Company Profile
WhenToWork
Built by TCP Software · San Angelo, Texas
Founded
2000
Payroll Exports
60+
Parent Funding
$418M
Starting Price
$38/mo
HQ
1 Time Clock Drive, San Angelo, TX
Ownership
TCP Software, acquired Sept 2023
Employees
868 across TCP Software
Core Service
Employee shift scheduling
Verified Scale
25 Years In Service
Trading under the same product name since 2000, through one acquisition
1M+ App Installs
Android app has passed a million installs and carries 3,160 ratings
Six-Product Portfolio
Sits beside TimeClock Plus, Humanity, Aladtec, ScheduleAnywhere and InstaSub
Key Differentiator
Pricing is per account, not per seat. One flat rate covers every manager and every employee up to your paid headcount ceiling, which is unusual in a category that bills per user. Seasonal operations can suspend an account over the off-season at no cost and keep their employee records and past schedules. WhenToWork also runs a separate Pro Plan that gates the API, linked multi-location accounts and group administration.
Support:
What is WhenToWork?
WhenToWork is an online employee scheduling tool that helps managers create and share work schedules without the usual headaches. It’s built for teams that need to stay organized, especially when shifts change often or staff availability is all over the place.
With this tool, putting together a full weekly schedule takes way less time, and everything’s in one place so you’re not juggling texts, calls, or sticky notes.
One of the best things about WhenToWork is how easy it is to match shifts with who’s available. Employees can set their preferred hours, and the system can auto-fill schedules based on those preferences.
That means fewer complaints and better coverage. Plus, managers can make quick changes, and everyone gets notified instantly, so there’s no confusion about who’s working when. If someone can’t make their shift, they can offer it up, and others can pick it up with just a few clicks.
The tool also lets teams communicate better. You can send messages, post updates, and even block out time for training or meetings, all within the same system. And because it’s online, everyone can access their schedules from their phone or laptop, whether they’re at work or on the go.
WhenToWork also includes features like shift swapping, time-off requests, and conflict warnings, which help prevent last-minute scrambles.
It works well for small businesses, retail teams, restaurants, and any place where people work in shifts. Managers save time, employees feel more in control, and the whole team runs smoother.
It’s not overloaded with extra stuff you don’t need. Just a clear, solid way to manage schedules, reduce confusion, and keep everyone on the same page without the stress.
Editor’s Rating for WhenToWork
Scores draw on 239 verified user reviews, 3,650 app store ratings, the vendor’s own product documentation, and our read of its published pricing and export material. We score WhenToWork as a dedicated scheduling tool rather than against the broader workforce suites it never set out to be.
239 verified reviews analyzed
WhenToWork · Employee Scheduling Review 2026
Strong on the single job it does, with the widest split we have measured in this category between what managers score and what their staff score.
1. Pricing & Value
The entry tier moved from $28 to $38 a month for up to ten employees, a 36% rise. Flat per-account billing still beats per-seat pricing at scale, but the rate for your actual headcount is never published.
2. Shift Scheduling & Coverage
AutoFill weights availability, time off, seniority and overtime maximums in a single pass. Thirteen schedule views cover daily, weekly, monthly and statistics layouts. One director reported overtime falling from 11% to zero within a month.
3. Self-Service & Shift Trading
Staff set availability in 15-minute increments and post shifts to a trade board with optional manager approval, though an employee must be given manager access before they can add their own shifts.
4. Mobile Experience
Android holds 1.5 stars from 3,160 ratings, and a June 2026 update left several users facing blank screens where their shifts should be. iOS fares better at 3.2, but there is no iPad build at all.
5. Time Tracking & Attendance
There is no punch clock. Tracking covers late, absent and no-show flags against the published schedule, nothing further. Teams end up running a second system for hours worked, which reviewers name as their leading frustration.
6. Reporting, Exports & Payroll
Custom reports, CSV output and a payroll estimate report ship as standard, and 60 named export formats cover ADP, Kronos, Paychex and QuickBooks. None of it syncs live, and labor cost tracking is absent.
7. Support & Onboarding
Verified reviews put customer service at 4.3 across 91 ratings with 24/7 live cover, and rollout needs no IT involvement because there is nothing to deploy.
