Bring your team across this week, not next quarter.

Why switch?

Something already broke, or you wouldn't be reading this. The schedule went down on a Saturday night and nobody picked up the phone. Or next week's schedule moved back into a spreadsheet, because that was faster than the tool you pay for.

Whatever brought you here, the honest answer depends on what you're leaving. Below are the three places people come from. Start with yours, because a spreadsheet and a five-year-old contract are very different weeks.

Shiftbase in one minute

Shiftbase is the workforce software for shift-based businesses. Employee scheduling, time tracking, absence management, and HR sit in one place, from the first shift you plan to the hours that reach payroll. 8,000+ businesses run on it, most of them between one and a hundred locations.

The idea underneath it: a schedule shouldn't start empty. Availability, contracts, leave, and the rules you have to follow are in there before your manager opens next week. So the manager approves rather than coordinates, and the hours that come out the other end are the ones payroll pays.

It's probably a fit if:

• your people are scheduled in whole shifts: a morning, an afternoon, a full day

• the admin that eats your week comes from those shifts: who's on, who called in sick, who's owed what

• your worked hours have to reach payroll correct, every period

• you're outgrowing how you run it today, whether that's a spreadsheet and a group chat or four tools that don't talk to each other

• you want one place for the schedule, the hours, time off, and the figures payroll needs

It's probably not a fit if:

• your planning comes from something other than shifts: routes, client visits, tickets, projects, or campaigns. That admin is real, and it isn't the admin Shiftbase removes.

• you need on-call shifts or rotating week patterns. Both are on the list, neither is here yet, and you'd rather hear that now than in week two.

• you want an HR system without a schedule underneath it, or payroll software that runs the pay run itself. Shiftbase connects to those instead.

• you're happy with how you run shifts today. Nothing here will change that, and that's fine.

• you like admin.

Switching from Excel and WhatsApp

Balances drift, because someone approved a day off and never went back to the sheet. Sick calls get logged in WhatsApp and never reach the schedule. The planner builds next week without knowing two people are on vacation. Payroll gets last month's leave as a list someone typed up by hand, and the errors surface when an employee reads their payslip.

The 6am sick call is the test. It has to reach the schedule, the timesheet, and payroll in one move, and a spreadsheet cannot carry it that far. Neither can a general HR system, because it has no idea what today's shifts look like.

What the switch looks like from here: your spreadsheet is the import file. Nothing to unpick, no contract to end, no notice to serve. Most people are running inside a day and spend the parallel week checking rather than worrying.

Switching from pen and paper

The schedule on the wall works right up until someone needs to see it from home. Then it becomes a photo in a group chat, the wall version changes twice more that week, and two people turn up for the same shift. Paper holds up fine on the wall. It can't be read from a bus.

You have nothing to migrate. No export, no file, no old system holding your data hostage. Enter your team once, with their contracts and the hours they're available, and from then on you build next week from what's already there.

What the switch looks like from here: the shortest of the three. One afternoon to enter your people, and your first schedule goes out the same week. The wall can keep the specials.

Switching from another tool

Shiftbase asks everyone who switches why they left. After a few hundred of those conversations the answers stopped surprising us. Five come back again and again, and they're specific enough that you'll know within a line whether one of them is yours.

What your current tool does well

You picked it for a reason, and it probably still does that one thing well. A comparison table where we win every row would tell you nothing you can use. So here's the version we'd give you on a call: what each of these is good at, and where the people who left told us it ran out.

Already on an HR system? You're not switching away from it

Shiftbase connects to tools like Personio, HoorayHR, jacando, and Buddee. Your people data stays where it is. Scheduling, hours, and leave come from Shiftbase and land in payroll the same way they do now. There are integrations with over 40 tools, and you'll find all of them in the marketplace.

The line items that disappear

Switching takes something off the invoice as well. One customer was paying roughly €8 per employee per month for contract signatures alone, on top of what they paid us. HR PRO does that job for €1. Add up the small tools you're carrying before you compare headline prices, and let the ROI calculator do the arithmetic.

