Honest Review:

Homebase

• Ease of use
• Automated payroll processes
• Open shift claims by employees
• Leaves and vacation tracking
• The efficiency of team messaging and group chats
• Time editing for accuracy

Homebase offers four pricing plans for their services, each curated with a suite of features to target specific needs. Features increase as the tiers go up, and all plans have the option to purchase a fully integrated payroll add-on for a standard $39 base fee per month plus $6 per employee paid on that month.

The Homebase Basic plan is designed for managers setting up a new team. It’s a free plan that can be used for one location and can support up to 20 employees. With this plan, users can enjoy time tracking, scheduling and availability, messaging and mobile app, hiring with job posts and applicant tracking, employee happiness metrics, employee roster, POS and Payroll integrations, and email support.

Intended for managers with growing teams to simplify the process of tracking and managing shifts, the Homebase Essentials Plan costs $20 per location per month and supports unlimited employees. It has all the features of the Basic plan, plus team communication and management, performance tracking, and live support via phone and chat. 

Made to help boost team productivity and improve communication of growing businesses, the Homebase Plus plan costs $48 per location per month and supports unlimited employees. It has all of the features of the Basic and Essentials plans, plus remote and field team tools, labor cost controls and budgeting, time-off controls and PTO tracking, and permissions and departments.

Containing the fullness of the Homebase arsenal, the All-in-One plan costs $80 per location per month with unlimited employees. It promises to control labor costs and streamline operations with all of the features of the previous tiers along with new hire onboarding, employee paperwork and documents, and HR and compliance support.

It’s worth noting that the prices listed above are subject to change, and some features may not be available in certain locations or for certain types of businesses. Be sure to check with Homebase directly to get the most up-to-date information on their pricing plans.

1. Homebase Time Clock and Timesheets 

Homebase streamlines the process of time tracking by allowing users to turn almost any internet-connected device — be it a PC, mobile phone, tablet, or POS device — into an online time clock from which they can punch in and out, and track hours, breaks, overtime, and PTO with ease. Clocking in can be done with a PIN unique to every employee, or with a photo capture to improve security. 

Each punch also captures the user’s GPS location to help ensure that employees are where they are when they clock in and out or start and end breaks. To further enhance accountability, managers can enable geofencing to ensure that workers can only clock in from within a geofenced area, preventing employees from punching in when they’re not actually on site. 

The data gathered from time tracking is automatically translated into timesheets. At the end of every workday, Homebase automatically calculates total hours worked, paid and unpaid breaks, and hours spent in overtime. It also allows businesses to add tips and compute wages automatically, including those of employees with multiple wage rates. These ensure that timesheets are payroll-ready at all times without the need for any manual calculations or processing.

Employers and team managers can view these timesheets using the Homebase dashboard, helping them stay on top of their employees’ working patterns and productivity levels. The team messaging system enables effortless communication over missed shifts, late clock-ins, or other tracking inconsistencies.

2. Homebase Payroll Processing and Reporting

Homebase’s add-on payroll feature enables users to connect time tracking to payroll and avoid manual wage calculations by automating the entire process. Employers can run payroll instantly using employee timesheets with just a few clicks. The system directly calculates wages and taxes from the timesheet app for multiple locations, eliminating the need for manual input and thereby reducing the risk of error.

Homebase even sends payments to employees, the state, and the IRS automatically. Admins only need to define which bank accounts would receive which payments during setup, and it pretty much runs itself. It also processes tax filings automatically and even issues 1099s and W-2s.

To help keep businesses compliant with labor laws, Homebase helps businesses set up breaks and overtime according to state regulations to calculate hours and wages correctly. It also stores time card records to help businesses stay compliant with FLSA record-keeping rules.

In addition to that, Homebase also empowers employees with perks and pay advances that give them early access to their wages so they can handle emergency expenses or take care of their welfare better. It allows employees to get their hard-earned money before payday without interest charges, credit checks, or late fees. It comes at no expense to the employer, does not impact payroll, and Homebase covers all costs and liability. 

While all of these really sound awesome, I just can’t help but point out that this service is a paid add-on, and a relatively pricey one at that if you’re using it to pay entire teams, it costs $6 per employee paid per month on top of a $39 base fee. This isn’t the case for other solutions that include payroll processing features similar to those of Homebase in their plans without the need for additional payments.

3. Homebase Reporting and Insights

Homebase allows users to run reports to give businesses a firm grasp of their current standing and to help plot future direction based on actual data. The collection of various reporting templates allows users to make sense of the numbers in the way most relevant to their purposes.

The Homebase reports overview gives users summarized information at a glance about how scheduled hours compare against actual time, estimated wages, hours comparison, and wages as sales percentages

The scheduled versus actual hours report shows a comparison chart of scheduled hours against actual time logged by employees on Homebase every week or every month, while the hours versus sales report tracks scheduled labor against sales. 

