WhenToWork vs Google Calendar: Which is a better fit?

Greg: Hey, my name is Greg, I'm a lifeguard and I give WhenToWork three out of five stars. For more reviews like this go ahead and click below. So there are a few other options for scheduling in terms of hourly rotation shifts, things like that. And I think a lot of them probably serve the same purpose as WhenToWork, but I've noticed that quite a few employers, especially ones that I've worked with in the past, will tend to build these things internally and that's where I think WhenToWork really comes in and saves the day. There's no need to build something in-house, it's honestly a lot more complicated and it may not work as well. And so I think when it comes to scheduling WhenToWork can really have your back. Yeah, so WhenToWork provides a few different functions that I think make it a relatively good scheduling tool. One, they have a mobile app which is nice. I think more and more people who you work with will have access to a mobile phone, maybe when they don't have access to a computer. But also they take into account different preferences and things like that. So for some employers you may have a really consistent schedule, but for other employers your employees may be rotating through in terms of when they can work. And WhenToWork makes it really easy to say, hey, this is when I am available, this time, and this may be repeating. And then for other employees, it might be like, hey, I'm available here, but on this particular date I'm going to be out of the area. And it makes these things relatively easy and sort of something that until you run into that problem is maybe not as obvious. So I think as with many of these software platform solutions, WhenToWork thrives the most, I think, when you're coming from something that doesn't exist yet. So if you're lucky enough to just be starting out, this is a great solution to just run with. I came in as an employee and was using WhenToWork and had no problems learning how to use it very quickly. It was super easy to use. That said, I wasn't used to using a different platform first. It was sort of what I was just presented with. Yeah. So if you're thinking about purchasing something like WhenToWork or building internally, I'd really consider what your main goal is here. If your hope is to save time and have a really reliable scheduling software, WhenToWork's a good option. I know as someone who enjoys coding, I'd be prone to trying to build my own solution, but scheduling is a really hard problem to solve. And I think WhenToWork gets very close to doing that well, if not better than the alternatives. You have other existing software or human resources management tools, I'd look into if those integrate well. It can make things like payment easier for paying your wages, but on the whole I think it's a really good option.

Laura: Hi, I'm Laura, and I'm the owner. I'm giving Google Calendar a five out of five for my review. And if you'd like to see more reviews, click below. Before I was using Google Calendar, just because I'm ancient, I was using paper. I carried around a little notebook that had a planner days, weeks, months, and I had a huge calendar in my office and I had to match the planner with the calendar on the wall. And if I wanted to work with other people, I had to print a copy of the calendar and go to a physical meeting with them, with all of their planner books so that we could make our calendars the same. This was really not efficient. Moving away from paper into digital. And I picked Google Calendar first because I had Gmail account and it was attached to Gmail. So super easy. And then it's online. So wherever I was that I had my computer or my smartphone, I could access my calendar and I was able to stop double booking, provided I looked at my calendar first. Then it was easy to add people to the calendar. Whether they had Gmail or not, I could invite them, and so we could all have a shared calendar and that worked really well. It was kind of first come, first serve too. It was one of the first online calendars I saw, and it was so easy to use that I've just never changed. Bringing Google Calendar into your business and having it work successfully for your team. This depends on your team. If your team are kind of fun, geeky, love new things people, it's just easy because it's easy to put on appointments. It's easy to make a Zoom meeting in the Zoom calendar, I mean, in the Google calendar. It's super easy. It's easy to invite people to a meeting, easy to accept. All of that's cool. If you have apps. I have one client I work with, and they have Trello, and we are connecting Trello to Google Calendar so that for the people who need to see it printed on a calendar, we can do that. That interaction is super helpful. The documentation is good. You can find what you need, and if you follow the steps, it works perfectly. So the first thing I would say if you're thinking about getting Google Calendar is get it. And why? It's easy to use. It's accessible all over the place, on your phone, on your laptop, on your desktop. Even if you're with somebody else, and you're borrowing their internet, you can get to your calendar. It's easily shareable, and that's a wonderful function for families, for working teams. You can share a calendar so that you all have your deadlines and everything together in one place. And that connectivity is excellent. If you happen to use a different program for booking and receiving payments, then you can connect that to your Google Calendar with about two clicks. And anybody who purchases a slot on your calendar and pays for it, shows right up on your Google Calendar. And if you have something else booked on your Google Calendar, that spot's not available for them to book in your scheduling and payment place. For me, this just simplified everything I was doing in my business. So again, if you're thinking about getting Google Calendar, go ahead and do it.