Top Staff Management Apps for Retailers Using the Shopify POS
One of the most important responsibilities as a store owner is staff management. Keeping an eye on every member of your staff, their productivity, performance, and motivation are key elements to make your business grow. After all, what are retail stores without employees?
The purpose of this article is to inform the reader about the importance, benefits, and the most effective staff management apps available on the market for the retail industry.
What Is a Staff Management App?
These apps allow you to easily and effectively keep track of your staff through a series of tools given by a digital platform. The features included in staff management apps let you have control of your employees' information, engagement, and productivity/performance. Their main goal is to provide convenient functionalities right into your mobile device, letting you do the same and even more tasks that you were able to do, but in an easier, safer, and more efficient way.
They also allow you to access your team members' data whenever you want to and have control over all registers introduced by your employees, as well as editing them in case of a mistake while submitting the data. All this information is constantly updated and synced with the app's servers, so as long as you have an internet connection, you'll be able to access it. These apps also make it easier to calculate payroll owed to your employees, given their abilities to display the hours worked during their shifts.
Does Shopify have a payroll app?
Shopify's app store has several options available for payroll, some of them include more staff management features and integrations than others, which is why in this article you'll see the best-reviewed ones in the market and their respective comparison.
Can employees clock in on Shopify?
As a matter of fact, they can, but only through third-party apps available on Shopify's app store, and as mentioned before, they come with a wide variety of features available so you'll be able to select the one that fits your store the most, even If it is a brick and mortar or an online business.
How do I clock in and out on Shopify?
It depends on the Shopify App you're using, it is recommended to watch tutorials of the app you select to work with and get to know all the features it provides, not only the time clock one. This way, you will exploit all the benefits a staff management app offers to your business.
How do I add a time counter on Shopify?
As stated before, a Shopify store natively can't do that kind of task, however, a third-party app can totally provide you with those features. Of course, the way to do it will depend on the app you select and use in your retail store. In case you haven't selected one app for this yet, the next topics will be all about the best options available.
What Are Their Benefits?
Less Manual Errors: Some retailers use manual data entry tools to keep track of their employees, such as Word or Excel documents, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and even paper and pencil registers. These practices leave you and your staff at risk of making mistakes while introducing data and, of course, the efficiency and accuracy will be affected.
Increased Efficiency: Having all of your team's records stored and categorized in a digital platform gives you the advantage of reducing the time spent on staff management tasks, such as time tracking, timesheets, reports, and so on.
Trust Building: Knowing for a fact that your employees are following their schedules and completing their tasks helps you build trust among your team members. Staff management apps let you track the performance, schedules, productivity, and motivation of your team, so you will always know what's happening in your store even if you're not there.
Cloud-based: Most of these apps have their own servers where they store every piece of data you enter, so the only thing you need to access all your staff member's stored data is an internet connection. You can forget about having servers of your own or a huge storage capacity.
Data Safety: Since your data will be securely stored inside the app's servers, there is no way you lose it in case of a hack or any incident that may happen to your software.
Enhance Staff Productivity: Staff management apps act as a supervisor of your employees, given that one of their most common features is a time tracker, workers will feel the motivation to complete their tasks in the very best way possible, this may include sales performance, punctuality, time organization, etc.
Top 5 Staff Management Apps for Retailers
1- EasyTeam
As one of the top Shopify apps for retail staff management, EasyTeam stands out as the best. The interface is extremely intuitive and can be used by anyone, regardless of their level of technical knowledge. Thousands of retail business owners use this app for their businesses and rate it with a relatively high five-star rating, claiming it's a valuable tool for growing their business.
EasyTeam's Pricing:
But, what makes EasyTeam be the most convenient app at this top? In addition to offering a free plan with all of its features, it continuously adds new functionality specifically tailored to work with the Shopify POS hardware. This way, it can be easily integrated into your Shopify store and any member of your team will be able to access all of its features right into the Shopify POS app. In addition, its prices are very competitive.
As a retail store owner, having all of these functionalities right into your Shopify POS system represents a huge advantage in terms of convenience and productivity. Here you have a list of EasyTeam's features so you can see for yourself why it stands out from all the other Shopify apps available:
Scheduling: EasyTeam supports multi-location scheduling, with staff permissions. In the POS, managers, and admins can add, edit, and delete each employee's daily shifts from the employee's calendar.
