Shift planning software costs: budget workforce scheduling for your team

A solution with fixed shift models starts at around EUR 16,000–28,000 excl. VAT. Add qualifications, preferred shifts and labour rules, and projects run EUR 30,000–60,000; automatic scheduling with optimisation above that. The calculator narrows the range by team size, rules and integrations.

From around 100 employees with changing qualifications and statutory rest periods, manual planning becomes a full-time job. An optimisation algorithm produces compliant schedule proposals in minutes that planners only review – typically saving 60–80% of planning time.

Connecting an existing time tracking system adds roughly 25% to the budget, handover to payroll (e.g. DATEV export with supplements) roughly 45%. In return, the manual transfer of actual hours and supplements disappears – a frequent source of errors.

With the app (from about EUR 6,500), employees see their shifts on their phone, confirm changes and submit preferences digitally. Calls and notice boards disappear, and short-term changes reach the whole team instantly – with read confirmation.

The swap exchange (from about EUR 4,500) lets employees trade shifts among themselves – the system automatically checks qualifications, rest periods and hour accounts before approving the swap. Planners keep control via an approval workflow but save the entire coordination effort.

Working time law (rest periods, maximum hours), youth protection, collective-agreement supplements and company agreements. Good planning software checks these rules while planning and warns about violations – protecting against fines and back payments and relieving HR.