Staffing Agency Scheduling Software: 12 Compared

I build HR software for small businesses, and if a founder starting a staffing agency asked me about scheduling, I would point out first that their schedule has a third party in it: the client. This comparison of twelve platforms is built around that fact and shows which kind of tool fits your agency.

A staffing agency does something no ordinary employer does: it schedules people it employs into shifts that somebody else controls, at a site it does not own, then pays the worker at one rate and bills the client at another from the same timesheet.

That arrangement explains why general employee scheduling software fails agencies, and why the platforms built for this are priced so differently. Ordinary scheduling assumes one employer, one set of locations, and one pay rule. An agency runs many clients at once, each with its own site, bill rate, pay rate, overtime treatment, and compliance requirements, and the same worker may move between three of them in a week.

The twelve fall into three groups: full-stack staffing systems that carry a placement from candidate to invoice, scheduling-first platforms built for shift demand at volume, and general tools that turn up when agencies shop for software because a vendor built a staffing landing page. The comparison also covers the case where the general tool is genuinely the right answer.

Why agency scheduling is a different problem

Agency scheduling is a different problem because shifts start with a client's job order, and the same timesheet pays the worker and invoices the client. Here is that workflow stage by stage, because the price differences follow directly from it.

Read the last row carefully, because it is where agencies lose money rather than time. The worker is paid at a pay rate and the client is invoiced at a bill rate, and the gap between them is the agency's gross margin. When those two numbers live in different systems, hours get re-keyed twice and margin leaks through transcription errors and unbilled overtime that nobody catches until month end.

Overtime is where the split hurts most. Under 29 CFR 778.103, part of the federal overtime rules, the agency as employer must total a worker's hours across every assignment in the workweek and pay overtime above 40, even when no single client booked more than 40 hours.

There is a second reason the categories diverge. Agencies place workers into environments they do not control, which makes credential expiry an assignment blocker rather than an HR report. A lapsed certification or an expired background check can void a placement and breach a client contract.

Safety obligations are shared as well. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) treats the staffing agency and its client as joint employers of temporary workers, so they share responsibility for a safe workplace, including the required training. That makes a missing site induction the agency's problem too.

Agency scheduling software means two unrelated things

Two different products are sold under the name agency scheduling software, and only one of them is on this page. The kind compared here assigns temporary workers to shifts at client sites. The other kind books client meetings and allocates billable hours inside a creative, marketing, or design agency.

Telling them apart takes one question: does your schedule place people into work a client pays you to staff, or does it book meetings and project time inside your own team? If it is the second, a resource planning or booking tool is the category, and nothing below will fit the way you work.

The platforms compared

The table compares all twelve platforms on price, trial, and the four capabilities that separate the categories: shift scheduling, an applicant tracking system (ATS) with client job orders, client billing, and pay and bill. Read those four columns together rather than individually: the pattern tells you which group a platform belongs to far more reliably than its marketing does.

Full-stack staffing platforms

Full-stack staffing platforms carry a placement from candidate through to invoice in one system. Workstaff, which has no client billing or pay and bill, is reviewed with the scheduling-first platforms instead. If you run temp or contract placements at any real volume, this is the category, and the scheduling is only one component of what you are buying.

Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the category standard. Its ATS and customer relationship management (CRM) tools are built as one system around placements, job orders, and client accounts, rather than as a CRM bolted onto a recruiting tool. By its own count, more than 10,000 companies use it.

Bullhorn publishes $99 per user per month for Starter and $165 per user per month for Core, with Pro and the AI-focused Max tier quoted individually. Implementation is included free on Starter, Core, and Pro. There is no free trial; evaluation is by demo.

The honest caveat is that the seat price covers the front office, meaning the ATS and CRM. Timesheets, invoicing, and pay and bill sit in the separately quoted Middle Office module or the front-to-back Bullhorn One package. Onboarding is quoted separately too, and below the Pro tier, so are automation and analytics.

TempWorks

TempWorks is a long-established staffing platform, founded in 1997, covering ATS, CRM, onboarding, time, billing, and payroll for temporary, contract, and day labor staffing. For day labor it adds quick dispatch and daily paychecks. TempWorks publishes no pricing; configurations are quoted through its sales team.

