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Employee Scheduling

Sling

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 6 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Sling (Toast Inc.) · getsling.com

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Sling: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Sling: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Sling at a glance

Vendor
Sling (Toast Inc.)
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026
Data hosting
Outside the EU by default source, captured 3 Nov 2026
Free plan
Yes, per the vendor’s own page source, captured 3 Nov 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Sling 2/5, the mean of 6 judges. Sling, an employee scheduler from Sling, Inc., a Toast company, is strongest at staff self-service, scoring 6 to 7: Android and iPhone apps deliver the schedule, open-shift applications, manager-approved swaps, clock-in, breaks, timesheets and coworker messaging with a newsfeed. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 3 Nov 2026; evaluated by the panel 3 Nov 2026. all sources

Sling alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Frontline Employee

Weighted verdict

Works part-time shifts next to a second job or a degree and never opens a laptop at work. Judges the product by its phone app: can she mark availability, swap a shift without three calls, see her hours, and read it in her own language. A roster she learns about from a photo in a group chat has failed.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Frontline Employee

Panel median The Frontline Employee This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Frontline Employee
Roster building & demand planning 2.5 of 5 3 of 5
Working-time law & collective agreements 2 of 5 2 of 5
Mobile self-service for deskless staff 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Works council & employee data 2 of 5 2 of 5
Payroll handoff & integrations 2 of 5 2 of 5
European sovereignty 0 of 5 1 of 5

Roster building & demand planning

How this is scored

How a plan gets built across locations, roles and qualifications — templates, staffing requirements, forecasting from sales or occupancy, and whether the product proposes a roster or only draws one.

0 — Not a rostering tool; shifts cannot be planned in the product (a time clock, HR file or messenger only).

3 — A weekly shift grid per location with shift templates and roles attached, and the roster published to staff.

5 — Shift templates with roles or qualifications on shifts, several locations or departments, and open shifts or coverage gaps shown while planning.

8 — Staffing requirements per shift and demand-based planning from a named data source (POS revenue, footfall, occupancy or bookings), automatic roster proposals the planner can accept or adjust, labour cost shown against budget while planning, and cross-location staff sharing.

10 — Planning closes the loop: forecast, proposed roster and actual hours compared in one place, the proposal explains which rule or demand figure drove each assignment, and the vendor documents the forecasting method rather than calling it AI.

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The Frontline Employee

Schedule templates can be saved and re-applied scoped to locations, positions, groups or tags, and the roster flags conflicts and gaps while it's being built, with multiple work locations as a headline feature. The only demand signal the captured pages show is Toast POS sales compared against Sling labour costs; we found no public information on staffing requirements per shift, automatic roster proposals, or a documented forecasting method. 1 4 5 12

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Working-time law & collective agreements

How this is scored

Whether the roster knows the rules it is subject to — ArbZG rest periods and maximum hours, youth and maternity protection, Minijob earnings limits, Tarifvertrag and works-agreement rules, surcharges — and whether it enforces them, warns, or leaves them to the export.

0 — No working-time checks: the vendor states or shows that any shift can be planned without a rule check.

3 — Basic checks such as overtime, maximum-hours or break warnings shown to the planner.

5 — Named working-time checks — daily or weekly maximum hours, rest periods between shifts and breaks — shown to the planner before the roster is published, and contract hours or earnings limits tracked per employee.

8 — ArbZG named with the 11-hour rest period and daily maximum checked, the Minijob earnings ceiling warned about, whether a check blocks or only warns stated, and configurable rule sets per contract or employee group covering Tarifvertrag surcharges (night, Sunday, holiday), time accounts, youth-protection limits and works-agreement rules, with the planner's override of a violation recorded and reasoned.

10 — The rules are modelled as law, not as warnings: maintained rule sets for named collective agreements, sector-specific exceptions (care, hospitality) documented with the statute they rely on, every override attributable, and published guidance mapping each feature to the provision it serves.

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The Frontline Employee

Overtime rules are configurable — weekly, daily and California double overtime — and Sling calculates a shift's duration the moment it's scheduled and alerts the planner, with employee breaks listed as a feature. That is US-style overtime law; we found no public information on rest periods between shifts, youth or maternity protection, Minijob earnings limits, or collective-agreement surcharges. 1 6 7

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Mobile self-service for deskless staff

How this is scored

What the employee on the shop floor actually gets: a mobile app to read the roster, enter availability, request and accept swaps, claim open shifts and clock in — in their language, on their own device or a shared one.

0 — No employee access; the roster reaches staff only as a printout or PDF.

3 — An app or web view in which employees see their own shifts and are notified of changes.

5 — A mobile app with the roster, availability or absence requests, and shift swaps or open-shift claiming, with push notifications of changes.

8 — Swaps and open shifts resolved under the rule set (qualifications and rest periods checked before approval), clock-in by app or shared terminal with offline handling, a multilingual interface, and team communication that keeps shift talk out of private messengers.

