Getting started with Sling FAQs
Employee scheduling FAQs
Time clock FAQs
Labor costs FAQs
Communication FAQs
Task management FAQs
Security and Privacy FAQs
Getting started with Sling FAQs
How do I get started with Sling?
It’s easy! Head to our homepage and enter your email to get started. That will help you create your company account. You can also download the app from your app store and sign up there. Once that’s done, we’ll walk you through how to add locations, positions and employees. Then you’re ready to start scheduling.
How do my employees join Sling?
You add your employees to your company account. You can do it manually or import them from a file – whichever is easier! Make sure to use their valid email addresses or phone numbers, as employees receive and accept invites to join Sling via email or SMS.
How much does Sling cost?
Sling can be used either as a free product with limited functionality, or as a complete workforce management tool either with a Premium or Business plan. Your needs and the size and complexity of your organization will determine which plan is right for you. View the details of each Sling plan on our Pricing page.
How does annual billing work?
Customers using Premium or Business plans have the option to save 15% by paying annually. Simply select ‘Bill annually’ when purchasing a plan at the end of your trial. Already a Sling customer and want to switch to annual billing? It’s easily done right from your billing page!
What platforms does Sling work on?
Sling is available everywhere you work — on the web, iOS and Android. Use Sling on your desktop to create employee schedules, and use the mobile app to make changes, approve time off and shift exchange requests, and communicate with employees on the go.
What happens if an employee leaves my business?
If an employee leaves your business, you can deactivate or remove them from your Sling account. We’ll prorate you for the unused time in both cases. When the position is filled again, add the new employee to your team and your billing will be automatically adjusted.
What is the difference between an Admin, a Manager and an Employee?
Admins have full access to manage the organization’s settings and employees and they can create shift schedules in all locations. Managers can only create shift schedules and manage employees within the locations they control. Employees can view their schedules, initiate shift exchanges, update their availability and request time off.
What other tools does Sling integrate with?
Sling integrates with many tools you may already be using to help manage your business. Some, but not all of these include:
For more, visit our Integrations page.
How do I delete my account?
Only Admins can delete the Sling account on behalf of the company. That can be done in Account settings. But before you do, be sure to look at all the features available in each our our Sling plans.
Employee scheduling FAQs
What is employee scheduling?
Put simply, employee scheduling is the process and practice of creating a timetable for when your team members work. For some businesses, it may be as simple as scheduling all your employees to work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in the same location. For other businesses, it may be more complex, requiring different employees to work different shifts on different days of the week at different locations. Regardless of the complexity, employee scheduling plays an important role in how your business operates.
Why is employee scheduling important?
First and foremost, employee scheduling provides structure and order to your business’s workday. Managers, team members, and everyone involved know when they’ll work, what they’ll do, and who will be there with them. Employee scheduling also provides your team with a foundation on which they can build a beneficial work-life balance. And when your employees are happy and healthy, they’ll be better able to give your business what it needs to succeed.
How can employee scheduling with Sling help my business?
There are countless ways Sling helps businesses like yours improve their efficiency and productivity. Here are just a few:
More time
One of the most significant benefits of using Sling employee scheduling software is finding more time to focus on other aspects of your business. When you incorporate Sling into your workflow, its ease of use and straightforward functionality help you create the perfect schedule in minutes instead of hours.
With the time you save, you can give more attention to improving the way your team works and growing your business.
Improved access
Modern, cloud-based software like Sling makes it possible — and remarkably easy — to access your employee scheduling data anywhere, anytime. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, as long as you can connect to the internet, you can create schedules, make changes, and communicate with your employees.
That’s connectivity you can’t get with other apps.
Fewer errors
Experienced managers know that it’s incredibly easy to make mistakes that render a schedule all but useless. With Sling employee scheduling software, the program itself alerts you when it detects an error. Sling incorporates a built-in artificial intelligence that keeps track of time off, hours worked, and other variables, so if you schedule something incorrectly, the software alerts you to make a change.
How do I share schedules with my employees?