The Homebase labor cost summary report gives an overview of sales versus labor breakdown by hour or by day, and the labor by role report details weekly labor cost by role in a color-coded chart. The hourly labor costs report tracks hourly sales against scheduled labor versus estimated paid labor on a daily basis, while the department report shows weekly sales, shifts, labor expense, and labor as a percentage of the sales of each department. 

Homebase also has a shift feedback report that details how employees feel about their shifts and a certifications report that gives visibility into employee certifications and their expiration dates.

While these selections are great, there seems to be a lack of depth and customizability in the reports that businesses need for better decision-making. The templates presented by Homebase are quite basic, and they would do very well to add more options or give their users the power to build their own report structures to reflect their unique analytic needs better. 

4. Homebase Shift Scheduling

Homebase has an employee shift scheduling system that makes workday planning easier with auto-scheduling features based on sales forecasts, labor targets, and the availability of teams. It also allows users to utilize built-in templates for instant roster creation that cut down on think time. 

Homebase does all the minding of employee availability and time off when generating daily or weekly schedules to ensure all locations are optimally staffed at all times. It allows managers to plan ahead by setting rules for black-out dates and time-off requests, and helps them to stay on top of changing availabilities. 

With Homebase, businesses can ensure that no employee is overburdened with too many shifts and that the work is divided equally among everyone in the ranks by showing managers their capacities. The scheduling system informs employees instantly when there are any shift changes through the scheduling app as well as through email. Employees also get alerts when they’re late or approaching overtime. And to keep everyone’s efforts on track, managers can add shift reminders and notes to the schedules. For even greater convenience, employers can set up open shifts for employees to claim, or allow workers to exchange shifts with quick approval.

There’s no doubt that Homebase presents a really great suite of scheduling features, but it could use a little more development. For example, employees are only able to set their availability on a recurring weekly basis, which does not consider day-to-day availability. Homebase could remedy this by allowing users to set daily availability for every week or month. Also, the software occasionally doesn’t show all the shifts assigned to certain employees, which can affect operations and cause friction between employees and management.

5. Homebase Employee Happiness

With the spotlight firmly focused on hard data and KPIs, perhaps one of the most underrated aspects of maintaining a productive team is employee happiness. Homebase understands this, and has dedicated features to help businesses gain visibility into the human side of work.

With the feedback-gathering feature, employees can tell management how they feel at the end of every shift, allowing employers to measure employee sentiment. The data gathered by this feature are translated into reports that help them to understand trends over time. Employers can then use that insight to enact positive change and keep employees happy, engaged, and feeling valued.

Employees feel valued when their achievements are recognized and celebrated. Homebase allows managers to track excellent employee performance, such as on-time arrivals, so management can give them proper recognition for the value that they bring to the team. Employees can also commend each other for jobs well done and build camaraderie in the process. 

And to help the team celebrate each other’s milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries, Homebase stores and creates reminders for those using the team foster. In addition to that, the software also facilitates open communication among team members with its in-app messenger feature, ensuring that important information and meaningful exchanges are possible even when they live on different sides of the globe.

(As of December 2023)

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• Google Play Store: 4.4/5 
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If you’re looking for a software that can help you manage your team’s schedules with ease, then Homebase is definitely worth checking out. The time clock functionality of the software proves to be a savior in time management – employees can log work hours that get automatically translated into timesheets without any hassle. With the addition of a payroll processing feature, payments, taxes, and payroll management are streamlined into an efficient and hassle-free process. 

Using the data collected in time tracking, businesses can gain insight into the numbers with a variety of report templates, and even get a pulse on employee sentiments with employee happiness metrics.

But the real star of the show is the scheduling app. With it, businesses can create schedules and inform teams of any changes in just a few clicks. Coverage is assured with a fair distribution of shifts according to capacities. And when availabilities change at the last moment, employees can swap shifts, or managers can open shifts for employees to pick up.  

Of course, like any software, Homebase isn’t perfect. It has its fair share of bugs and glitches that affect user experience negatively. The mobile app needs a bit of work to function optimally. The scheduling system can be a bit inconsistent at times, and I’ve noticed that the app sometimes has issues logging time and sending notifications. In addition to these, Homebase’s reports are insufficient for users requiring more detailed and advanced insights, and some essential features like payroll come at an additional cost. And they keep on increasing prices, too.

But overall, Homebase is an excellent starting point for businesses that are looking to streamline and automate their workflows. So listen, if you’re out in the market for a time and attendance solution that also covers other business needs, you should definitely check out Homebase and give their 14-day free trial a whirl.