Avionte

Avionte positions itself as an end-to-end front and back office platform for clerical, light industrial, and professional staffing, with payroll, billing, vendor management system (VMS) support, and a mobile talent app. Avionte publishes no rates, so pricing comes by quote.

Zoho Workerly

Zoho Workerly is purpose-built for temporary staffing, covering a temp and client database, job scheduling against client requirements, timesheet generation, and invoicing.

Zoho publishes the price: $59 a month for up to 25 temps with unlimited recruiters, then $1.50 a month for each extra temp. A free plan covers 5 temps and two active jobs, which makes Workerly the cheapest published way into a genuinely staffing-specific product.

Ubeya

Ubeya and Enginehire are vertical specialists. Ubeya targets event, hospitality, and catering staffing, where shift volume is high, workers are casual, and clients expect a portal showing who is turning up.

Ubeya publishes $4, $7, and $10 per active worker a month, counting only workers booked that month, with monthly minimums of $50, $259, and $499. Payroll and billing are part of those published plans.

Enginehire

Enginehire targets niche verticals such as childcare, healthcare, and domestic staffing, where credentialing is the dominant constraint. It quotes every plan, and every plan includes the full feature set.

In a vertical with unusual requirements, a specialist frequently beats a generalist. Event staffing needs same-day fill and mass shift broadcast; childcare placement needs credential expiry blocking assignment. Those are product decisions a general platform makes generically and a specialist makes correctly.

Federal child care rules show why. Under 45 CFR 98.43, a licensed, regulated, or registered child care provider must request a criminal background check on each staff member, contract employees included, before they start and at least once every five years after that.

Scheduling-first platforms

Scheduling-first platforms solve shift demand at volume without trying to be the whole business system. They suit agencies that already have an ATS or accounting stack and need the scheduling layer to be better than what they have.

Workstaff

Workstaff targets event, hospitality, and catering staffing, where shift volume is high, workers are casual, and clients expect a portal showing who is turning up. It holds the candidate database and client job orders, but its only invoicing is contractor invoices, so client billing and pay and bill run in other systems.

Workstaff charges per manager seat from a $99 monthly minimum, and payroll preparation, contractor invoices, the client portal, and onboarding come as add-ons.

UKG Shiftboard

UKG acquired Shiftboard in 2025, and the old Shiftboard site now redirects to UKG, which sells it as UKG Shiftboard. The product focuses on hourly workforces where demand changes constantly: labor planning, matching workers to shifts by skills and qualifications, and worker self-service for shift claiming and swaps.

UKG positions the product for oil and gas, energy, and manufacturing operations with substantial headcount rather than for agencies. Pricing is quoted.

Workforce.com

Workforce.com approaches scheduling from labor cost control, with demand-driven scheduling and the ability to compare labor cost against a client budget. For agencies managing fixed-price contracts where overspend erodes margin directly, that framing is useful. Pricing is quoted and licensed per user.

General scheduling tools and where they break

General scheduling tools show up in agency comparisons because each vendor built a staffing landing page, not because they were designed for the agency workflow. That does not make them wrong, and for a small agency the economics are hard to ignore.

The economics are stark: a general tool costs single-digit dollars per user against $99 to $165 per user on Bullhorn's published tiers. If your operation genuinely fits, that is a real saving rather than a false economy.

One catch: most general tools price per user, and in agency use the temporary workers usually count as users. That flips the economics once your placed workforce grows, and it is the calculation most agencies run too late.

Connecteam

Connecteam is free for up to 10 users on its Small Business plan, with one schedule and one time clock. Above the free plan, $29 a month covers the first 30 users per hub on annual billing, then $0.80 for each additional user. It has no job orders, client billing, or pay and bill.

Deputy

Deputy charges $5 per user a month for Lite on annual billing, with Core at $6.50 and Pro at $9, and its monthly plans carry a $30 minimum. It is built for compliance-heavy shift rules: labor law compliance starts on Lite, and auto-scheduling and demand forecasting start on Core. Like the other general tools, it has no job orders, client billing, or pay and bill.

When I Work

When I Work is the cheapest per-user scheduler here at $2.50 per user per month for Essentials, with Pro at $5 and Premium at $8. Placed workers count as users, so the bill grows with the workforce you place, and it has no job orders, client billing, or pay and bill.