Time Clock: Imagine how easy it would be to quickly clock in and out in your store's POS hardware and with just a few clicks. Well, that can easily be done thanks to EasyTeam. Each time your employees want to clock in or out, they just need to login into the Shopify POS system, select the Time Clock tile, and... they're clocked in!
Checklists: Having control over your store's procedures is easier than ever. With EasyTeam, you'll be able to create personalized checklists for every task you want to and indicate to your employees the specific steps they need to follow. This can be helpful for inventory management or product inventory tasks, daily routines, and the best part is that your created checklists can be monitored by admins even in the case of multiple warehouses.
Staff: This feature allows you to customize your staff members, add a new employee, edit it, and delete them as well. You can also select the location in which they will work, in the case of a store with multiple locations. EasyTeam displays every staff member with their respective name, location, salary/wage, department, position, and status.
Sales and commissions: This feature lets you check your staff's sales performance by showing you their sales count, sales amount, the average amount per sale, sales amount per labor hour, and commissions. You'll be able to select their type of commission plans, being those options a fixed percentage of each sale and a steps plan, which increases the commission rate based on the employee's performance. Additionally, you can export all the sales data registered on EasyTeam in a CSV file. This way, you'll have control over all your sales channels, see an overview of your staff's performance, make improvements if needed, and get more customers. The commissions are synced with the payroll automatically as well.
Timesheets: You'll be able to manage your payroll more easily right into your Shopify POS with just a few clicks. The timesheets feature lets you export time reports based on the data registered by your employees when they clock in and out in-store, so all this information is gathered and categorized into the system. This turns out to be very helpful when payroll time comes.
Not only EasyTeam provides all the features mentioned above, but it also allows Shopify POS integration so you have the possibility of adding them right into your Shopify dashboard as a new tile. You can create and assign staff roles and permissions in Shopify POS too, this lets you decide which responsibilities each worker should manage.
2- Clockify
Clockify's Pricing:
The number 2 on this list, Clockify, provides brick and mortar store owners with several features that facilitate an intuitive, comprehensive staff management experience. Here's a list of Clockify's main features available:
Timesheet: For example, you can use this feature to create and select activities, enter time for each of them, use templates to quickly load activities each week, submit and approve employee timesheets, set reminders for due timesheets, etc.
Time tracker: Employees are able to track time with the stopwatch as they work, input and edit hours manually, and start and stop the timer. They can stop and continue tracking with just one click and mark hours as billable too.
Calendar: It lets you visualize your working day, add blocks of hours with a click, and edit them by resizing. You can also connect events by adding them from Outlook/Google.
Reports: The application allows you to see who worked on what, how much money was earned, how much time the team spent working on a project, and even export the data. You can view this data by day, activity, and user, then drill down into your data, and share reports via a link with clients. The exporting formats available are PDF, CSV, and Excel.
With this app, you'll have the ability to create, customize, and modify a series of elements like projects, teams, clients, tags, and invoices related to your retail store. However, it can be adapted to an online store too.
Clockify also has wide device compatibility, you'll be able to use it on both your computers and mobile devices to keep track of your team wherever you are. These are the platforms Clockify is currently compatible with:
Web App: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.
Mobile App: Android and iOS.
Desktop App: Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Unfortunately, Clockify lacks Shopify compatibility which means it cannot be installed on your POS systems.
3- SocialSchedules
SocialSchedules takes third place in this list with a great way to simplify timesheets and schedules while also providing an effortless time tracking process. It has a powerful and very intuitive user interface where you and your employees will be able to interact no matter how tech-savvy you are. SocialSchedules offers a free basic version with some handy features but if you want to get more of it, you'll need to pay for the following subscription plans:
SocialSchedules' Pricing:
Here is a list of the main features offered by this app, keeping in mind that some of them will require a starter, premium, or enterprise subscription.
Scheduling: With this feature, you can easily create schedules in minutes, find replacements for your employees, and manage their time off.
TimeClock: Helps time tracking and attendance of your staff while simplifying timesheets and running payroll faster at the same time.