After you have created and published the schedule, your employees will be able to see their shifts right on Sling. They will get notified about new shifts or any changes to their schedules on the Sling dashboard and also via push, email or SMS notifications, depending on their preferences. If your employees download the mobile app, they’ll always carry their schedules in their pockets.
How do my employees exchange shifts?
If your employees can’t make it to a shift they were assigned to work, they can help you find a replacement. There are three ways for that on Sling:
- Employees can make their shift available, which notifies staff members in the same position and within the same location.
- They can offer a shift to a coworker.
- They can swap shifts with a coworker.
All shift exchanges require manager’s approval to take effect, unless approvals are disabled, in which case exchanges are approved automatically.
How do I build shifts around anchor employees?
When faced with employee scheduling, many managers start on Monday and work their way through to Sunday. While that certainly is a valid method for building a staff rota, there is a better way. Instead of filling in all shifts on Monday, then all shifts on Tuesday, and so on, start by scheduling an “anchor” employee (typically one of your best) to each shift and then fill other employees in around them.
This ensures that the employees most suited for each shift (e.g., the lunch rush at a restaurant or the rush-hour shift in a gas station) are working when you need them. It also ensures that you have a core of experience to provide stability across all shifts and on which your newest hires can rely.
Read more about how to create the perfect work schedule for your team.
How do I create and reuse templates?
Want to cut hours off your employee scheduling efforts? Create a template that you can reuse week after week to streamline your scheduling process. You can tailor your templates to your business’s specific needs so that you don’t have to recreate the wheel every time you want to build a new schedule.
When it’s time to sit down and create shifts for the next week, month, or quarter, the formatting, shift slots, and other relevant information are already there. This allows you to focus on scheduling the right employee at the right time and place to make your business run smoothly.
How do I create a backup schedule plan?
Despite your best intentions, and no matter how hard you work to make your employee scheduling perfect, emergencies will come up. Don’t let these emergencies cripple your business — have a plan in place.
With Sling’s cloud-based tools, you can create an availability chart of employees who might be willing to pick up an extra shift when another team member falls ill or can’t show up. You can also use the employee scheduling software to compile a list of reliable part-time employees or employees who left your business on good terms that you can call if your backup plan falls through as well.
Time clock FAQs
What is an employee time clock?
An employee time clock is a device that helps your business keep track of employee work hours so you can pay your team accordingly.
Time clocks come in three basic formats:
- Manual
- Software
- Combination
Sling is the most flexible time clock because it is made for businesses of all sizes and includes even more tools to help you manage and optimize your workforce.
Why is an employee time clock important?
One of the main reasons a time clock is important for any business is because it helps save time and money. An employee time clock reduces the time it takes to process employee time cards and calculate payroll. And a time clock saves money by automating collection and calculation, preventing time card fraud, and shifting the responsibility of hour tracking to your employees.
Ensures accurate payroll
Accurate payroll is essential for the success of your business and the engagement of your team members. Too often, the accuracy of employee payroll falls short because of confusing policies, human error, or banking issues. Incorporating Sling’s digital time clock into your business’s workflow drastically reduces the likelihood that you’ll experience these issues.
Provides real-time information
Sling’s digital employee time clock provides real-time information about all the variables that affect the way your business tracks time. It gives insight on employees and departments that are costing you the most in overtime, and helps you lower those costs.
Alerts you to attendance issues
Sling’s time clock gives you insight into attendance issues such as:
- Regular, repeated absences (e.g., a specific employee calls in sick three Fridays a month)
- Tardiness
- Long breaks
- Early clock-ins
- Late clock-outs
- Unapproved accumulation of overtime hours
Controlling these attendance issues can cut a significant percentage off your business’s annual payroll costs.
How can an employee time clock help my business?
Helps manage your team remotely
Sling’s cloud-based time clock gives busy managers the ability to coordinate their teams remotely. You don’t have to be on-site physically to ensure your team is arriving on time, working their shifts, and leaving when they should.
Eliminates human error
With Sling’s software-based time clock and time management system, human error is out the door. Sling stores all the data in one place, tabulates it, and produces reports that you can use to simplify the payroll process. Allowing a computer to do the work for you reduces the potential for errors that occur when manually entering all the numbers.
