Shiftbase vs MakeShift Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

Shiftbase is an all-in-one workforce management application for shift-driven businesses, combining staff scheduling, time tracking and core HR administration in a single system. It is aimed at organisations where the roster is the operational backbone — hospitality, retail, healthcare, logistics, cleaning, security and events — and where the cost of getting staffing levels wrong is immediate. Managers build schedules from templates or previous weeks, assign shifts by role, skill and qualification, and account for employee availability and approved leave automatically so conflicts surface before a roster is published rather than on the morning of the shift. Once published, the schedule reaches every employee through the mobile app, and staff can view upcoming shifts, indicate availability, request time off, swap shifts with colleagues and pick up open shifts without going through a manager for every exchange. Time tracking runs alongside scheduling, with employees clocking in and out via mobile, browser or an on-site terminal, and recorded hours compared automatically against the planned schedule so deviations, overtime and missed breaks are visible immediately. Approved hours flow into timesheets and out to payroll, removing manual transcription. A live labour cost view shows the wage bill of a roster while it is still being built, letting managers balance coverage against budget before committing, and reporting covers productivity, absence, overtime and cost by department or location. The HR layer holds employee records, contracts, documents, absence history and leave balances, so the same system that rosters someone also stores their employment data rather than splitting it across tools. Shiftbase supports multiple locations and departments under one account, which suits growing operations with several sites. It is built and priced for small and mid-sized businesses, starting from around EUR 3.25 per user per month, with a free version available for very small teams and a free trial of the paid plans.