Sling Reviews

Pros

Sling is a great program. We have been with sling for 3 years now. We love sling. It better than spectrum for cable. Sling is way cheaper than any cable on market unless you go annetena. In order to use sling we had to buy roku to get sling for our tv. Sling programs offers very good rates for cable channels and more. Sling also offers dvr for any channel they have. My favorite channel is hallmark. Sling offers 3 hallmark channels that i never knew was on market. So being on a budget this was good buy and reasonable. Just to enjoy sling. I highly recommend it to anyone that is on a budget.

Cons

I don't have any complaints or downfall with sling. I am very happy and pleased with sling. I don't know what i do without sling program. It great program and you can't go wrong with sling.

Pros

I love how easy it is to create a schedule and see what employees are not available, it makes completing the schedule painless and quick. I also love that you can complete it as non-published then once you are ready publish it to your employees. The notification feature telling employees when you schedule them and then again reminding them they are schedule is fantastic; my employees love that feature also. Being able to use the integrated time clock is also a great feature. There are just so many feature and customizations that it would be an asset for any type of business at any size.

Cons

I absolutely love this software. The only thing that would be nice to add is the ability for an employee to put their availability in addition to the current feature of unavailability. Because we have many employees who work "as needed" and "very part time" this would save a lot of time on their part on entering information. We could easily see when these "flex" employees would be available to work without them having to put in an excessive amount of unavailable entries as they do now.

Pros

Easy access to distribute schedules and messages.

Cons

Private messaging. Users can private message each other within Sling. If these messages take a negative turn. Sexual Harassment or something else. There is no way no monitor these messages. Unless a screen shot was taken there is no proof, because if the either of the user deletes the message it is gone.

Pros

Being able to copy and paste the schedule weekly saves time when making a schedule. In my department alone I have 87 employees. The unavailability feature is great so that as managers we can ensure we are scheduling people when they are available. This reduces the amount of time we would need to make adjustments to schedules if we scheduled someone when they were not available.
The messaging and announcement feature is great so that we can send out a group message to get an announcement out to all associates. Also being able to send private messages to employees is great so we do not have to give our personal phone number out to all employees.

Cons

Not being able to delete private messages. We can archive the messages but cannot delete them. We have to archive each one individually which is time consuming. Also when we want to delete an announcement we have to check two boxes and then hit delete. Would be better if we could just click on the announcement or multiple announcements and hit delete.

Alternatives Considered

Deputy

Reasons for Switching to Sling

When we started the process of opening our store knowing that we would have close to 600 employees throughout multiple departments I knew we would need some sort of scheduling software. Our other location which is much smaller in operation was using Excel for each department. I had roughly 200 associates in my department when we first opened. I searched online for a scheduling software and came across Sling. After using the free version I realized this would be perfect for our store. I brought it to our General Manager and he agreed that we should use this software. We have been using it store wide in all departments now for about a year and a half.

Pros

The timeclock system is very easy to use, and you can effortlessly apply filters to execute payroll and AR procedures.

Cons

The customer service leaves a lot to be desired. Not all agents are bad [Thank you [sensitive content hidden] for saving us!], but most of the time the responses are generic, and provide no real solution.

Alternatives Considered

Workday Adaptive Planning

Reasons for Choosing Sling

Quickbooks Times is a clumsy system. There's too many modifications you need to make to execute payroll efficiently, and that affects billing for those contractor hours as well.

Switched From

QuickBooks Time

Reasons for Switching to Sling

The walkthrough and trial period Sling provided allowed us to test run their system, and identify that they were a match - thank you [sensitive content hidden]!

Pros

The ease all the staff can enter the dates they want to work, so schedules can be covered. Cuts down on phone calls of management to see who is available for uncovered shits and days.

Cons

I would like the Staff- Off that day Days to be at the top of the Schedule so the person doing the scheduling would know who not to look for on that shift.

Pros

Easy to use, clear color coded positions

Cons

Labor management tools are lacking, would like to see some sales projection tools

Alternatives Considered

HotSchedules

Reasons for Switching to Sling

Sling Scheduling came as a free integration with Toast POS

Pros

This software is very helpful for scheduling, tracking time punches, and reporting. Especially when integrated with Toast, Sling is excellent! The mobile functionality of Sling is also incredibly important and useful.

Cons

The user interface in the mobile app leaves a bit to be desired.

Pros

Very easy to use, visually easy to read both in scheduling and time cards.

Cons

Can't think of anything! Zero complaints from me!

Alternatives Considered

Meevo

Reasons for Choosing Sling

Mostly to save paper, but also to keep employees honest

Reasons for Switching to Sling

Meevo was almost what we needed for scheduling appointments, and included a time clock option. We went with a different program that included routing, and does not have a time clock option.

Pros

Free version suitable for small team to try and use + availability - flexibility to update in case of more requirements. App + web and notifications... Generally we have not found better product so far for 24/7 operations team.

Cons

Not really , suits our needs, if you need more reports you have to pay, what is normal and reasonable. Not sure if possible to have few different time zones in one schedule, based on location

Pros

I really like how easy is is to schedule people, put up available shifts for employees and the reminders so people know to come in to work. It makes my job easier and gives me some peace of mind.

