Sling employee scheduling and shift management
Sling's scheduling interface uses a drag-and-drop calendar where managers create shifts, assign employees, and publish schedules that push notifications to workers' phones.
Sling's scheduling interface uses a drag-and-drop calendar where managers create shifts, assign employees, and publish schedules that push notifications to workers' phones. The schedule view supports daily, weekly, and monthly views, and managers can copy previous weeks to speed up repetitive scheduling patterns.
Shift swapping and open shift posting are available on all plans, including the free tier. Employees can request swaps through the app, and managers approve or deny with one tap. Open shifts are posted to all eligible employees, and the first to claim gets the shift — which reduces the back-and-forth texting that bogs down schedule changes.
Shift templates and recurring schedules
Managers can save shift templates and apply them to future weeks, which is essential for restaurants with predictable patterns. Templates include role assignments, break rules, and shift notes. Recurring schedule support means a manager can set a standard weekly template and only adjust for exceptions.
Availability and time-off management
Employees set recurring availability preferences and submit time-off requests through the app. The scheduling engine respects availability constraints when managers build or auto-assign shifts, preventing conflicts before they happen.
Sling time clock and attendance tracking
The time clock feature on the Business plan supports clock-in and clock-out via mobile app, web browser, or a shared kiosk device.
The time clock feature on the Business plan supports clock-in and clock-out via mobile app, web browser, or a shared kiosk device. Each clock event captures a timestamp, and managers can review timesheets, edit entries, and approve hours before exporting to payroll.
GPS tracking on the mobile app verifies that employees are clocking in from an approved location, which is useful for catering staff, food truck operators, or multi-location employees who move between sites. The kiosk mode uses photo capture to prevent buddy punching.
Overtime alerts and break tracking
The system flags employees approaching overtime thresholds and notifies managers before overtime is incurred. Break tracking ensures compliance with state-mandated break rules, logging break start and end times automatically when configured.
Timesheet export and payroll integration
Approved timesheets export as CSV files compatible with most payroll providers. Direct integrations are available with Toast payroll and select third-party payroll systems. The export includes regular hours, overtime, and break deductions.
Sling labor cost management and budget controls
Labor cost management is Sling's strongest differentiator on the Premium plan.
Labor cost management is Sling's strongest differentiator on the Premium plan. As managers build a schedule, the system calculates total labor cost using each employee's hourly wage, projected hours, and overtime rules. The running total updates in real time as shifts are added or moved.
Budget alerts let managers set a target labor cost or labor cost percentage for each day or week. When the schedule exceeds the target, an alert fires before the schedule is published — giving managers the chance to adjust staffing before committing to an expensive lineup.
Wage-based scheduling decisions
Because Sling knows each employee's pay rate, managers can see the cost difference between assigning a $15/hour server versus an $18/hour server to a slow Tuesday shift. This granularity helps operators make informed staffing choices that directly impact the bottom line.
Labor cost reporting by location and role
The Business plan breaks down labor costs by location, department, and role. Managers can compare labor cost percentages across locations or track how scheduling pattern changes affect total labor spend week over week.
Sling team messaging and internal communication
Sling includes a built-in messaging system available on all plans, including the free tier.
Sling includes a built-in messaging system available on all plans, including the free tier. The messaging supports direct messages between two employees, group conversations for teams or departments, and a company-wide news feed for announcements.
Shift-specific messaging is particularly useful for restaurants — managers can send a message to everyone working the Friday dinner shift without creating a separate group. Read receipts confirm that messages were seen, and push notifications ensure time-sensitive updates reach employees promptly.
News feed for company announcements
The news feed functions like a bulletin board where managers post announcements, policy updates, menu changes, or event information. Posts can include text, images, and file attachments. All employees see the feed, which replaces printed notices and email blasts that hourly workers rarely check.
Messaging privacy and admin controls
Administrators can control who can create group conversations and post to the news feed. Message history is retained and searchable by management, which provides an audit trail for communication about schedule changes, policy updates, or workplace issues.
Sling task management and operational checklists
Task management on the Business plan lets managers create task lists, assign them to shifts or individual employees, and track completion in real time.
Task management on the Business plan lets managers create task lists, assign them to shifts or individual employees, and track completion in real time. Common use cases include opening and closing checklists, prep lists, cleaning duty assignments, and event preparation workflows.
Tasks can be recurring — assigned automatically to every Monday opening shift, for example — or one-time for special events. Completion status is visible to managers on a dashboard, and incomplete tasks trigger notifications so nothing falls through the cracks.
Shift-linked task assignments
Tasks are tied to specific shifts, so the opening crew sees their prep checklist when they clock in, and the closing crew sees their shutdown procedures at shift end. This eliminates the need for printed checklists or verbal handoffs between shifts.
Multi-location task standardization
For multi-unit operators, task templates can be applied across all locations to ensure consistent operational standards. A new cleaning protocol or food safety procedure can be deployed to every location simultaneously through the task management system.
Sling POS integrations and third-party connections
Sling integrates with Toast POS natively — a direct benefit of the Toast acquisition.
Sling integrates with Toast POS natively — a direct benefit of the Toast acquisition. The integration syncs sales data with scheduling, enabling real-time labor cost percentage calculations and historical sales data for scheduling decisions. This is Sling's most valuable integration for its core restaurant audience.
Beyond Toast, Sling connects with Square, Shopify, and select payroll providers. The integration library is smaller than what 7shifts or Deputy offer, but it covers the core needs of most restaurant and retail operations.
Toast POS native integration
The Toast integration provides bidirectional data flow: sales data from Toast informs scheduling decisions in Sling, and labor cost data from Sling appears in Toast's business reporting. For Toast customers, this eliminates the need for manual data reconciliation between scheduling and POS systems.
Payroll and accounting exports
Sling exports timesheet data to CSV format compatible with most payroll processors. Direct integrations with Toast Payroll streamline the hours-to-paycheck pipeline for restaurants using the full Toast stack.
