Find your fit
Who it is for
A small team can use Starter for scheduling, simple time tracking and basic payroll reports. Plus is the more relevant comparison if leave policies, advanced scheduling, integrations or employee documents are required. Pro adds custom configuration and auto-scheduling on a quote. List those needs before choosing a tier; a 30-day trial defaults to Plus, so a feature seen in trial may not be in Starter.
Before inviting staff, map departments, employee groups, managers and shift types. Assign who may publish schedules, approve requests and edit worked hours, then pilot one ordinary week and one absence. The billing minimum and five-user increments make an accurate active-user count important even for a small team.
The work it supports
Core capabilities
Managers view the schedule by department, period and grouping, and can reuse templates for recurring coverage. Planday also has a working-time-rule report; review exceptions manually before publishing, particularly when staff work across departments or have unusual hours.
An unassigned open shift can be requested by an eligible employee and approved by an admin or schedule manager. Staff can also swap, hand over or offer shifts, with approval behavior controlled in settings. Walk through a late swap with sample staff before giving a team broad self-service rights.
Employees can submit preferred and unavailable periods to guide the scheduler and open-shift coverage. Availability is not an absolute block: Planday says a manager can still schedule someone marked unavailable. Record contractual or safety constraints separately and confirm them in the final rota.
On Plus and Pro, an administrator can set fixed or accrued leave policies, create leave accounts and let staff request time off in the app. Managers accept or decline requests; approved leave appears on the schedule and flows into the time record. Test balances, overlapping requests and who can see sensitive absence detail before using live staff data.
Punch Clock records starts, breaks and finishes through an employee phone or a shared station; phone setup can use GPS or Wi-Fi rules. Choose the method that fits the workplace and explain it to staff, especially when location controls are enabled.
Timesheets brings worked hours, breaks and clock entries together for correction and approval. Current Help says it is available across organizations and regions and replaces the earlier Punch Clock approval page, though not all deviation rules are supported. Check the account's approval screen and one known exception before depending on automatic checks.
A payroll report can be exported as PDF, Excel or CSV for a separate payroll service. Preview a complete pay period and confirm breaks, supplements and approved leave with the payroll owner; an export is a preparation step, not a verified payroll run.
Understand the offer
Pricing and getting started
Planday presents Starter and Plus as per-user plans and Pro as custom-priced. Starter covers core scheduling and basic reporting; Plus adds leave, richer payroll reporting and integrations; Pro lists auto-scheduling and custom roles. Pricing depends on region and billing selection, so use the current in-country quote rather than a universal amount.
User fees are billed in advance in five-user increments: six active users are billed as ten. Official Help lists minimums of five Starter, ten Plus and fifty Pro users. Adding staff changes the invoice, and removing them only helps the next period if they are deactivated before it ends. Price the expected peak active headcount, not just the average rota.
The 30-day trial needs no credit card and includes Plus by default. It ends without automatic paid conversion, but trial data is deleted after a brief grace period if no subscription follows. Decide which trial records must be retained before expiry and confirm the chosen plan's rights before moving real operations into it.
Look a little closer
Before you choose
A practical evaluation is a fictional two-department week: create open shifts, receive a request, submit unavailable time, try a shift swap and request leave. Confirm that manager approvals, notifications and schedule conflicts follow policy. Compare the same scenario on the intended paid tier rather than only in the Plus trial.
For time and payroll, run harmless sample clock entries through Timesheets, correct a discrepancy and preview the exported report. Ask the payroll owner which fields and approval state are required, then price the minimum and five-user billing step for every active employee. Planday documents employee, time and leave export paths, which are worth checking before a future migration.
13 distinct sources behind this profile. Research observed Oct 21, 2026. Features and offers can change.
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