Sling vs When I Work

Sling is an employee scheduling, communication, and workforce management platform for organizing shifts and labor costs. It supports reusable schedule templates, employee availability, time-off requests, shift offers, swaps, open shifts, and auto-scheduling. The Free plan supports up to 30 users and includes shift scheduling, time-off requests, available shifts, news sharing, long-term scheduling, and private messaging. Premium costs $2 a month per user and adds mobile time tracking, labor cost management, overtime tracking, and group messaging. Business costs $4 a month per user and adds kiosk time tracking, reports, no-show and sick call-out features, and PTO management. Communication options include private and group messages, a Newsfeed, Announcements, and email, push, browser, and some SMS notifications. Sling lists integrations with Toast and other point-of-sale systems; the Toast connection syncs employee data, compares POS sales with labor costs, and exports timesheets to Toast Payroll. Sling runs on Android, iOS, and the web, though some actions require a desktop browser.

When I Work brings employee scheduling, shift swaps, team messaging, and time tracking together for shift-based workplaces. Auto scheduling assigns shifts using staff availability and qualifications, and managers can oversee multiple stores, departments, or job sites from one dashboard. The time clock tracks attendance, breaks, and time off, while staff can message without sharing phone numbers. It runs on the web, Android, and iOS. Essentials costs $2.50 a month billed per user per month; Pro is $5 a month billed per user per month; Premium is $8 a month billed per user per month. A 14-day trial offers complete access and requires no credit card, but there is no free plan. API key access, webhooks, and SAML/SSO are included in Premium. When I Work says it uses AWS, TLS, daily backups, multiple-disk writes, and mobile two-step verification. It does not offer an SLA, although its hosting partners guarantee 99.9% uptime.