Is Scheduling Software Worth It? A Simple Payback Calculation for Small Teams
30 October 2026 · The Rosterly team · 4 min read
Scheduling software is worth it when the time and money it saves each month exceed its price. For most small shift teams, the biggest savings are manager hours spent building rosters and chasing swaps, bookkeeper time fixing timesheets, and avoidable overtime. If software saves a manager even one hour a week at $35 an hour, that's about $150 a month.
It's easy to see the price of software and hard to see the cost of not having it. This post gives you a simple payback calculation you can fill in with your own numbers, plus the costs that don't show up on any invoice.
Count only savings you're confident of; a conservative estimate is more useful than an optimistic one.
Payback = Monthly saving − Software cost per month
A negative result means the software doesn't pay for itself yet at your size.
If the result is positive, the software pays for itself. Convert weekly figures to monthly by multiplying by 4.33.
Where the savings come from
Building the roster. A spreadsheet roster is often rebuilt from scratch, re-checked for skills and re-sent to everyone. Software that copies the week forward and checks skills and leave for you typically cuts that to a fraction.
Chasing swaps and gaps. Time spent in the group chat confirming who's working, phoning around for cover and fixing mistakes. Requests that land in one place, with manager approval, shrink this.
Timesheets and payroll. Retyping hours from paper, reconciling them with the roster and fixing errors. A time clock tied to the roster, with an export, removes most of it.
Overtime and over-rostering. Routine overtime at time and a half, or extra people on quiet shifts. Seeing hours against the roster each week makes these visible. Our overtime cost post shows how fast it adds up.
A worked example
A café with 18 staff and one manager:
Saving
Weekly
Rate
Monthly
Manager time on rostering and swaps
Weekly: 2 hours
Rate: $35
Monthly: $303.10
Bookkeeper time on timesheets
Weekly: 0.5 hours
Rate: $50
Monthly: $108.25
Overtime avoided (2 hours at time and a half on $25)
Weekly: –
Rate: –
Monthly: $324.75
Total
Weekly:
Rate:
Monthly: $736.10
Overtime avoided: 2 hours × $25 × 1.5 × 4.33 = $324.75. If the software costs $60 a month, the monthly benefit is about $676.
Now the conservative version: count only one hour of manager time a week ($151.55 a month) and nothing else. It still pays for itself against a $60 subscription.
What the software actually costs
Compare like with like:
•
Per-user pricing. When we checked on 17 October 2026, When I Work listed $2.50 to $8 per user per month by plan, and Deputy's Australian plans were A$6.75 to A$13 per user per month, with an A$30 monthly minimum. For 18 staff, that's roughly $45 to $144 a month on When I Work, or A$121.50 to A$234 on Deputy, before add-ons.
•
Flat pricing. Rosterly is A$59 a month for up to 25 staff, including GST.
•
Setup time. An afternoon to set up, plus a few weeks of change.
•
Training time. Short for staff if the tool works in a phone browser.