Team management software for the 150,000+ small businesses that run on hourly shifts
Homebase is an all-in-one team management app for small businesses that run on hourly workers.
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AI Editor ApprovedApproved and published by our AI Editor-in-Chief after full panel analysis.Homebase is an all-in-one employee management platform for small businesses that run on hourly teams. Restaurants, retail shops, salons, and clinics use it to schedule staff, track time, run payroll, and handle hiring and HR from one dashboard. It offers a free Basic plan for one location with up to 20 employees, and paid Essentials, Plus, and All-in-One tiers that start at $24.95 per location per month billed annually; a 14-day free trial and an optional payroll add-on at $39 per month plus $6 per employee round out the pricing. Core capabilities include drag-and-drop and AI-powered scheduling, a phone or tablet time clock, auto-calculated timesheets with overtime alerts, team messaging, applicant tracking, employee onboarding, and real-time labor-cost forecasting. It fits owner-operators who want scheduling, time tracking, and payroll in a single per-location subscription instead of stitching together separate tools. Common alternatives include When I Work, Deputy, 7shifts, and Sling.
Homebase runs on a shared schedule that managers build with drag-and-drop shifts and then publish to the team's phones. Employees clock in on a tablet, phone, or connected point-of-sale system, and those hours flow into auto-calculated timesheets that apply overtime and break rules and flag issues before they reach payroll.
Higher tiers add AI-powered auto-scheduling that fills shifts from availability and labor targets, PTO and time-off controls, departments with role-based permissions, and real-time labor-cost forecasting that compares scheduled wages against projected sales. The hiring tools post jobs and track applicants in one dashboard, and the optional Homebase Payroll add-on turns approved hours into paychecks, files taxes, and sends direct deposits.
Homebase targets small hourly-team businesses in restaurants, retail, beauty and wellness, healthcare, and hospitality. Pricing is charged per location rather than per user: a free Basic plan covers one location with up to 20 employees, and the Essentials, Plus, and All-in-One tiers run $24.95, $56, and $96 per month billed annually. It competes with When I Work, Deputy, 7shifts, and Sling.
Managers and staff work from native iOS and Android apps or the web dashboard, and Homebase connects to point-of-sale and payroll systems including Square, Clover, Toast, and Gusto so sales and pay data stay in sync.
Real-time forecasting that compares scheduled wages against projected sales and flags approaching overtime.
AI-powered scheduling on the Plus plan that builds shifts automatically from availability, roles, and labor targets.
In-app messaging, shift notes, and announcements that reach the whole team or specific roles.
Sends, collects, and stores new-hire paperwork and e-signatures on the All-in-One plan.
Posts job openings to boards and manages candidates and messages from a single hiring dashboard.
Connects with POS and payroll systems such as Square, Clover, Toast, and Gusto to sync sales and pay data.
Add-on that converts approved hours into paychecks, files federal and state taxes, and sends direct deposits.
Drag-and-drop schedule builder that pulls in employee availability, time-off, and roles, then publishes shifts to the team.
Role-based access and department views that control what managers and staff can see and edit.
Turns a phone, tablet, or connected POS into a time clock with PINs, photos, and GPS to stop buddy punching.
Auto-calculated timesheets that apply overtime and break rules and export directly to payroll.
Manages time-off requests, accruals, and coverage so approved leave syncs back to the schedule.
Free plan for a single location getting started with scheduling and time tracking.
For teams that need advanced scheduling and communication with unlimited employees.
For managers who want AI scheduling, time-off controls, and role permissions.
For operators managing labor costs, onboarding, and HR compliance across the business.
A decade-old, well-funded team app that earns its keep for hourly-shift operators, not salaried teams.
“Homebase bundles scheduling, time tracking, and payroll into one per-location subscription built for small hourly teams. It is a durable, well-funded bet, but the features operators want most sit on the higher paid tiers.”
Homebase sells one login for scheduling, the time clock, and payroll — for a 15-person diner, that consolidation is the whole point. The company's been at this since 2014 and pulled a $60 million Series D in 2024. That's a vendor that'll still be here at your next renewal.
Strategic fit depends on who you are. If you run hourly shifts across restaurants or retail, Homebase Payroll turning approved hours straight into paychecks is real leverage. If your team is salaried, most of this is dead weight.
Deputy and When I Work cover the same ground, and neither is going anywhere either. The catch is that the features an operator actually wants — AI auto-scheduling, labor forecasting — live on the $56 and $96 tiers, not the free one. Pilot it at one location for a full pay cycle before you roll it chain-wide.
