love to see much more emphasis on a fast and easy to use product, with lots of features to get my work done quicker. Homebase is a classic example of software which gets better the less i have to use it. I would like to see the product move in this direction.

My team used Homebase as a scheduling and communication tool. If we needed a day off, there is a setting to where I can request a teammate to switch shifts with me or I can request cover. This made it super convenient if I needed a day off last minute.

As for communicating with my team, this was the best! When sending out a group message, it allows you to message the people who are only scheduled for a specific day. So if you needed to let the team you're running late or that you need someone downstairs to bring up supplies, etc. I wouldn't need to take time to select the specific people I need to inform, it would automatically pull up those people from the schedule. This software not only lets you message the people you are scheduled with but it also allows you to see who is scheduled that day. I enjoyed this feature because it let me know when I was working with my bestie or my not so bestie.

Another tool I loved on Homebase was the income tracker. This software was able to track when I worked and for how long and would provide an estimate on how much money I have made that pay period. It wasn't hard to find either. This helped my anxiety a lot because I knew if I had enough to pay my upcoming bills or if I needed to pick up an extra shift.

There is only one thing that I have to say is a con and I think it's more my managers fault. There is a feature in Homebase that allows you to potentially get a small amount of your paycheck early. Unfortunately every time I tried it never worked, but I am pretty sure it's because my manager was against that feature and enabled it. I think this feature is so awesome for employees especially during this inflation period and living in an expensive city.

The ability to copy and paste schedules from week to week and customize your week start date makes it so much easier to do an entire month’s schedule in advance. They are constantly offering free trial upgrades, and the features the upgrades include would be critical if we were a larger business.

The mobile version is not as easy to use in terms of creating and modifying schedules, and the inability to have more than one email address/account designated as an administrator on the free version is a little inconvenient. The calendar printout isn’t as customizable as I’d like - a month won’t fit on one page.

We use this software to track student’s time doing online schooling. The ability to see who is currently online is great! Making changes to timesheets if a student forgets to clock in or out is very easy. The reporting features to see monthly hours are helpful.

It would be really nice to see a feature that sends admin a notification as people clock in and out!

Homebase makes clocking in and out easy for our employees. The ability to clock in from their phones only within a geofenced area is both efficient and fair for all involved.

Occasional glitches and reliance on a strong internet connection.

what I like the most about homebase is the functionalities like online time tracking and much more

what i like the least about homebase is that most of features works online

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.

What I like most about Homebase is that it doesn't break the bank to put in a virtual timeclock system. It integrates with Quickbooks online and it is easy to use.

1. It does allow for a little customization, but not advanced enough for the way I run payroll.
2. It does not send separate regular hours and overtime hours to QBO.

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.

My team was using spreadsheets to schedule and to complete payroll before Homebase. What a manual nightmare. There were always so many mistakes and issues. Once we moved to Homebase, it instantly made things better.

My contractors were able to see their schedules instantly and at any time they needed it. The reminders an hour before their schedule help them to be on time for their shift. So we have fewer tardies. They can also check their payroll amount at any time during the month instead of having to wait until the end of the month when I am able to calculate it. They have also made schedule swaps easy.

It has helped my person who does the scheduling tremendously. It has helped her to be able to get our schedule done in a much faster and efficient way.

It has helped me complete payroll in a fast, easy effective way.

There are sometimes glitches, especially with the app. They are overall minor but can be a pain. For example, sometimes when there is a swap made on the app, it will show a notification, but when you go into the app it doesn't show the swap. Good thing we keep up with them in a chat or we would have no idea who was trying to swap.

Also, it is mostly geared towards companies with employees, this could be great if there could be modifications for people who have contractors and do not have to abide by the same restrictions, such as 8-hour shifts, working days consecutively, etc.

I've used this for so long now it is hard to imagine what I'd do without it. We began using it as a simple time clock, and it has slowly become our go to for hiring, time tracking, time off, and employee messaging. If you have a mostly hourly workforce it is super simple to setup, and as your business grows it has helpful and intuitive tools to make your life easier. Their support in my experience can be a bit disorganized, but they always get the job done and are easy to work with.