Communication: This allows you to create group messaging for your team, add shift reminders, and manage logbooks.
Compliance: You'll be able to monitor meal and rest breaks, overtime, compliance warnings, and certifications.
Integrations: It offers compatibility with some of the popular POS and payroll solutions such as Square POS, POSitouch, Future POS, and Shift 4. However, it cannot be integrated with Shopify POS.
4- Planday
Planday and its great functionalities rank 4th on this list. The app comes with a number of smart features that make managing employees easier. Planday doesn't display its specific plan costs, but its packages are sold in increments of five users. It accepts multiple payment methods including major credit and debit cards. The 4 plans available are Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise, of course, in order to have more resources available, it is required a subscription to the most expensive plans. Planday offers a 30-day free trial.
Staff Management: Planday helps you eliminate the need to check schedules, employee files, and email to manage your staff by giving you access to all of it right in the same place. You'll be able to categorize your team by employees, groups, and positions for both cases of single and multiple locations. It also lets you manage your team's availability, absence, and vacations while always making sure everyone follows your business policies over time by letting you set compliance warnings.
Scheduling: You can use the schedule to get a snapshot of your weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly outlook. Moreover, it will be displayed how many hours each employee is scheduled to work and what salary they will be paid for those hours. You can build smart schedules to avoid their non-compliance and make sure everyone's in the right place at the right time. If you already have a schedule that works for you, you can save it as a template.
Communication: Planday includes internal channels where you and your staff can keep in touch whenever you need to. It includes a force read feature that makes it necessary for employees to read an important message in order to continue using the app. Staff can also receive updates when they punch in, which helps everyone stay up to date on any time-sensitive or important information.
Punch Clock: It's basically a time clock that allows employees to clock in through the app using location-specific time tracking and lets you export the timesheets for payroll purposes. Employees can use their own iOS or Android device to start and end shifts and take breaks with Planday's Punch Clock.
Reporting: Perfect for monitoring staff costs and shift patterns efficiently. The number of hours and shifts worked by each staff member is displayed. You can also see start and end times for each shift, who called in sick, and which type of shift each employee worked. Reports allow you to input your weekly revenue and compare it with salary costs.
Integrations: Planday includes a wide list of partners in many areas such as analytics, HR, payroll, and point of sale. One of their best and well-praised integrations is the ability to link QuickBooks online. However, the point of sale support is lacking options, specifically Shopify POS system integration.
5- When I Work
Last but not least, When I Work rounds out this top 5. This app was developed not only to save time on scheduling, but to reduce chaos, costs, and turnover inside your brick-and-mortar store. It's available as a desktop and mobile app, allowing its users to complete their staff scheduling requirements on their preferred platform.
When I Work's Pricing:
Here's a list of the main features When I Work has to offer:
Employee Scheduling: As an admin, you'll be able to assign skills to your employees, this way, when you're trying to add them to a schedule, the system will tell you if that specific employee is capable or trained for that shift. It will also automatically let you know if an employee is available for the day/time you're assigning them to. Also, there's the "drag and drop" functionality which allows you to manually edit your employees' schedules. Employees can use the schedules created for them to clock in and out of the platform.
Timesheets: Due to the integration of timesheets into the software, you can manage your staff's payroll easily and more reliably since it's based on the data registered throughout the month.
Team Messaging: Admins are able to communicate internally with every member of the staff without the need to share their phone numbers and keep them posted in case of an emergency.
Time & Attendance: This feature allows employees to turn their mobile devices into a time clock. They can clock in and out of the system with just one click. The software includes smart functionalities that don't allow employees to clock in before their shifts have started and also reminders to clock out their shifts to avoid overtime.
In conclusion
All of the apps on this list were selected because of their functionalities and abilities to streamline and simplify staff management tasks. Sometimes, both retail and online store owners struggle with timesheets for payroll purposes, scheduling hourly shift workers, training new employees, etc. So, the number one app in this top not only makes each one of these tasks a breeze but also brings Shopify POS system compatibility to your business.
In this article, the number one app was EasyTeam, which provided the best features and integrations for the price. It's also recommended and amazingly reviewed by its users. So, you can start using EasyTeam's completely free version right now and check it out for yourself.