Guarantees security
When you choose Sling, you all but guarantee the security of your employee data. Sling’s system saves sensitive information such as address, social security number, pay rate, and hours worked in digital format rather than in a physical files so you can better control access.
Improves productivity
Manually tracking and calculating employee work hours takes a lot of time out of your busy day. With Sling’s integrated time clock, a process that usually takes hours will only take minutes. This frees you up to focus on other business matters and dramatically improves your productivity.
How do I track employee hours on Sling?
Managers can turn any phone into a personal time clock terminal and allow employees to clock in and out of their shifts right from their phones. Geofencing settings ensure employees are in the right place when they are clocking in and out and help prevent time theft. Alternatively, managers can set up a time clock kiosk on site and track employee time from a designated device. On-site time clocks can be used alone, or in combination with the mobile time clock on employees’ phones.
How do I use an employee time clock?
The physical act of clocking in and out is pretty simple, but the rules that surround the process are more involved and require all employees to learn how to use the time clock correctly.
Here are some of the more common settings businesses use to govern how their employees use the time clock:
- Employees are required to record hours worked for each shift and use Sling for that purpose.
- Employees must clock in by the start of their assigned shift.
- Employees must clock out at the end of their assigned shift.
- Employees may not clock in more than 5 minutes prior to the start of their assigned shift, or clock out more than 5 minutes after the end of their assigned shift without manager’s approval.
- Employees must clock out for their assigned break and clock back in when the break is over.
- Employees who have worked more than 40 hours during one week will be paid for the additional hours worked at a rate equal to 1.5 times their regular wage. Learn more about overtime and how it relates to payroll.
- Employees must clock out if they leave the work location for any reason other than work duties assigned by a manager.
- Employees should always clock in and out at their assigned duty station.
- Any adjustments to the time recorded using Sling must be approved by an immediate supervisor.
Of course, you may need different guidelines for your business. Tailor the items on this list to meet your requirements.
Labor costs FAQs
What are labor costs?
For business purposes, labor costs are anything and everything remotely related to compensating your employees.
Labor costs include such expenses as:
- Hourly wages
- Salaried wages
- Payroll taxes
- Overtime
- Health care
- Bonuses
- Sick days
- Vacation days
- Insurance
- Benefits
- Meals
- Supplies
- Training costs
Read more about how to calculate and lower labor costs.
Why are labor costs important?
First and foremost, labor costs are important because they can average a whopping 30-35% of your business’s total revenue. In some cases, labor costs can go even higher. In addition, labor costs factor heavily into your prime cost, which is a key metric for efficiency.
The key point is while you may pay your team members a set amount per hour, the actual labor costs your business accrues are much higher because you have to factor in many, if not all, of the other expenses listed above. Regardless of how much your business spends on labor costs, chances are, it’s a lot of money leaving your business every year. If you don’t have control, your bottom line will suffer.
How do I establish a labor budget?
Labor is one of the largest expenses your business is likely to face. To keep it under control, it’s essential to establish a labor budget and do everything possible to stay within those numbers when scheduling your employees.
Sling’s powerful software helps you set a labor budget that works for your operation. With Sling, you create a schedule that keeps your labor expenses under control and under budget. If your schedule exceeds the budget you’ve set, Sling notifies you immediately so you can make the necessary changes. Learn more about how to set a labor budget.
How do I track labor costs?
Tracking labor costs is all about efficient record keeping and reporting. Sling makes it simple with a built-in time clock and powerful reporting features. Sling automatically imports hours worked after your employees clock in and out and allows you to calculate and track labor costs over any period of time you choose.
How do I manage and optimize labor costs?
Optimizing your labor costs doesn’t mean you have to pay your employees less. In fact, there are better ways to manage one of the biggest expenses your business deals with. Here are a few tips to help you get control:
- Plan your schedule a month in advance
- Tabulate labor costs as you schedule
- Incorporate a rotating shift
- Train employees to fill in at other positions
- Establish clock-in, clock-out regulations
- Reduce absenteeism
- Decrease employee turnover
- Analyze labor trends
Read more about how to calculate and lower labor costs.