8. Ease of Use
Teams moving off spreadsheets pick it up in an afternoon, and 4.5 across 137 ratings reflects that. Looks are another matter, with one 2026 reviewer comparing it to a 1997 website. Navigation also degrades past roughly 100 employees.
Editor’s Verdict
Buy WhenToWork for the scheduling engine and the flat per-account rate, not for the employee app or the reporting. Get your headcount tier price in writing before signing, because the published $38 covers ten people and nothing above that is disclosed.
WhenToWork: Strengths and Limitations
Drawn from 239 verified reviews spanning 2018 to July 2026, 3,650 app store ratings, and the vendor’s published feature and export documentation.
What Wins
Staff absorb the coverage work
Employees post, claim and swap shifts on the trade board under approval rules you control. A university library runs 50 student assistants across three buildings this way. Its supervisor reports that shift changes now happen without her involvement at all.
Permissions go unusually deep
Restrict each manager to named employees, hide positions from staff, or publish only part of a week. One community services operation splits ten staff groups so each supervisor sees only their own.
Nothing to deploy
An enterprise higher education reviewer set it up without any IT involvement, then widened it department by department. The 30-day trial asks for no card and no phone number. Expect a working schedule the same afternoon.
Notifications reach people three ways
Changes fire by email, SMS and in-app push, and urgent alerts hit all three together. Read-receipt icons show exactly which staff opened a published week, which settles the argument about who knew what.
Every change is on the record
Shift history logs who added or edited each shift. Deleted shifts can be restored, trade activity exports to a log, and one reviewer priced a full fiscal year of student worker hours from the reports to the dollar.
What Falls Short
You will run two systems
Scheduled hours never become worked hours inside the product, so payroll needs a separate clock and a manual export between them. Reviewers going back to 2019 name this as the one thing they wish would change.Consider instead: Homebase
The employee app is the weak link
Android sits at 1.5 stars. After a June 2026 update, multiple reviewers described tapping through to blank screens and losing access to open shifts, and reinstalling did not help. Push notifications fail silently on iOS for some users across two device generations.Consider instead: When I Work
Exports are files, not connections
All 60 payroll formats are manual downloads, and the published list carries a March 2022 timestamp. The API sits behind the Pro Plan upgrade.Consider instead: Deputy
No labor cost view
Pay rates go in and a payroll estimate comes out, but nothing checks a draft schedule against a budget in real time. A veterinary administrator flags this as the gap that stops her evaluating coverage against spend.Consider instead: 7shifts
WhenToWork’s Core Features
We rated ten capabilities against what the vendor documents, what the 239 verified reviews report in practice, and what we could confirm in the app stores. Two things drove the ratings down: features that exist but sit behind the Pro Plan, and features that work on desktop but not reliably on the phone.
1. AutoFill Scheduling
One pass weighs availability, approved time off, seniority, priority groups and per-employee hour ceilings, then fills a week and lets you undo it wholesale.
2. Schedule Views
Thirteen distinct layouts ship as standard, including coverage-by-hour and two-week statistics against target hours, which Deputy and Homebase both narrow to fewer options.
3. Trade Board
Staff drop, claim and swap shifts, part-shifts included, with cut-off windows and approval on or off. Reviewers do call the mobile view of it confusing.
4. Availability Capture
Staff mark preferences in 15-minute blocks across three states: cannot work, prefer not to, prefer to. Lock the window after a cut-off date if you need stability.
5. Messaging & Alerts
Message individuals, groups or everyone scheduled on a given date, and urgent alerts fire to text, email and push at once. Attachments and auto-forwarding both work.
6. Time Off Management
Partial-day and repeating requests, blackout dates, a rolling block window and a per-day approval cap. Accrual balances are the one thing it will not track.
7. Reporting
Custom reports and payroll estimates are genuinely useful, yet one retail owner found no way to pull shift data for anyone removed from a schedule.
8. Payroll Exports
Sixty named formats reach ADP, Kronos, Paychex, Paycom and QuickBooks, but every one is a manual file download and the list was last updated in March 2022.
9. Multi-Location Support
One account handles multiple sites, but viewing several as linked accounts needs the Pro Plan, and one multi-facility manager still signs in separately with a different PIN per site.
