Finding the Best Free and Open Source Scheduling Software for Small Businesses

Scheduling can be a pain in the butt! How do you keep track of everything? Open source scheduling software simplifies scheduling for businesses of all sizes. But which is the best free scheduling software for your business?

Below we’ll discuss what open source employee scheduling software is as well as options for choosing the best employee scheduling software, best project scheduling software, best meeting and interview scheduling software, and best room scheduling software.


 

Open Source Scheduling Software

First of all, it’s important to point out that open source software does not necessarily mean free—it’s actually a lot more technical than that. Open source software refers to a user’s freedom and ability to inspect, modify, and enhance software that’s designed by another person or organization. So if you’re looking for free scheduling software for small businesses, be careful not to automatically choose open source software believing it’s free from a financial standpoint.

That said, open source scheduling software is often free, making it ideal for small businesses and startups that want to stay organized without breaking the bank. Open source scheduling software has a wide variety of uses depending on your business’s needs, such as employee scheduling, project scheduling, interview scheduling, and room/space scheduling.


 

Employee Scheduling Software (Free)

ABC Roster

ABC Roster

ABC Roster is a free shift scheduling software designed to augment the complicated task of organizing employee shift schedules (also known as rosters) for small organizations and businesses.

ABC Roster’s features include:

  • A simple and intuitive user interface
  • An automated planner that can generate schedules
  • The ability to manage all aspects of scheduling, including managing employee availability, days off, leave, events, bookings, etc.
  • The ability to email schedules to employees directly from the application
  • The ability to export the schedules to Microsoft Excel, PDF, and HTML documents

 

The development of ABC Roster is ongoing, so they welcome suggestions from their users about new features they’d like to see added in future versions. ABC Roster welcomes donations, but the software is completely free to use. There are no paid upgrades available.

Sling

Sling

Sling’s free staff scheduling software isn’t only designed for small businesses. No matter what size your business is, Sling promises to help you build your employee work schedules within minutes so that you can manage availability, time off, and shift trade requests.

Sling’s scheduling features include:

  • The ability to manage time off, availability, and shift trade requests
  • Notifications about overlapping shifts or double-bookings
  • Democratized scheduling, which allows your employees to choose their own shifts (with or without your approval)
  • Schedule templates, which allow you to recreate schedules with a few clicks and create templates for future use
  • Shift alarms that notify employees about upcoming shifts, newly available shifts, and potential shift exchanges

 

Sling also offers Premium ($2 per user per month) and Business ($4 per user per month) options that enable you to organize and manage all of your work from a single platform, from labor cost management to budgeting to PTO tracking and reports.

Wrike

Wrike

Wrike offers free centralized task management for startups and teams that are just getting started. Its free version is one of five options businesses can choose from. Among the many features included in the free version is an account-wide work schedules feature that allows you to designate your teams’ work week and see when you or your team members are scheduled to work.

Wrike’s features include:

  • Account-wide work schedules
  • Unlimited users
  • Web, desktop, and mobile apps
  • Task and subtask management
  • Cloud storage integrations (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, MSFT Office 365, and OneDrive)
  • 2 GB storage per account
  • Interactive board and spreadsheet views
  • External and internal collaborators
  • Live activity stream across global, project, and task levels

 

As you can see, Wrike offers a lot more than scheduling software, so if that’s all you’re looking for, Wrike may come with too many bells and whistles. While Wrike offers several paid upgrades, each feature listed above is completely free with Wrike’s introductory plan.


 

Project Scheduling Software (Free)

Asana

Asana

Asana is a big name in project management, and they offer a basic free version that’s available for individuals and small teams. The basic account offers unlimited projects, tasks, activity log, storage, and comments, so you can track as many different elements as you need to. View what’s most pressing and all of the moving pieces with three different views—list, board, or calendar. Basic workflows help you monitor work, keep track of workloads, spot potential bottlenecks, and understand how everything connects.

Asana’s features include:

  • Unlimited projects, tasks, activity log, and storage
  • Due date reminders
  • Custom tags with color-coding
  • Basic workflows
  • Multiple views (list, board, and calendar)
  • Integrated apps and tools
  • The ability to collaborate with up to 15 teammates

 

For a monthly fee, you can gain access to unlimited users, workflow automations, timeline views, and advanced reporting.