Communication FAQs
What are the communication features that Sling offers?
Sling’s communication tools include Messages, Newsfeed and Announcements. Messages allow you to communicate in private or group conversations and organize them by different teams and projects. Newsfeed enables you to share important information to keep teams up to date through thematic and targeted pages. Announcements are where you post reminders and urgent notices where they can’t be missed. Learn everything there is to know about communicating with your team on Sling.
How do I get notified about everything in Sling?
There are a few channels that you can choose to be notified through — email, push, and even web browser. You can select to be notified in a different way about updates related to Shifts, Time Clock, Tasks, Messages and Newsfeed. All users set their own preferences for notifications in Settings. Some channels can also send SMS text message notifications.
Task management FAQs
What is employee task management?
Team task management is the process of directing, organizing, and conducting both small tasks and large projects through to their conclusion.
This often involves:
- Planning due dates
- Testing
- Tracking
- Reporting
- Enforcing deadlines
- Integrating task dependencies
- Creating priorities
- Managing time on task
- And so much more…
Read more in our ultimate guide to team task management.
What are the benefits of employee task management?
If your business isn’t tracking employee tasks at all, you’ll see huge improvements when you start to. These include but aren’t limited to:
- Increased productivity
- Higher efficiency
- More accountability
- Clarity
How does Sling help with task management?
Sling helps you direct, organize and monitor progress on all your team’s assigned tasks. Visit our support center to learn all the ways you can assign and monitor tasks with Sling.
Security and privacy FAQs
Have Sling’s terms been updated to reflect GDPR?
Our terms have been updated to reflect the requirements of the GDPR and are available on our website:
How does Sling ensure deletion and retention of customer data according to GDPR?
Sling has all the necessary functionality for compliance with the GDPR. The method we use for deletion and retention of data is acceptable for use under the GDPR.
How does Sling process data?
We promise to maintain a high level of security and meet all expectations of GDPR. Any data that users put into Sling will only be processed in accordance with the customer’s instructions. In case of a data breach, we will ensure that the breach reporting will meet all the GDPR requirements.
Are all Sling employees aware of GDPR?
All Sling employees sign an non-disclosure agreement and go through a code of conduct training. The code of conduct training outlines protection of customer data according to GDPR requirements.
Does Sling use others to process data?
Sling uses Mixpanel and Salesforce for analytical purposes and Intercom for support purposes.
How does Sling handle data return and deletion?
All customer data is stored in our database. Currently the process to delete a customer’s data is manual. Upon receiving a valid request to delete someone’s data we will have a developer delete (or NULL out when required) the customer’s data. This deleted data would no longer be present in the database backups after one week.
Who can access my private data?
At Sling we use the principal of role-based access and least privileges. Only employees whose responsibilities require access to data will have the access.
How long does Sling store customer data?
Customer data is stored permanently except when a valid request is made by a user to have their data deleted as per the GDPR.
What is the process if I want you to delete my data?
Send an email to privacy@getsling.com or reach out to our support team and we will delete your data.
How does Sling obtain and document the consent of storing personal data?
When someone uses Sling for the first time, they are required to give consent as part of setting up their account. This cannot be skipped. We provide links to our terms of service and privacy policy documents and record the date and time when the user gave consent.
What are the data protection policies for customer data?
Please refer to the following resources:
Where is Sling data physically stored?
The data is stored in the Amazon cloud, which meets the most stringent regulatory requirements.
What is Sling’s formal procedure for reporting on data leaks?
Sling determines if the supervisory authority needs to be notified in the event of a breach. Sling assesses whether the personal data breach is likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedom of the data subjects affected by the personal data breach by conducting impact assessment against the breach. If a risk to data subject(s) is likely, Sling reports the personal data breach to the supervisory authority without undue delay, and not later than 72 hours.
What are the terms of ownership over my data?
Each customer owns their data. We host this data for them in order to provide the services that make up Sling.
How does Sling store data at rest?
Our database is encrypted at rest. Passwords are hashed and social security numbers (if provided, they are not mandatory) are encrypted. Both use very secure hashing functions and encryption schemes respectively.