10. Mobile App
Rated 1.5 on Android across 3,160 ratings and 3.2 on iPhone, with no iPad build. Deeper tasks still hand off to the browser version.
WhenToWork Integrations
The grid below shows what WhenToWork connects to, split between live calendar sync and the manual payroll exports that make up most of the list. Xero, Gusto and Square have no export format at all, and the API is a Pro Plan upgrade rather than a standard feature.
Google Calendar
Live calendar sync
Microsoft Outlook
Live calendar sync
ADP
Payroll file export
UKG
Payroll file export
Paychex
Payroll file export
Paylocity
Payroll file export
Paycom
Payroll file export
Paycor
Payroll file export
Dayforce
Payroll file export
QuickBooks
Accounting file export
TimeClock Plus
Timekeeping export
EasyClocking
Timekeeping export
Power BI
Pro Plan API
Only the two calendar connections sync live. Everything else is a file you download and upload yourself, and the vendor’s published format list was last revised in March 2022, so confirm your payroll provider is still supported before you commit.
Who Should Use WhenToWork?
WhenToWork suits operations where the scheduling itself is the hard part: rotating shifts, heavy part-time rosters, and staff whose availability changes week to week. Small businesses make up 69% of its reviewer base and veterinary practices the largest single vertical at 12%. It is the wrong buy if you want scheduling and timekeeping in one system, since there is no punch clock and the exports do not sync.
Best For
Student and seasonal workforces
Availability that resets every term is the case AutoFill was built for. Staff set preferences in 15-minute blocks, and accounts can be suspended over the off-season at no cost with employee records and past schedules intact.
Best For
Round-the-clock clinical rosters
Veterinary and clinical operations are the heaviest users here, at 12% and 10% of reviewers respectively. Colour-coded categories flag who is supervising and who is in training on any given shift, and minimum rest gaps between shifts are enforceable.
Best For
Teams leaving spreadsheets behind
There is nothing to deploy and no IT ticket to raise. The 30-day trial needs neither a card nor a phone number, and ease of use scores 4.5 across 137 ratings.
Best For
Departments wanting tight permission control
Restrict each supervisor to a named group, hide positions from staff, or publish a week to some departments and not others. Buyers who need this granularity rarely find it below enterprise pricing.
Wide as that fit is, four situations make WhenToWork the wrong tool no matter how good its scheduling is.
Skip If
You need one system for hours worked
Staff cannot clock in or out. Scheduled hours stay scheduled hours, so payroll needs a second product and a file passed between them every cycle.Look at: Homebase
Skip If
You handle patient or client data
The vendor states outright that it holds no HIPAA compliance agreements and that no patient or client data should be entered. Its own advice is to use initials or employee codes rather than full names. There is no published SOC 2 or ISO 27001 attestation either.Look at: Aladtec
Skip If
Your workforce lives on the phone
Android sits at 1.5 stars from 3,160 ratings, there is no iPad build, and a June 2026 release left staff at blank screens. If the app is how your team gets its shifts, this is the wrong product.Look at: When I Work
Skip If
You manage labor cost against a budget
Nothing checks a draft schedule against a spend target while you build it. Demand forecasting is absent too, so busy-period staffing stays a judgment call.Look at: 7shifts
WhenToWork Pricing: What It Actually Costs
One tier is published and one only. Up to ten employees costs $38 a month, $100 for three months, $164 for six, or $273 for a year. Above ten people, no rate appears anywhere on the site.
The vendor’s own documentation confirms why: your price is visible only inside the account under Settings, then Payments and Pricing. So a 40-person or 200-person operation cannot price this before starting a trial.
Nothing is charged for setup, extra managers or additional locations, and there is no percentage-based plan, so no crossover calculation applies. Taxes sit outside the listed rate, and payment is by card or check in US dollars only.
Worth knowing before you negotiate: the pricing page currently carries a discounted introductory offer with a phone number attached, and one 2026 reviewer states they negotiated their rate down after acquisition-driven increases.