Trello

Trello

Trello is a visual-focused project management tool that helps teams work collaboratively on tasks and projects. The Trello interface utilizes to help individuals and teams visualize work as it progresses from To-Do to Done. A traditional Kanban board has three sections: To-Do, Doing, and Done. Work progresses through each phase with careful attention to only having one task or a small number of tasks in progress at any given time. With Trello, everything is customizable, so you can create your own board titles to meet the needs of your team or the needs of a project.

Trello’s features include:

  • Unlimited personal boards
  • 10 Team Boards
  • Unlimited cards
  • Unlimited lists
  • 1 Power-Up per board
  • Custom backgrounds and stickers
  • Assignee and due dates


Additional features, such as advanced admin permissions, custom fields, calendar view, voting, and app integrations, are available at a monthly or annual fee.

ClickUp

ClickUp

ClickUp is a free project scheduling software built for teams of 1 to 1000+ that puts all of your work in one place, including tasks, docs, chat, goals, and more. With ClickUp, you can plan, track, and manage any type of work with flexibility.

ClickUp’s features include:

  • 100MB of storage
  • Unlimited tasks
  • Unlimited members
  • Two-factor authentication
  • Collaborative docs
  • Real-time chat
  • Email in ClickUp
  • Kanban Boards
  • Sprint management
  • Native Time Tracking
  • In-app video recording
  • 24/7 Support

 

If you ever feel the need to scale up, ClickUp offers four additional payment plan options with advanced features, automation, and reporting. These plans range from Unlimited for small businesses to Enterprise for large teams.


 

Meeting and Interview Scheduling Software (Free)

Calendly

Calendly

Calendly is a simple meeting and interviewing scheduling software that allows you to set your own availability to share with others. You can share your calendar so that the people who need to book time with you can see when you are available and when you aren’t. This system eliminates the back and forth that’s so common with scheduling. “Are you available this day?” “No, what about this day?” and so on.

Calendly’s features include:

  • The ability to set daily limits on available meeting time
  • The ability to schedule meetings with multiple team members at once
  • Time zone detection (ideal for remote and hybrid teams)
  • The ability to send meeting confirmation and reminder emails
  • Integrations with Google, iCloud calendar, Office 365, and Outlook

 

Let your meeting attendees and interviewees book the time that’s best for them while preserving your own schedule of availability.

Setmore

Setmore

Setmore is a free scheduling software with 24/7 automated online booking, reminders, payments, and more. You can manage all of your appointments through one online calendar that helps you and your clients connect from anywhere.

Setmore’s features include:

  • Unlimited appointments
  • Email reminders
  • Payments with Square
  • A unique URL
  • Teleport video meetings
  • Social media integrations

 

Setmore also offers additional features for a monthly or annual fee. Their Premium ($9 per user per month) and Pro ($5 per user per month) include SMS reminders, two-way calendar sync, and payments with Stripe and PayPal.


 

Room Scheduling Software (Free)

Picktime

Picktime

Picktime is a free online room booking software that allows you to book a meeting room from any part of the world with any device that’s connected to the internet. Picktime’s weekly dashboard instantly shows room availability, enabling you to schedule a meeting in the room of your choice directly from the home screen. For recurrent meetings, Picktime offers an advanced booking screen for attendees.

Picktime’s features include:

  • 3 team members
  • 3 resources
  • 2 locations
  • 2 classes
  • Unlimited appointments
  • The ability to import contacts
  • Email notifications
  • An online booking page
  • Payments with PayPal
  • Over 8+ integrations

 

Additional features, such as two-way sync, automatic time zone conversion, and over 100+ integrations, are available with a monthly fee.

Skedda
Skedda

Skedda provides free online booking and scheduling for office spaces and venues. The platform is customizable and includes booking conditions, color rules, and custom fields for acquiring additional information upon booking.

Skedda’s features include:

  • A booking calendar
  • Booking conditions
  • Unlimited bookings (for 5 rooms)
  • Notifications
  • Unlimited users
  • Website embedding

 

The platform is free for up to 5 bookable spaces, which is a good starting point for small businesses. You can pay a fee either yearly or monthly for more rooms, depending on the number of rooms you need to add.


 

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Is the any search demand for an article on Kanban? It would connect to the other agile content. Could be an intro to kanban boards or how to use or make a personal kanban.


 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan's passion for travel led her to design a career as a remote content marketer. Nearing 1000 published articles, she's spent the past decade using her interdisciplinary education to research and write content for a wide variety of industries. Working remotely, Jordan spends half of the year exploring different corners of the world. At home, she's content exploring fictional lands—Spark an immediate and detailed conversation by mentioning Game of Thrones, Red Rising, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings.

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