About switching

Leaving is the easy decision. What stops people is the week in between, where neither system is right and half the team can't see their shifts.

That week doesn't have to happen. You run both systems side by side until the numbers agree, then you switch one off. Below: the three steps, the five days they fit into, and what your week looks like once you're through.

What a switch actually involves

Switching takes three steps, and none of them are interesting.

What a switch week looks like

A switch week, start to finish. All of this fits inside the 14 days, with a week to spare.

What changes after the switch

Moving the data takes a week. What you switched for shows up in the second one, when nobody asks you who's working Thursday. Four things change, and every one of them takes work off someone's plate.

Nothing to escape at our end

You're leaving software you couldn't get out of, so the fair question to ask us is what happens when you want to leave this one. You pick the contract length instead of inheriting it, your data walks out the way it walked in, and starting costs nothing. We'd rather earn the month than hold you to a year.

How to switch

How you start depends on how much of this you want to do yourself. One location with a spreadsheet behind it can sign up this afternoon and publish by Thursday. Six locations, a collective agreement, and a finance lead who wants numbers first is a different conversation, and we'd rather have it than watch you spend a fortnight in a trial that was never going to answer your question.

Four ways in, in order of how involved we get.

Try 14 days for free

Everything switched on, which is what makes the parallel week a fair comparison. Long enough for the import, the week alongside, and a proper look at the hours. Sign up today and set it up yourself. No card, and no sales call unless you ask for one.

Schedule a fit check

Half an hour with someone who does this every week. Tell us what you run now, how many locations and people you have, and which week of the month eats your evenings. We'll tell you whether Shiftbase fits, which plan you need, and what your import looks like. If it doesn't fit we'll say so on the call, and you've lost half an hour instead of a fortnight.

Book a demo

For when the decision isn't only yours. Bring your locations, your rules, and the week you actually run, and we'll show you that week rather than a made-up restaurant where everyone turns up. Bring whoever has to live with the choice too: your managers ask different questions than your finance lead, and it saves a round of email if they hear the answers together. Half of most demos ends up being about the collective agreement, and that's usually the half that decides it. Book a demo.

Get your stakeholders onboard

After a trial or a demo, the decision moves to the people who have to sign for it and live with it: owners, finance, and the managers running the floor. Book an internal presentation with one of our product specialists, and send the pitches below round beforehand so the obvious objections are off the table before anyone sits down.

Pitch to owners

You get time and money back to spend on the floor instead of losing both to admin. It's month to month, so the decision stays reversible, and one location can run free while you make up your mind.

Pitch to finance

Payroll errors and corrections cost you every period, and they're the kind of cost that never shows up as a line item. Pre-payroll shows you labour costs while you can still do something about them. Journal entries go straight into Nmbrs, AFAS, and the rest, so nobody retypes them. Cleaner numbers, and a faster month-end close.

Pitch to managers

Your managers decide whether this works, not the person who signs for it. Next week opens as a draft instead of a blank grid, with availability, contracts, and leave already in it. Swap requests, open shifts, and sick calls arrive in one place instead of four, and approving a week takes minutes rather than an evening at the kitchen table.

Worth saying out loud: the first schedule they build in Shiftbase takes longer than the old way. The second one doesn't, and by week three they've stopped thinking about it.

Pitch to employees

Your shifts, your hours, and your leave live on the phone you already carry. See next week the moment it's published, along with who you're on with, pick up an open shift or swap one without starting a group chat, and check your leave balance without asking anyone in an office.

Clocking in takes a tap, and a reminder tells you when it's time to clock out, so the hours on your payslip are the hours you worked. You set your own profile photo too, which is a small thing people like more than you'd expect. Work for two businesses that both run Shiftbase and they sit under the same email address, so you switch between them without logging out.

The best week to do it

Start at the beginning of a pay period, so you never split a month across two systems and payroll gets one clean file. Avoid your busiest week, and if you run a seasonal business, stay clear of the four weeks before your season opens. Beyond that any month works, because the parallel week catches whatever the calendar throws at it.

One timing mistake worth avoiding: switching in the same week you change something else. One new system at a time.