Up to 10 employees, all features included
1 Month
$38
per account
3 Months
$100
$33.33 a month
6 Months
$164
$27.33 a month
1 Year
$273
$22.75 a month
What the pricing page leaves unstated
Undisclosed
Your actual tier rate
Not published above 10 employees
Every published figure covers ten people. The rate for your headcount appears only after you are inside an account, so ask sales in writing before the trial ends.
Excluded
State and local tax
Added on top where applicable
The listed rates are pre-tax. Public sector and non-profit buyers should note there is no charitable discount, which the vendor confirms directly.
Conditional
Introductory pricing
Renewal terms unpublished
A discounted introductory offer sits on the pricing page with a phone number beside it. Nothing states what happens at renewal, so confirm the year-two rate before you pay for year one.
Rates shown cover up to ten employees and were verified against the vendor pricing page in August 2026. Pricing scales by maximum employee count and by the duration you commit to, both set inside the account. Exceeding your paid employee level forces an upgrade. Payment is US dollars only, by credit card or check, with invoices available on request.
How WhenToWork Compares to Alternatives
We compared WhenToWork against When I Work, Homebase, Connecteam, Deputy, 7shifts and Sling. Each one turns up repeatedly in the switching notes of WhenToWork’s own reviews, and between them they cover both pricing models a buyer has to choose between: per seat and per location.
The comparison runs on four attributes: how deep the scheduling automation goes, whether you can price the product before signing up, what the employee app is actually like, and whether hours worked live in the same system as hours scheduled.
Attribute 01
Scheduling depth and automation
AutoFill weighs seniority, priority groups, rest gaps and per-person hour ceilings in one pass, and 13 schedule views is more than anything else here offers. Deputy matches it on compliance rules. The rest simplify by design.
Deepest automation
Capable but simpler
Attribute 02
Pricing you can check before buying
Every competitor here publishes a full ladder. WhenToWork publishes one tier at $38 for ten employees and hides the rest inside the account. Sling and Connecteam go further with free plans covering 30 and 10 users.
Fully published, free tier
Fully published, paid only
One tier published
Attribute 03
What staff experience on their phone
This is the widest gap in the comparison. WhenToWork’s Android app holds 1.5 stars across 3,160 ratings with no iPad build at all, while When I Work and Connecteam both ship mobile-first products with GPS clock-in and live location views.
Mobile-first
Solid
Browser fallback required
Attribute 04
Cost predictability as headcount grows
Flat per-account billing means a 60th employee costs nothing extra, where When I Work at $2.50 per user reaches $150 a month for that team. Homebase and 7shifts bill per location instead, which punishes multi-site operators rather than large ones.
Flat, headcount-insensitive
Per location
Per seat, scales linearly
| Product | Scheduling Depth | Price Transparency | Employee App | Built-In Time Clock |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 WhenToWork $38 a month, up to 10 staff |
Leads |
Falls short |
Falls short |
Falls short |
When I Work $2.50 per user a month |
Competitive |
Leads |
Leads |
Leads |
Homebase Free, then $30 a location |
Competitive |
Leads |
Competitive |
Leads |
Connecteam Free to 10 users, then $29 |
Competitive |
Leads |
Leads |
Leads |
Deputy $5 per user a month |
Leads |
Competitive |
Competitive |
Leads |
7shifts Free, then $39.99 a location |
Competitive |
Competitive |
Competitive |
Leads |
Sling Free to 30 users, then $1.70 |
Competitive |
Leads |
Competitive |
Competitive |
Leads the category
Competitive
Falls short
How WhenToWork Performs in Practice
Four real buying situations, drawn from the operations that actually appear in its review base. Two where it is the right answer, one where it works until a specific threshold, and one where it should lose. Costs below reflect what you would really pay including anything you have to buy alongside it.
Scenario 01
Municipal parks department, 45 staff across four facilities, hours filed to Tyler Munis
Flat billing means all 45 cost what 10 do, and Tyler Munis is one of the 60 named export formats. Four facilities run from one account without the Pro Plan. Seasonal closure suspends billing while keeping every past schedule intact.
From $38 a month, tier to confirm
Scenario 02
University conference services, 60 event staff, same-day shift fills, no clock needed
One HR lead in exactly this setup reports posting a job and adding staff in about a minute, which is what same-day event cover demands. Campus payroll already handles hours, so the missing clock costs nothing. When I Work would run $150 a month here.