Cons

I have a couple issues.My least favorite thing is the mobile app, I said before it's just clunky and doesn't feel like a mobile app.I also need a way to view pdf's on the app without it downloading to your phone.And lastly it would make everything so much easier if I could have an hourly rate and a day rate option for employee's.That would solve all my issues and make me love using this scheduling system. I think I could even get some live music venues in the area to use it too because there isnt a program that does all of those things and your system is already really easy to use.

Alternatives Considered

7shifts and Slack

Reasons for Switching to Sling

The layout of the program on desktop and the easy way to set everything up made me go with sling.

Pros

Transparent scheduling features, ease of use of the timeclock to report hours, and ability to modify reports through dates, locations, and employees.

Cons

Customer service usually doesn't have an answer for you - although they are polite - I wish that some of these bugs we encountered were ironed out sooner than later.

Pros

Clocking in works great with SLING, scheduling and the employee interaction with the app is fantastic!

Cons

Getting use to messaging for help, were all used to calling someone. I found it works great and the response time is quick and responsive.

Pros

The mobile app is what makes this package great. My employees love the push notifications when new shifts are posted.

We have a variable schedule and a student workforce. Our MO is to post available shifts when we need people to work. Sling! lets our students apply for as many or as few shifts as they like. We can then approve individuals to put our team for the day together based on the skills of those who have applied and the needs of the tasks at hand.

Cons

There is no view available that visually groups like time blocks into shifts.

Our shifts don't follow a set schedule, but we often need more than one person to work the same time block on a given day. There are now several features to help you save time when scheduling things like this. For example, you can copy shifts to avoid having to enter all of the same details multiple times, and you can select several different positions when creating a shift, but once created, each person shows up as their own event on the schedule.

If I've got a half dozen different people working for each of four different time blocks on a single day, the calendar starts to get a little overwhelming with 24 separate events represented. If there was a way to group like time blocks into shifts with multiple employees assigned, this example would be down to 4 separate events, which is much easier to quickly get your head around.

Pros

We have tried several different scheduling softwares. All fell short in one way or another. Sling is easy to use as an administrator and also as an employee. Very intuitive and love having the option to send messages as well.

Cons

The only negative I can find is that when printing the schedule, it is not in a easy format so is not user friendly.

Pros

Sling is critical to the planning of deploying staff in a large scale environment of events. The ease of use for both users and managers alike.

Cons

Nothing. Sling is an all encompassing app / Website that we use on a daily basis

Alternatives Considered

PARiM and Timegate

Pros

I like that it is free and it makes it easy to see who is working when. I can color code people and see when they are not available and want time off. We also can communicate and I get updates immediately in my email.

Cons

There isn't an option to calendar meetings so I get around it by using the Employee feature to name repeating meetings. I also would like the Notes feature to be more prominent. It would be nice to know there is a caveat on a shift that we need to know about.

Pros

I really appreciate that there is an accessible employee database. This feature allows me to not have to add every employee on my personal phone because I can reference the database for needed information. I also quite like the Newsfeed feature. We currently have different categories in which to post pertinent information. It is helpful in sharing information with the team when we are all not present.

Cons

I do not like that when on my desktop, the Newsfeed will alert me about new posts but the alert will not go away after I review the posts.

Pros

I like how easy it is to schedule employees

Cons

It’s harder to use on my ipad than on my computer b ut still very easy to use

Pros

Love the fact that I can look out months out to see who I have off and when. It let's those who are on vacation know what their schedule is without calling the store. We can communicate with our employee's when we have a store meeting, if we have shifts

Cons

My one and only issue is the cost. As a General Manager of one store, the overall company does not pay to use Sling so I am responsible for the bill. I am sure though, that a company as a whole would not have an issue with the cost.

Pros

The easiness of managing labour costs in real time.

Cons

Not being able to manually put someone in as late if we don't use the "time clock" feature within Sling.

Pros

Our company uses the basic level of Sling for scheduling. It’s nice to creat reoccurring shifts, allow employees to submit requests off, put daily notes in and to be able to trade shifts (with managementa approval). Not really sure how I put up with my previous way of scheduling. Sling has made it a breeze.

Cons

No cons on the basic level - maybe if we paid for it, there might be a con?…

Pros

I love the filter fields which help me view specific schedules with ease. I also love the newsfeed feature! Overall, sling has been the best scheduling app and I have no complaints thus far. Great work!!

Cons

I would like the option to reply directly to a message instead of having to mention the person. That way, the original message, and reply can be seen together.

For the desktop version, please improve the update to the current date function. I have to refresh multiple times to remove the 404 error and it can be annoying.

Pros

Sling offers the flexibility to schedule and track staffing for irregular events (catering) with ease. I can also track actual hours worked vs my budget and schedule. Tremendously helpful. Their support has been very responsive, too.

Cons

Not much I would change! The only issue my team and I have experienced is that the notifications can be excessive, e.g. if I post a month work of events, staff who are eligible for multiple positions will get dozens of notifications. It'd be nice if there was an option to get a notice of updates, but a digest of the details.

Pros

Ease of use, instant notification to my staff of changes in the schedule, and making my staff responsible for making those changes.

Cons

If you could give the option of having the work week go from Sunday to Saturday, instead of only Monday to Sunday that would be awesome.