Stop Playing Tetris with Your Roster: A Fair Comparison of Retail Scheduling Tools in 2025

If you manage a team in the hospitality or retail industry, you know the "Roster Tetris" all too well. It’s Tuesday afternoon, and you’re staring at a spreadsheet (or a clunky app), trying to fit 25 shifts into a grid that refuses to cooperate. Sarah can’t work closing on Fridays anymore, Mike just hit his overtime limit, and you still have a gaping hole in coverage for the Saturday rush.

For years, the industry standard has been to throw money at "Big Tech" scheduling platforms and hope for the best. But as the owner of TimeClout, I built something different—not just to digitalize the calendar, but to solve the math problem behind it.

Today, we’re doing a deep dive into the current landscape of retail scheduling. We’ll look at the industry giants—Deputy, When I Work, and Homebase—and compare them fairly with TimeClout to help you decide what your shop floor actually needs.

The Contenders

• Deputy: The heavy hitter. Known for robust compliance features and a high price point.
• When I Work: The user-friendly option. Great for simple communication but can get expensive as you scale.
• Homebase: The small-business favorite. excellent for single-location shops with a "forever free" basic tier.
• TimeClout: The newcomer. An AI-powered, open-source optimization engine designed to solve complex constraint problems that other tools ignore.

Feature Showdown: How They Compare

1. The "Auto-Schedule" Feature

Most platforms claim to have "auto-scheduling," but the definition varies wildly.

• The Competition:

  • Deputy & When I Work use "Auto-fill" logic. They look at your empty shifts and try to plug in available staff. It works well for simple needs, but often struggles with "soft" rules—like ensuring fair weekend rotation or balancing senior staff with juniors during peak hours.
  • Homebase relies more on templates and repeating schedules, which is fine if your retail traffic never changes, but retail always changes.

• The TimeClout Difference: TimeClout doesn't just "fill holes." We built a Constraint Solver Engine. You don't just tell TimeClout who is free; you tell it your rules.

  • "Must have one manager on floor at all times."
  • "No employee should work more than 3 closing shifts a month."
  • "Maximize fairness in shift distribution." TimeClout’s AI runs thousands of simulations to find the mathematically optimal schedule that keeps your staff happy and your store covered. It’s not just automation; it’s optimization.

2. Pricing & Accessibility

Retail margins are thin. Paying per-user fees can eat into your bottom line fast.

• The Competition:

  • Deputy: Can cost upwards of $4.50 - $6.00 per user/month. For a staff of 20, that’s over $1,000 a year.
  • When I Work: Starts around $2.50 - $4.00 per user/month, but key features often require higher tiers.
  • Homebase: Offers a great free plan for one location, but upgrading to get performance and deeper scheduling features costs ~$20 - $60 per location/month.

• The TimeClout Difference: TimeClout is currently in Free Private Beta. But more importantly, TimeClout is Open Source. We believe you should own your tools. If you have a tech-savvy team, you can self-host TimeClout for free, forever. If you prefer the convenience of our cloud hosting, we offer it at a fraction of the enterprise cost. We are transparent because we have nothing to hide.

3. Handling Retail Complexity

Retail isn't just 9-to-5. It's seasonal spikes, split shifts, and last-minute call-outs.

• The Competition: These tools shine in Integrations. Deputy and Homebase have mature ecosystems that connect directly to POS systems (like Square or Clover) to forecast sales. This is their current advantage. If you need your schedule to automatically adjust based on yesterday's burrito sales, they are strong contenders.

• The TimeClout Difference: TimeClout focuses on Human Complexity. While we are building out our integrations, we currently excel where others fail: Staff Constraints. In retail, your "part-time student" workforce has chaos in their availability. Complex constraints (like "School on Tuesdays/Thursdays" + "Cannot work past 10 PM" + "Needs 15 hours minimum") break most simple schedulers. TimeClout eats these constraints for breakfast.

Summary Table

The Verdict: Why Switch?

If you want a tool that seamlessly syncs with your cash register today, the legacy players are a safe bet.

But if your biggest headache is actually building the schedule—if you spend hours bargaining with staff, trying to be fair, and solving the puzzle of "who works when"—then TimeClout is built for you.

We are bringing the power of heavy-duty optimization algorithms to the retail manager's pocket. Stop guessing. Stop copying last week's broken schedule. Let AI solve the puzzle for you.