From $38 a month against $150 per seat
Scenario 03
Single-site coffee retailer, 22 baristas, needs hours worked as well as scheduled
The scheduling works. The economics stop the moment you need a clock, because Homebase Essentials bundles scheduling and timekeeping for unlimited staff at one location for $30 a month. WhenToWork plus any separate clock beats that before you have paid for either.
$38 plus a clock, against $30 all in
Scenario 04
Security patrol contractor, 90 deskless guards, phone-only workforce, GPS check-in required
Nobody here touches a desktop. A 1.5-star Android app is a staffing risk, not an inconvenience, and there is no GPS check-in to confirm a guard reached their post. When I Work costs $225 a month at this size and delivers both.
$225 a month buys a working app
What Users Say About WhenToWork
The sample splits in two, and the two halves disagree completely. Across 239 verified business reviews the product averages 4.4, with 89% of sentiment positive. Across 3,650 app store ratings it averages roughly 1.7.
That is not a contradiction to explain away. Business reviews are written by the managers who chose the tool and who work in it on a desktop. App ratings come from the staff who only ever see it on a phone. Both are accurate about the thing they are rating.
Two cautions on the sample. Most business reviews carry a disclosed incentive, and there is no verified profile on one of the three major review platforms, so the business-side count is smaller than the category norm.
Data sources
G2
4.4 · 98 reviews
Capterra
4.4 · 137 reviews
TrustRadius
4.5 · 4 reviews
Google Play
1.5 · 3,160 ratings
App Store
3.2 · 490 ratings
Rating distribution, business reviews with a published breakdown
5 star
80
4 star
42
3 star
9
2 star
6
1 star
0
Who is doing the rating, approximate
Managers and buyers
239 reviews
Schedulers, directors and owners writing on business platforms. Roughly 6% of the total sample, and the source of the 4.4 average.
Employees
3,650 ratings
Staff rating the app they receive shifts through. Roughly 94% of the total sample, and the source of the 1.7 average.
Why this matters to a buyer: the score you find when researching this product comes from 6% of the people who will use it. Trial it as an employee, not just as a manager.
Score comparison by source
G2
Capterra
TrustRadius
App Store
Google Play
Weighted average
What users consistently praise
Coverage gaps close themselves
One director recorded overtime falling from 11% to zero inside a month of switching, crediting how quickly staff find and claim open shifts without a manager brokering it.
Support answers fast
Service scores 4.3 across 91 ratings. Reviewers describe replies within minutes on live questions, and a university manager singles out response time as the best she has encountered.
Templates carry the repeat work
Saved week and day templates get named repeatedly. A veterinary practice manager of ten years keeps separate templates for term, break and holiday rotations rather than rebuilding each month.
Reports settle budget questions
A library supervisor priced a full fiscal year of student worker funding to the dollar from the reports, and CSV export means the data leaves cleanly.
What users consistently complain about
The app broke and stayed broken
Three separate reviewers in June and July 2026 describe blank screens replacing shifts, availability and open-shift lists after an update. Uninstalling, reinstalling and clearing cache fixed none of it.
It looks its age
Complaints about the interface run unbroken from 2019 to 2026. A retail owner in June 2026 compared it to a website from 1997 and rated features one out of five.
Bulk actions are missing
You cannot select several shifts to delete at once, and one food service operation reports the same limit on removing multiple employees. Deleted staff also slow the list down badly.
Multi-site managers log in twice
Running more than one facility means a separate account and PIN for each. An executive assistant overseeing several sites raised this directly, and linked accounts need the Pro Plan.
Data pulled 24 August 2026. Business review counts and distributions were taken live from each source rather than from historic figures. A published star breakdown was available from one business platform only, so the distribution above covers 137 of the 239 business reviews. No verified profile exists on the third major business review platform, and most business reviews carry a disclosed incentive. Before signing, ask the vendor for two references at your headcount and install the mobile app yourself on the platform your staff actually use.
Is WhenToWork Worth It?
Yes, if you are buying a scheduler and nothing else. The AutoFill engine and the flat per-account rate are both genuinely hard to match, and 25 years of operation means the core works. The decision hinges on one question: does your workforce need to hold this product in their hands, or only your schedulers?