Holds its own against Deputy and When I Work but doesn't clearly out-feature them.
Serving 100,000-plus small businesses with 4.8-star apps makes this a low-embarrassment choice.
A free Basic plan and same-day scheduling mean a manager sees value within one shift.
Consolidating scheduling, timesheets, and payroll fits hourly SMBs cleanly but adds little for salaried teams.
A decade in market and a $60M 2024 Series D signal a vendor that will be around.
Small hourly-shift operators who want scheduling and payroll in one app.
Managers of salaried teams who never track shift hours.
Homebase gives small operators the labor-cost discipline a COO usually builds by hand.
“Homebase turns scheduling into an operational control system, linking published shifts to projected sales and overtime alerts. For multi-location hourly businesses it standardizes labor management well, though its forecasting is shallower than dedicated workforce suites.”
Labor is the largest controllable cost in any hourly business — typically 25-35 percent of revenue — and most SMBs manage it with a spreadsheet and a guess. Homebase's Labor Cost Controls tie the published schedule to projected sales in real time and flag overtime before it lands. That's the operational discipline a COO usually has to build by hand.
Domain fit is strongest for multi-location operators. Per-location pricing and Departments & Permissions let you standardize how every store schedules and approves timesheets, which is exactly the consistency you want when you're running twelve units, not one.
The integration surface into Square, Toast, and Gusto keeps sales and pay data flowing without a middleware project. But the forecasting depth is thinner than a dedicated workforce-management suite like Deputy, and 7shifts still owns restaurants on menu-level labor analytics. For a business under 50 locations, Homebase is the right operational bet.
Strong all-in-one position but out-specialized by Deputy and 7shifts on depth.
Purpose-built for hourly restaurant, retail, and hospitality operations, not generic teams.
Native links into Square, Toast, Clover, and Gusto avoid custom middleware.
Per-location standardization scales cleanly as an operator adds units over three years.
Real-time labor forecasting against projected sales gives small operators genuine cost-control depth.
COOs standardizing labor and scheduling across many hourly locations.
Operators who need menu-level labor analytics for high-volume restaurants.
Per-location pricing from $24.95 a month rewards big teams and punishes multi-site chains.
“Homebase charges per location with unlimited employees, so a single crowded site gets unusually cheap coverage. Fully published tiers ease procurement, but the per-location model compounds quickly once you operate many stores.”
Homebase prices by location, not by head. For a 25-person restaurant, that inverts the usual math. Essentials runs $24.95 per month billed annually. Unlimited employees at that location, no per-seat creep.
Run the year-one number. One location on Plus at $56 is $672 annually. Add Homebase Payroll at $39 per month plus $6 per active employee: twenty staff pushes payroll to about $159 monthly. All-in, roughly $2,600 a year for one busy location.
Every tier is published — no sales call, so procurement won't stall. The free Basic plan caps at 20 employees, which is a real on-ramp. The catch: multiply per-location pricing across ten stores and the sticker climbs fast, where a per-seat rival like When I Work can look cheaper for large single sites.
Self-serve, published pricing means procurement rarely has to negotiate.
Monthly and annual options plus a free Basic tier, though annual billing drives the headline rates.
All four tiers and the payroll add-on are published without a sales call.
Overtime alerts and labor forecasting give a measurable payback on wage spend.
One busy location runs about $2,600 a year all-in, but multi-site costs compound.
Single-location operators with large hourly teams watching cost per head.
Multi-site chains with small headcounts at each location.
Homebase kills the Sunday-night scheduling texts and moves swaps and time theft into the app.
“Homebase covers the operations manager's real day: building schedules, approving swaps, and closing timesheets without spreadsheet reconciliation. Its Time Clock and overtime rules cut daily friction, though AI Auto-Scheduling is gated to a paid tier.”
The weekly schedule build is where an ops manager actually lives, and Homebase pulls availability, time-off, and roles into the drag-and-drop grid before you publish to everyone's phone. Shift swaps route through approval instead of the group chat. That alone kills half the Sunday-night texting.
The Time Clock earns its place: PIN codes, photo capture, and GPS geofencing stop the buddy-punch you'd otherwise catch a week late on the timesheet. Approved hours flow into timesheets with overtime and break rules already applied, so payroll prep stops being a Friday reconciliation.
AI Auto-Scheduling is the headline, but it sits on the $56 Plus plan, and it only autofills as well as your availability data is kept current. 7shifts still reads restaurant sales patterns more sharply, and When I Work's swap flow is a touch faster. For a general hourly operation, though, the daily friction here is low.
