When I Work
Easy scheduling, time tracking and team messaging built for hourly, shift-based teams
By When I Work · 4.2/5 verified-buyer score
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Hourly, shift-based teams in restaurants, retail, healthcare, manufacturing and franchises
- Managers who want to build schedules in minutes with auto-scheduling and OpenShifts
- Multi-location operators that need one dashboard for schedules, attendance and labor cost
- Payroll-ready time tracking with GPS clock-ins and geofencing
- Frontline communication that replaces group texts with in-app shift messaging
Ideal size: 5-500 hourly staff people · Single-site to multi-location shift-based operator
Not for
- Salaried knowledge workers on fixed 9-to-5 schedules
- Organizations needing in-product payroll processing rather than payroll integrations
- Teams that require a contractual uptime SLA - the vendor states it does not offer one
- Buyers seeking published SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA certifications
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
Same day (setup in minutes)
~1 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$1,500/yr
Starts at $30 · Per user, per month, billed monthly or annually: Essentials $2.50, Pro $5, Premium $8. 14-day free trial, no long-term contracts.
Implementation Friction
1/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Buyer Score
out of 5 · verified buyers
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
No seat minimum; unlimited users on every plan. Time Tracking & Attendance is a toggleable add-on per plan.
Add-on costs
- Time Tracking & Attendance add-on (per user, toggled on Essentials, Pro or Premium)
- Premium at $8/user/month adds API key access, webhooks and SAML/SSO
- Six months of Rippling payroll free for new When I Work customers
Company & support
Who is behind When I Work, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatAll plans
- Support portal / ticketsNot listed
- Community forumNot listed
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
The Essentials plan lists 'Help Center and live chat', so both are available from the entry plan. No support phone line, support email or SLA is published; the security page states the company does not offer an SLA.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where When I Work sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- When I Work
- Homebase
- OptimoRoute
- SurePayroll
- Planday
- Melio
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including When I Work. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What When I Work ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
When I Work is a mobile-first workforce management platform for hourly, shift-based teams. It combines auto-scheduling, GPS time tracking and attendance, open-shift swapping, labor forecasting, multi-location management and in-app team messaging, syncing attendance data to payroll providers such as Rippling, ADP, Gusto and QuickBooks. Plans start at $2.50 per user per month with a 14-day free trial, no contracts and no implementation fee; setup is self-serve in minutes. More than 200,000 workplaces use it.
Frequently asked questions
What does When I Work cost per user?
Published list pricing is Essentials at $2.50 per user per month, Pro at $5 and Premium at $8, billed monthly or annually. Every plan includes scheduling, messaging and unlimited users; Time Tracking & Attendance is a toggleable add-on. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card, no long-term contract and no implementation fee. Larger or multi-entity organisations can request enterprise pricing.
How long does implementation take?
The vendor markets the product as ready in minutes, not months, with self-serve setup and no IT department or intensive training required. Customer quotes on the site describe setup taking minutes and new employees being trained in under ten minutes. A realistic planning assumption is same-day first schedule for a single site, with a short configuration pass for multi-location rules and payroll mapping.
Does it integrate with our payroll and HR stack?
Yes. The published integration catalogue covers payroll providers including Rippling, Gusto, Square Payroll, Paychex, QuickBooks Online, OnPay and SimplePay, plus business-operations tools such as Zapier, GoCo and People. Attendance and labor data sync to eliminate manual timesheet entry. Rippling is the preferred payroll partner and new customers get six months free. API key access and webhooks require the Premium plan.
What security and compliance certifications does When I Work hold?
The security page states data is stored and transmitted securely over TLS, written to multiple disks, backed up daily and hosted on AWS with hardened configurations; card data is processed on a PCI-compliant network and mobile two-step verification is available. The company also states it does not offer an SLA, relying on a hosting partner's 99.9% uptime guarantee. No SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA or FedRAMP certification is claimed on the public pages, so regulated buyers should obtain documentation through the Trust Center or a direct security review.
Can it manage multiple locations or franchise groups?
Yes. The multi-location plan manages unlimited job sites and departments from one central platform, letting each location run its own shifts while sharing labor, reporting and payroll data company-wide. Pro adds scheduling rules, role permissions and labor sharing; Premium adds API access, webhooks and SAML/SSO for larger groups. The pricing FAQ explicitly positions this for franchises, retail chains, healthcare organisations and construction firms with dispersed teams.