Then get two things in writing. First, the rate at your actual employee count and the rate at renewal, since neither appears on the site. Second, an answer to a question the marketing never addresses: what is the plan for the mobile app? A 1.5-star rating with 3,160 votes and a June 2026 regression is not a backlog item, and TCP has a clear commercial reason to point you at Humanity instead of fixing it.
3.9
Out of 5
A specialist worth buying for one job, at a price you cannot yet see
Two decades of scheduling logic that competitors have not caught, wrapped in an employee app that its own users rate below every alternative here.
Shortlist it when
Your headcount is large enough that per-seat pricing hurts, since a 60th employee adds nothing to a flat bill
Timekeeping already runs elsewhere and you only need schedules landing in payroll each cycle
Rosters are genuinely complex, with rotations, split shifts and rest gaps that simpler tools cannot express
Your schedulers work at a desk and staff mainly need to read a shift rather than run their week from an app
Skip it when
Staff adoption on mobile decides whether the rollout succeeds at all
Procurement needs a published price before a trial, or a security attestation before a signature
You want labor cost visible while you build the schedule rather than after payroll runs
Headcount is heading past 250, where reviewers report navigation becoming the bottleneck
WhenToWork – Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the important questions around the product that are asked by potential users frequently.
Is WhenToWork the same as When I Work?
No. They are two separate companies with two separate products, and the similar names cause constant confusion. WhenToWork was founded in 2000, is now owned by TCP Software, and bills a flat rate per account. When I Work is an independent company that bills $2.50 per user per month.
WhenToWork was acquired by TCP Software on 1 September 2023 and now appears on some listings as WhenToWork by TCP.
How much does WhenToWork cost in 2026?
The published rate covers up to 10 employees at $38 per month, $100 for three months, $164 for six months, or $273 for a year. That is a rise from $28 per month previously. Above 10 employees, no rate is published anywhere on the vendor site.
Pricing scales by maximum employee count, and your specific tier only becomes visible inside the account under Settings, then Payments and Pricing. Ask sales for the figure at your headcount, and for the renewal rate, before your trial ends.
Does WhenToWork have a time clock?
No. Staff cannot clock in or out. It tracks late arrivals, absences and no-shows against the published schedule, but scheduled hours never become worked hours. Most customers run a separate timekeeping system and move data between the two with a manual export.
Is WhenToWork HIPAA compliant?
No. The vendor states directly that its system is not under any HIPAA compliance agreements and that no patient or client data should be entered. Its own guidance is that identifiable information is not required, so you can use initials or employee codes instead of full names.
There is also no published SOC 2 or ISO 27001 attestation. This matters because clinical and veterinary operations are among its largest customer groups.
Does WhenToWork integrate with payroll systems?
It exports to roughly 60 named formats covering ADP, UKG, Paychex, Paylocity, Paycom, Paycor, Dayforce and QuickBooks among others. Every one is a manual file download rather than a live sync, and the published format list was last revised in March 2022.
Live connections are limited to Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. An API with a Power BI connector exists but requires the Pro Plan upgrade.
How good is the WhenToWork mobile app?
It is the weakest part of the product. The Android app holds 1.5 stars from 3,160 ratings and the iPhone app 3.2 from 490 ratings. There is no iPad version.
Following a June 2026 update, several users reported blank screens in place of schedules, open shifts and availability, with reinstalling making no difference. Deeper tasks hand off to the browser version of the site. Install it yourself during the trial before committing.
How many employees can WhenToWork handle?
There is no hard published ceiling, and one veterinary hospital runs over 200 staff across three sites on it. Practical limits arrive earlier than technical ones. Reviewers managing more than 100 employees describe navigation becoming difficult, and one operation reports outgrowing it past 250.
What is the WhenToWork Pro Plan?
It is a paid upgrade above the standard subscription that most directory listings do not mention. Pro gates API access, linked accounts for billing multiple locations together, group administration, automatic shift reminders, employee photos, custom logos on notifications, extended message archiving and employee login history.
The upgrade cost is not published, so ask whether you need it before you price the standard plan.
