Square Team App Review and Improvements

[chefsweaty]

The Square Team App seems to work as intended. It displays timecards in an easily readable fashion, accurately showing times clocked in and hours worked (regular, overtime, double time, and total). The timecards section also offers a feature to allow you to view your hours worked over a user-selected period of days. This helpful feature can also be found in the paystubs section. Here, paystubs are presented so that the pertinent information is easily located with detailed breakdowns of pay and taxes found at the press of an arrow. The app also offers an option to download a PDF version of your paystubs. While these two sections seem to serve their purpose well, the scheduling part of the app leaves much to be desired. There are options to set your availability week by week, but not by date, only day of the week. This leads to team members having to set availability week by week should they have an irregular schedule and need to set availability weekly. Additionally, there is no option available to make yourself unavailable on a day or future date. That is to say, the scheduling aspect of the app could be improved by adding features to allow you to make yourself unavailable and to set your availability by date and not day of the week. I also think as a "team app", a messaging system within the app would be beneficial for communicating with your team. There also seems to be no option to integrate your work schedule with Google or Apple, which would also be beneficial for organization. 

[Donnie-M]

@chefsweaty I like the idea of the integration with a google calendar.  I will pass that along as a feature request, because I think that is totally awesome idea.  The messaging within the team is also another good idea.  I am not sure where Square and the team that handles scheduling is currently at with the request time off feature you are asking about.  I know it has been a feature request that has a high priority.  From my experience, the team app has been around a while, but the scheduling perk is a much more recent addition to the benefits of the app.  

What all that means is, it is a work in progress and new features are being added all the time.  Currently your team should be able to request time off:

"

Tap the three horizontal lines on the bottom navigation bar to view and edit:

Profile
To view your personal information, tap your name at the top of the navigation bar.

Time Off
To request time off, tap the Request time off button, select the time frame you want to request off with the date selector tool, add an optional note, and tap Request off. "

This should show up as a notification in your online dashboard when you are making the schedule.

The variable schedule thing, especially in food service, is a bit more tricky.  On one hand, the weekly available matches up to the more industry standard of when you fill out an application, the employee fills out their availability (i.e.  I can't work Thursday due to call in the afternoon, or I need off by 3 every Tuesday).

The time off is really there for those exceptions like:  This week I need vacation on the 12-16th or I need off the 14th for an md appointment.  What I tell my people to do is if they need to come in late or leave early is put in a request for the day off, and in the optional note list what time you need to leave or what time you can come in.  The good thing about this is it is a way to communicate to me what they need.

Hope this helps and keep watching for improvements.

Donnie-M

[Stanley]

Would love to see a messaging option on the team app.  The only reason we're using Homebase for scheduling is because of the messaging feature.

[MayaP]

Hi @Stanley,

Thanks for adding some input into this feature request. 

I think it would be a fantastic feature for the app and see how it would be beneficial to your business. I recommend you submit a Feature Request here. This will help our product team get visibility and track other Sellers’ interest in your request. 

Important: When submitting a request, make sure to include the desired feature, and provide the details of how this feature will help your business succeed (how would you use it and what you expect from it).

We appreciate your input! 🙂