Homebase Reviews

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.

It is nice to choose the apps that will work for your type of business. We are a sports bar, and it was perfect for us. It feels so good to not have a bunch of added items you dont use on your POS!!!

It seems to slow up at times, but it resolves quickly.
I don't like that we purchased a tablet and that will be outdated so it no longer is supported or provided updates. The tablet is convenient, easy to use and we use it for training new staff!

I like that I am able to link all of my locations within one application. I can easily schedule someone for multiple sites and assign specific duties, send messages, approve or decline time-off, etc.

I do not like that I can't edit someone's information when they take ownership of their account. I have some that forget passwords and not update their personal information like phone numbers and email addresses.

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.

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 software is very easy to use, very easy to customize. I always have our schedule in my hand because it's on my phone. I'm able to most everything on my phone that I can do on my laptop. New staff have no difficulty navigating through the functions. Has made my life so much better

In the beginning there were some little kinks that I had to figure out, like some functions I can't see on the monthly view that I can see on the weekly view, but any questions I had were found on the help tab or my chatting with Homebase staff.

I like that my team all have access to the schedule as soon as it comes out. The ability for them to request days off on the app is amazing because I do not have to remember all the days, it comes up while I'm making the schedule. The ability for my team to clock in and out on their phones makes it easy and efficient and the ability to track where they did so is very reassuring. Everyone on the team is also able to message on it which means everyone can be in contact even without everyone sharing their phone numbers. The ability for the team to see who they are working with and in what positions is a great bonus too.

I would love to be able to put on the schedule that we are closed on certain days (for holidays or other reasons) just as a reminder for the team. I would also like an option to remove employees without having to terminate them. In cases with students going back to college but working on breaks or families taking maternity leave, they don't need to notifications from Homebase, but they are still planning on continuing to work later on.

Homebase is easy to use, quick, and effective. There is practically no learning curve for new employees. Scheduling is a breeze, as is running reports for payroll. It gives me quick reporting to see my business performance, even when I'm not there I can see how the shops are performing. Clock-in features work great. Customer service and troubleshooting (not that you'll even need it) are seriously amazing. This team treats you like your problem is their main priority.

I wish the date selection feature still said the day of the week like it used to. It says July 10 2019, but it used to say Wednesday July 10 2019. I mean... that's all I can think of that I would change... and that's kind of a non-issue.

I was looking for something that was easy and convenient to use and most of our employees are contractors and we do not need to track their hours and we do have one employee that we have to pay hourly and this just seemed like the best way to go. It was free to use for what we needed. What could be better than that. Homebase is wonderful and is just what we were looking for. We are a small business and when we grow we of course will use the service more. But it saves me time doing payroll and it is ADP friendly which is another plus .

It was a little confusing at first but after using the features and playing with it a bit I found it to be quite logical so I was able to figure things out with just a little playing around. As i played I thought it to be a wonderful program and I could see what a time saver it could be especially if you have more employees than we do.

I think it is fairly simple to use and for all questions I have I generally get quick answers from support. The free HR support offered during the pandemic was very generous and we ended up signing up. In past reviews I have stated that I think your pricing should be based on a sliding scale depending on how many employees a business has. For someone like myself, who only has 2 hourly employees I don't need to use HR pro much and may not be able to justify $800+ for annual renewal for minimal assist and usage. I do like the onboarding paperwork feature that was added as well.

I don't like that when publishing a schedule, the default on my version is to update all employees. Unfortunately, we had to furlough employees and if I don't manually change it, it defaults to alert all on our team even though they don't have a schedule or employed by us currently.

The core feature we needed was employee time tracking, but we have started using this for team communication and posting new jobs and tracking applicants.

I wish I could easier audit when the manager edits clock ins and clock outs.