By day three the schedule build and swap approvals genuinely replace group-chat chaos.
Guidance is solid for managers but thinner than power-user-oriented rivals.
Low daily friction, though availability data must be kept current for auto-scheduling.
Covers core needs but trails 7shifts on restaurant-specific depth.
Clock-in hours flow into timesheets and payroll without manual re-entry.
Operations managers who build weekly hourly schedules across a full team.
Managers who need deep restaurant sales-based labor forecasting.
The employee phone app is the real product, and it earns its 4.8 stars.
“Homebase treats the employee phone app as the main product, and its 4.8-star rating shows the care. The free tier feels thin until you pay for the good features, but daily use mostly respects your time.”
For most of the team, Homebase isn't a dashboard — it's the phone app, and that's the right instinct. The iOS and Android apps sit at 4.8 stars across roughly 84,000 App Store reviews, the kind of number you don't fake. Staff check their schedule, clock in, and swap shifts without ever seeing the web side.
Onboarding is gentle because the free Basic plan lets one location poke around before paying. Team Messaging keeps shift notes and announcements out of a dozen personal text threads, which is the small thing that quietly saves your evening.
Not all clean. The catch is the good stuff — labor forecasting, hiring — hides behind the $56 and $96 tiers, so the free app feels a little empty until you pay up. When I Work's app feels smoother on swaps. But for an hourly crew glued to their phones, this mostly respects your time.
Team Messaging and shift notes cut the daily group-chat noise cleanly.
Simple for staff, though managers meet more setup on paid tiers.
Staff run scheduling, clock-in, and swaps entirely from native apps.
The free Basic plan lets a location try everything before paying.
A 4.8-star rating across roughly 84,000 reviews signals dependable everyday use.
Hourly staff who manage their shifts entirely from a phone.
Users who expect every feature on the free plan.
A decade-old, well-funded survivor whose free plan is the real hook.
“Homebase uses a genuinely free tier to pull small businesses in, then upsells the scheduling and payroll features that matter. The track record is solid and the funding real, but exit portability and paywalled AI are the fair things to watch.”
Free plan first. One location, 20 employees, zero dollars — that's the customer-acquisition engine, a good one. Homebase gets in the door free, then sells you up to the $56 Plus tier once you're hooked on the schedule.
The track record checks out, mostly. Founded 2014, a $60 million Series D in 2024, north of 100,000 businesses on the platform. This isn't a startup that vanishes. The 4.8-star app rating is real, not a launch-week vanity number.
Two things I'd watch. AI Auto-Scheduling is the marketing headline, but it's paywalled and only as good as your availability data. Exit portability is the usual SMB story — schedule and timesheet history sit in their system, no clean export on the pricing page. Deputy and When I Work are equally sticky. For an hourly SMB, this is a fair, durable bet.
Solid all-in-one bundle, but Deputy and When I Work cover the same ground.
No clear data-export or offboarding story appears on the pricing page.
$60M Series D and 100,000-plus customers make a shutdown unlikely soon.
Claims like 4.8 stars and per-location pricing hold up against the evidence.
A decade in market and a 2024 Series D back the durability pitch.
Skeptical SMB owners who want to trial scheduling before paying.
Buyers who need a documented data-export and offboarding path.
Common questions answered by our AI research team
Homebase has a free Basic plan for one location with up to 20 employees. Paid tiers are priced per location, not per user: Essentials at $24.95, Plus at $56, and All-in-One at $96 per month billed annually, all with unlimited employees.
Yes. The Homebase Payroll add-on turns approved timesheet hours into paychecks, files federal, state, and local taxes, and sends direct deposits. It costs $39 per month plus $6 per active employee and works on every plan, including the free Basic tier.
Homebase connects with major point-of-sale and payroll systems, including Square, Clover, Toast, and Lightspeed. Sales data flows in for labor-cost forecasting, and tracked hours can export to payroll providers like Gusto and QuickBooks.
Yes. Homebase offers native iOS and Android apps rated 4.8 out of 5 across roughly 84,000 App Store reviews. Employees can view schedules, clock in, swap shifts, message the team, and request time off from their phones.
Yes. The Homebase time clock uses PIN codes, photo verification, and GPS geofencing so employees only clock in on-site. It also blocks early clock-ins and flags approaching overtime to keep labor costs in check.
Company
HomebaseFounded
2014Pricing
From $30/moFree Trial
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Homebase builds all-in-one team management software—scheduling, time tracking, payroll, and HR—for small businesses with hourly workers. Based in San Francisco.