What each option costs an agency

The table models internal staff rather than placed workers, because that is how Bullhorn bills: an agency with 6 coordinators placing 400 temps pays for 6 seats. Ubeya and Zoho Workerly bill by workers instead, so their rows show the entry price whatever your team size.

Two things stand out. Per-worker pricing turns the model around: Zoho Workerly includes unlimited recruiters, so its $59 holds for 2 coordinators or 20, and only the temp count moves it. And general tools look dramatically cheaper than Bullhorn on this table precisely because it counts internal staff only; add your placed workers as users and the comparison narrows or inverts.

How to choose

Put the same five questions to every vendor you shortlist: together they separate a staffing platform from a scheduling tool and expose the costs a seat price hides.

Before you choose

FirstHR builds onboarding and HR software for US small businesses that employ their staff directly, so the agency side of the work comes from the platforms above: applicant tracking tied to job orders, a client CRM, shift dispatch to client sites, client invoicing, and pay and bill. If you run a staffing agency, the right answer is on that list.

What we cover is the direct-employer side: onboarding workflows, e-signature, training modules with completion tracking, document management, employee records, and an HRIS (human resources information system) with self-service, at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50. A staffing operator reading this page needs a platform that carries a placement from job order to invoice, and the full-stack platforms above are built for that job.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is staffing agency scheduling software?

Software that assigns temporary workers an agency employs to shifts at client companies, then carries the assignment through to timesheets, worker pay, and client invoicing. Shift demand originates outside the business: a client raises a job order, the order generates shifts, and the agency fills them from its worker pool.

How is it different from regular employee scheduling software?

Regular tools assume one employer, one set of locations, and one pay rule. An agency runs many clients, each with its own site, bill rate, pay rate, and compliance requirements, with workers moving between them. General tools also stop at the timesheet, while an agency needs that timesheet to produce both a paycheck and a client invoice.

What does pay and bill mean in staffing software?

One approved timesheet drives two outcomes: the worker is paid at their pay rate and the client is invoiced at the bill rate, with the difference being gross margin. Platforms advertising back office or middle office functionality are describing this, and some, Bullhorn among them, sell it as a separately quoted module rather than part of the base license.

How much does staffing agency software cost?

Paid plans start at a $50 monthly minimum on Ubeya, which bills $4 per active worker, and $59 a month for up to 25 temps on Zoho Workerly, which also offers a free plan. Bullhorn lists $99 per user per month for Starter and $165 for Core, and Workstaff starts from a $99 monthly minimum. TempWorks, Avionte, Enginehire, UKG Shiftboard, and Workforce.com quote individually. Back office modules and implementation terms vary by vendor.

Are staffing platforms priced per recruiter or per temporary worker?

It varies by vendor. Bullhorn and Workstaff bill per internal user, so an agency with 6 internal staff placing 400 workers pays for 6 seats, while Zoho Workerly bills by temps and Ubeya by active workers. General scheduling tools usually count every worker as a user, which is the calculation that flips the comparison as placement volume grows.

Can a small staffing agency use general scheduling software?

Sometimes. If you place a stable roster into recurring shifts at a few clients and invoice from accounting software, a general tool at $2.50 to $5 per user works. It stops working when you need bill rates separate from pay rates on one timesheet, credential expiry blocking assignment, or a candidate pipeline feeding coverage.

What is a job order in staffing software?

The record of a client's request for workers: role, site, rates, required credentials, and number of shifts. It connects the client to the work and generates the shift demand that scheduling fills. General scheduling tools have no equivalent, which is why agencies using them track client requests in a separate spreadsheet.

Does staffing software handle credential and compliance tracking?

Staffing-specific platforms generally do, and it matters more here than in ordinary scheduling because a lapsed certification can void an assignment and breach a client contract. The useful implementation blocks assignment rather than reporting the lapse afterward.

What should a small agency prioritize when choosing?

Work backward from where hours leak. If coordinators re-key timesheets into payroll and again into invoicing, prioritize pay and bill. If shifts go unfilled because nobody knows who is available and qualified, prioritize the worker pool and matching. If clients complain about visibility, prioritize a portal. Buying a full front and back office platform before knowing the bottleneck usually produces a system used at a fraction of its capability.