Not as helpful for salaried employees as it is for hourly employees in my experience. The lower tiers lack some of the onboarding functionality and digital form filing I'd like it to have, but I think this may have been added recently.

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.

Homebase has been the perfect time clock system for our business. It was easy to configure and with the entire system web based I can monitor our staffing when I am off site. We use a wall mounted iPad to clock in and out which was less expensive than many physical time clocks.

My staff has enjoyed having access to their Homebase dashboard where they can easily review their punches/total hours.

One of the best features is the ability to specifically define your pay periods. Many systems only offer weekly, biweekly, or monthly with no customization of dates. Homebase allows complete customization for when you would like you pay periods to start and end.

I have also used their hiring tool. It is by far and away the easiest tool I have used to publicly post to multiple job sites at once. It is very straight forward and has been a great resource in helping us in our hiring.

I don't have any cons. It is a quality product and the team at Homebase has been quick to respond to any issues we have had.

First off......It is free for basic features. I love that it has an app for phone and tablet use. It is very intuitive and easy to learn. Staff can track their time and their salary. I could make a huge list here, but basically it is the software we needed, but now we can't live without it.

Some of the features are a little on the expensive side when purchasing plans, but mostly because of our exchange rate.

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.

Being able to create a base schedule of open shifts as a template is nice. You apply the template to the week, and then you can drag and drop the shifts onto employees. You must use a computer for this to work. The auto-scheduling feature can give you a good starting point but has flaws that make it impossible to publish a schedule using only auto-scheduling.

I would like more categories than owner, manager, employee. With more options of who can see what information. Auto schedule feature needs improvement to not schedule people on doubles and multiple locations at the same time. They've made a number of improvements over the years, but I sometimes think they are trying to add too many new features when they need to perfect the features already available first.

I really value the integration with Square POS that allows me to use the analytical tools within Homebase. It's really helpful for me to be able to see my labor estimates and even the weather (coffee is largely dependent on weather). I value the real-time feedback on my labor costs as well. I also appreciate the flexibility of the timecard programming that allows the real world to happen and for callouts to not totally disrupt my timecards. We LOVE your integration with Gusto that makes my payroll incredibly easy. I came into this position expecting to drop your platform for hotschedules, but I've stuck with it because you integrate really well.

I am currently having problems with your Square POS integration and it's causing me to not enjoy the best parts of your program. Unfortunately your technical support is so backlogged that I get calls late at night when I can't access the program to make a fix.

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.

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.

Everything. For starters, it's very user friendly. I also love the scheduling, time sheet integration, PTO, chat/messaging, integration w/ Clover is HUGE. Having the COVID checklist when clocking in is also a great addition.

Homebase has some small glitches or bugs here and there but we look past that. For instance, although it's been a month or two now that I've heard an employee speak about this, Homebase does not always give you a notification when you receive a chat message.

It's VERY user friendly, makes scheduling extremely easy. Also makes tracking hours and Labor$ easy as well. I also like the option of group messaging which enable s managers to communicate and issues or changes efficiently.

When an employee fills in their "availability" on Homebase, I personally would do away with the option that says "preferred' and replace it with the word "available" The reason:
whenever I copy a schedule to the following week, I can easily accidently schedule employees on days the did not, or weren't able to work, because the system would allow me to schedule them outside their preference. The way I solved this issue was by telling my employees to put in the availability as "unavailable" that way, whenever I would schedule them on days, or hours, they weren't available to work, the system would only then alert me that they can't work those hours!!
With that being said, I don't understand why the "preferred" option is even there! :) I don't care what they prefer, I want to know when they can't work so I know what NOT to schedule them.
you're welcome :)
I have called in the past, twice, and explained my suggestion, but no one seemed to get what I'm talking about, maybe because they're software engineers and not business managers.