Sling Reviews & Pricing

Key Features

• Shift Scheduling: Build schedules within minutes while managing time-offs, shift swaps and employee availability. Schedule across geographical locations and time zones while saving templates for future use. Get notifications for double-booking or overlapping shifts, reduce absenteeism and late arrivals, and avoid scheduling overtime. Let employees pick shifts they like while granting approvals.
• Task Management: Keep employees accountable by adding tasks to shifts. Clarify everyone’s job during shifts while ensuring employees stick to set timelines while finishing assigned tasks. Improve productivity and efficiency by allowing employees to access task lists via mobiles.
• Time Clock: Track employee clock-ins and outs from a designated terminal, on-site time clock or both. Set early clock-in limits while automatically clocking out employees in case of forgotten log-outs. Review, edit, approve and export timesheets to process payroll seamlessly.
• Location Management: Create location-specific news feed pages to share important information and messages. Monitor progress while creating to-do lists per location. Authorize multiple display directions and workspaces for every location.
• Mobile App: Manage schedules on the go while letting employees clock in and out using any Android or iOS device. Use geofencing tools to ensure employees log in and out from designated locations while tracking attendance from anywhere. Send automated alerts or message latecomers in the app.
• Labor Cost Management: Receive budget insights and suggestions while scheduling to ensure cost-effectiveness. The platform calculates labor costs based on employee wages, allowing real-time margin monitoring per shift. Sling also sends alerts if projected labor costs exceed your budget for a particular shift, prompting you to adjust staffing assignments before finalizing the schedule.
• Compliance Management: Store licenses, contracts, certifications, and other files within employee profiles with unlimited storage. To ensure timely renewals, Sling alerts you when critical documents are nearing expiry. Set granular permission levels for document access to safeguard staff details. Managers can define and assign custom break durations per labor regulations, automate break scheduling, and send break reminders to employees.

Approach to Common Challenges

• Employee Engagement and Retention: Traditional scheduling methods often leave workers feeling like cogs in a machine. Sling empowers employees by offering self-service options to view schedules, chat with team members and swap shifts.
• Skills-Based Scheduling: One-size-fits-all scheduling can lead to inefficiencies and employee frustration. Sling allows managers to create task-specific shift templates. Match these templates to employees with the most relevant skill sets to ensure a targeted approach during task allocation.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Managers can get insights into labor costs, overtime trends and employee utilization to make informed decisions on staffing, budgeting and team performance. Sling integrates with existing business intelligence tools to provide a holistic view of workforce management.
• Embracing Flexibility: The platform helps you create hybrid schedules that blend in-office and remote work options. Employees can specify their preferred work locations within the app, and you can create schedules that cater to individual needs to promote a healthy work-life balance. This flexibility can be appealing to businesses looking to attract and retain talent in a competitive job market.

Cost of Ownership

• Premium: Charges $2 per user monthly for labor cost management, shift swaps, timesheet and schedule templates, SMS alerts, mandatory breaks, and staff time-off requests.
• Business: Charges $4 per user per month for POS integration, reporting, tags, task templates, budgeting, geofencing and attendance tracking.

• Paid Plans: Sling offers several paid plans with additional features beyond the free tier, including advanced reporting, AI-powered scheduling optimization, integrations with specific tools and the ability to manage a larger number of employees. The cost of these plans depends on the features you choose and the number of users you need.
• Integrations: While Sling integrates with many popular tools, some integrations require separate subscriptions. Be sure to check the pricing structure of any third-party tools you plan to integrate with Sling.

Limitations

• No compliance management tools.
• Geofencing shows inaccurate login hours.
• It doesn’t support biometric employee logins.
• Desktop and app versions differ significantly.

Demo Resources

• Guided Onboarding: Answer a few simple questions about your business, and Sling will automatically configure your dashboards, allowing you to jump right in and start scheduling.
• Help Center: Find articles, videos and FAQs on everything from getting started to mastering advanced features. A handy "feature request" option allows you to suggest new functionalities for Sling to consider adding in the future.
• API Center: Sling offers clear API documentation, making it easy to integrate the platform with your existing third-party software and point-of-sale systems.

FAQs

1. Log in to your Sling account on your web browser.
2. Look for the "Schedule" or "Create Schedule" option.
3. You'll see a calendar view. Click on the specific date and time you want to include in your schedule.
4. You can assign employees, add shift details and customize other relevant options.
5. Once you're happy with your schedule, save it, and it’ll be visible to you and your team.