There are so many types of scheduling software out there, you may not know which one is best for your business. Do you need appointment scheduling software? Calendaring software? Automotive? A restaurant pos software with reservations?
Below we clear explain the different types of this common software, as well as provide answers to commonly asked questions.
Scheduling software is any software used to automate the reservation of resources for a particular time period or project.
Although that definition might sound complicated at first, if you want to have (reserve) an employee (human resource) to work Friday from 9am to 5pm (time period) you could use an employee scheduling or shift scheduling software to do so.
Now scheduling software is not limited to employee scheduling, in fact it can be used to reserve a variety of resources including but not limited to: meeting rooms, facilities, equipment, assets, devices, contractors, call centers, and more.
1. Employee Scheduling Software
Employee scheduling software helps small businesses and organizations manage their employees' work schedules. Common examples include: shift, small business, and work scheduling software.
2. Resource Scheduling Software
Although the name resource scheduling software could apply to almost any type of scheduling, as employees and equipment are resources. This more often applies to internal resources like: meeting scheduling, conference room scheduling, calendar scheduling, and salesperson scheduling software.
3. Healthcare Scheduling Software
Healthcare scheduling software is a broad term for various medical scheduling software that help with calendaring for anything in the healthcare space. This includes medical procedure, nurse, patient, physician, dental, and surgery scheduling.
Due to the sensitive nature of the data these software handles, they usually are reviewed and approved to ensure compliance with HIPAA (United States), PIPEDA (Canada), and GDPR (Europe).
4. Project Scheduling Software
Project scheduling software is typically used by project managers to help facilitate management of team members responsibilities and calendars, as well as other resource time planning including: production, manufacturing, and facility scheduling.
5. Education Scheduling Software
Education scheduling software is any software used in the education sector in order to schedule classes, school events, courses, online education, or even parent teacher interviews.
6. Maintenance Scheduling Software
Maintenance scheduling software is used in the maintenance industry to schedule preventive, reactive, or planned maintenance activities on equipment, assets, or facilities. Common examples include: HVAC maintenance scheduling, as well as facility and fleet maintenance schedules.
7. Logistics Scheduling Software
Logistics scheduling software is any software used to schedule the acquisition, storage, and transportation of goods from their origin to their final destination. Common logistics scheduling tools would include: delivery, freight, and transportation scheduling software.
8. Appointment Scheduling Software
Appointment scheduling software typically refers to service business software where the time and date of the appointment requires the buy-in or request of a third party (customer). Common industries where you will see this type of software include: spas, massage parlours, hair salons, nail salons, beauty salons, gym classes, and even attorney or accounting practices.
9. Contractor or Construction Scheduling Software
Contractor or construction scheduling software is used for scheduling workers to perform both planned, on-demand, and emergency work for an organization or its clients. Commonly this is used for plumbers, electricians, landscapers, construction crews, as well as field service workers who need to be dispatched to certain locations or jobs.
10. Automotive Scheduling Software
Automotive scheduling software is used by mechanics, garages, and car shops to track appointments as well as the status of repairs across all vehicles being
11. Hospitality Scheduling Software
Hospitality scheduling software is used within the hospitality industry to manage hotel and restaurant reservations, worker schedules, maintenance, and other calendars specific to the hospitality industry.
12. Event Scheduling Software
Event scheduling software is used to plan events, conferences, conventions, and more. Typically this can be either standalone software, or come as a key feature to any event management system.
13. Smart Scheduling Software
Smart scheduling software is a software for automating scheduling within an organization and often incorporates AI or machine learning to find the optimal schedule for resources. Smart scheduling also allows employers to use data to gain insights on how employees and resources are being deployed.
Virtually anyone can benefit from scheduling software. It is used by individuals for personal meetings and work tracking, salespeople for booking demos and sales calls, contractors booking jobs for themselves or their team, maintenance workers for booking preventive maintenance tasks, as well as restaurants and small businesses for employee schedules and client reservations.
Every type of scheduling software has features specific to a particular use case, but general features in almost all scheduling software would include: overview of who is scheduled to do what, billable hour tracking, shift assignment automation based on availabilities, communication between workers and managers, resource tracking and forecasting, as well as data analysis and reporting by job or resource.
Scheduling software is typically paid on a per month and per user basis with discounts for a greater number of users, as well as for longer term contracts (yearly is cheaper than monthly). Cheaper software ranges as low as $5.00 per user per month, and increases to as much as $100 per user per month based on the industry and the organization's needs.
