RotaCloud

Avantages

This software has been great for us and moving to it, from pen and paper, was the best decision we ever made. We have most definitely saved time in both writing and administering rotas, and the app means that all the staff know when they are expected in work without being able to say they hadn't been told!

It is generally really easy to use from both a Manager and Employees point of view. The customer support is excellent, with questions being answered very quickly through the online chat facility. This is also great as it means you have a record of the conversations so if you need to refer back to something later on then you are able to do so. We manage two sites and 6 rotas in total across the business with nearly 100 employees. Being able to manage the leave through rotacloud has proven far more efficient and ensured that we are not in danger of finding ourselves at the beginning of December with a lot of holiday to make up with staff - something that seemed to happen every year historically.

Inconvénients

There are some quirks which I would love to see ironed out. The 'Availability' function cannot cope with both ongoing requests and individual requests at the same time which is really frustrating. The majority of our crew are casual employees who have ongoing commitments as well as one off commitments so we have had to come up with a workaround to enable them to add all of their availability without the danger of some of it being missed.
It would also be useful to have an easy way to see, and reinstate, past employees. With a very transient workforce, often away at university or travelling for long periods, we don't want to keep them on the system but need to be able to reinstate them when they return. I currently do this via a link but an easier way would be better.

Avantages

User-friendly, does a lot of the 'managing' for you, its really liked by our staff. I find the admin really easy to use either from an office or on-the-go. It is mostly reliable and the takes time and effort out of admin tasks - forward planning rotas, accurately recording holidays etc. Having a PHB meant that we had to take on the responsibility of managing 6 staff (3 full time/3 part time) to care for my disabled son around the clock. This facility is absolutely brilliant, and takes away the time-consuming role that I have now of admininistrating rostas and managing those staff. It also ensures that we run everything very professionally - but it takes away the embarrassment of saying 'no' if there are holiday clashes, staff want to swap last minute etc - as the function automatically puts in red flags when our staff try to do this. They soon get the message without us having to tell them! This would otherwise be difficult to in a situation like ours when people are working in your home, caring for your child and for parents like myself who are are not used to management of staff.

Inconvénients

We can honestly say there there is not one single function that we don't like. The designer are very approachable and willing listen with regard to putting in new functions if you are not happy with the design.

Avantages

The user face is very simplistic and easy to set up an account or add a new employee. It's great that we can add multiple locations to the account as we have multiple stores across the North West, and how we can add employees to various locations rather than having to add the same employee numerous times to have their account set up at different locations (which we had to do on other apps) which makes it much easier for the employees to see when they are working as well as where they are working.

Inconvénients

It would be helpful for the person who is managing the Rota to be able to see the weeks rota in full on the phone app (like you can on the desktop) by spinning the screen on its side as at the moment you can only see day by day and have to select the each individual day to see it all, however this isn't a major issue.

Avantages

Rota cloud is a really easy to use and straight forward app. When ever support is needed to make changes on rota cloud, the Q&A and help tool often has all the answers your looking for, however for those times where the query is more complex, the live chat service is very useful, and the team at rota cloud give very speedy responses and resolve any problems almost instantly! Excellent customer service

Inconvénients

I have had a few problems in the past with rotacloud syncing correctly with peopleHR and the process to link the two correctly can be a little confusing if information isn't coming across from peopleHR. The reporting of employees is a basic overview and would be nice to see some more straight forward in depth reports

Avantages

Ease of use, for both myself and my staff. Love to be able to run reports to submit to my accountant.

Inconvénients

No support at the weekend! I once was disconnected by accounts for a delay in paying a bill, and the whole company came to a halt, because although my payment was made, the system was not reset live until the following Monday and this created a proper operational disaster for us.