10 — Self-service is designed for people who never open a laptop: swap and cover flows that resolve without a manager where the rules allow, accessibility and language coverage stated, use on a shared or personal device both supported, and employees able to see and export the data held about them.

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The Frontline Employee

This is the part built for people like me who never open a laptop at work: Android and iPhone apps with my schedule and open shifts to apply for, a swap flow where my coworker gets a notification to accept or reject and the shift reassigns once approved, clock-in and breaks from the dashboard, my recorded hours in Time Sheets, and team messaging with a newsfeed instead of a group chat. Swaps need a manager's approval, and we found no public information on offline use, language coverage, or entering my own availability from the app. 8 9

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Works council & employee data

How this is scored

Whether the product can be introduced under co-determination (BetrVG § 87) — role-based visibility, what is logged, which monitoring can be switched off, retention of availability, absence and location data — and whether the vendor supplies what a works agreement needs.

0 — No access control: the vendor's pages show every user seeing all employee data, or tracking of individuals that cannot be switched off.

3 — Admin, manager and employee roles with different rights, and a privacy policy that covers employee data.

5 — Configurable roles and permissions limiting who sees whose data, a data processing agreement offered, and either location tracking stated as optional or a retention or deletion rule for employee data.

8 — Fine-grained visibility (absence reasons hidden from colleagues and line managers where not needed), GPS and similar tracking off by default, an audit log of who viewed and changed an individual's data, configurable deletion periods, and documentation the vendor offers for works-council approval under BetrVG § 87.

10 — Data minimisation is designed in and evidenced: a model works agreement or feature-by-feature data inventory published, no performance or behaviour scoring of individuals, monitoring functions individually deactivatable, and deletion executed automatically per configured period.

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The Frontline Employee

Employee, manager and admin roles are visibly different — staff cannot edit their assigned locations or positions and only admins and managers can delete conversations — and the privacy statement covers employee data with a retention schedule after the contract ends. We found no public information on configurable permissions, an audit log of who viewed an employee's data, or works-council documentation; the same statement describes session replay and interest-based advertising on the services. 3 8 10

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Payroll handoff & integrations

How this is scored

How planned and worked hours, surcharges and absences reach payroll — DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, the tax adviser — and how the roster connects to the POS, HR and time systems a shift business already runs.

0 — No payroll path: the product offers no export of hours and no integration.

3 — An export of worked hours and absences (CSV or Excel) intended for payroll.

5 — A named payroll integration or payroll export (DATEV Lohn und Gehalt or LODAS, or another named payroll system) covering hours and absences, plus several named HR, POS or accounting integrations.

8 — Vendor-maintained payroll integrations with a lock step before transmission, wage types mapped per surcharge, POS integrations feeding forecasting, an HR master-data sync, and a documented API.

10 — Payroll is designed for, not exported to: several named payroll systems maintained, retro corrections after the close handled, the tax adviser given scoped access, and a versioned public API with webhooks and a deprecation policy.

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The Frontline Employee

Payroll reports export as a customisable XLS or CSV built from time-clock punches for any date range, and the one named payroll integration is Toast Payroll, alongside employee-data sync and POS sales-versus-labour comparison inside the Toast stack. The terms mention general API access to account data, but we found no public information on other named payroll or HR systems, DATEV, wage-type mapping for surcharges, or a lock step before transmission. 2 11 12

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the employee data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are, and whether that is documented rather than assumed. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted seriously here, because a scheduling tool holds availability, absence and often location data about employees who had no say in the vendor.

0 — Vendor, contracting entity and hosting of employee data all shown to be outside the EU, with no transfer safeguard stated.

3 — A named contracting entity and a privacy policy or data processing agreement; EU hosting offered as an option or claimed without a provider, or the hosting location not stated.

5 — EU hosting stated as standard, together with an EU contracting entity or a published subprocessor list, and a data processing agreement offered.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, EU contracting entity, full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing — push notification services included — named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, certification published, and a DPA that covers the employee data the app collects on personal devices.

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The Frontline Employee

Everything the captured pages show points across the Atlantic: Sling, Inc. is a Toast company at a Boston address, the terms are governed by New York law, and the single hosting-related statement sits in a GDPR FAQ scoped to personal data of EU residents. We found no public information on EU hosting, a subprocessor list, or a data processing agreement. 2 3 10

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual invoice for their headcount and locations — including the time clock, payroll export, forecasting and other modules sold as add-ons — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A public per-employee "from" price, a free tier or one priced tier, while the other tiers or what they include are not stated.

5 — Per-employee or per-location prices public for each tier with the billing period stated; add-on modules (time clock, payroll export, forecasting, terminal hardware) may still be unpriced.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with the per-employee maths, how inactive or seasonal staff are counted, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table producing the annual invoice for a given headcount, location count and module selection, including hardware, onboarding and renewal terms.

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The Frontline Employee

A free tier and a fifteen-day free trial are public, and the terms state monthly advance billing, non-refundable fees exclusive of taxes, thirty days' notice for fee changes, and no cancellation fee. The paid plans surface by name only through help articles — Premium and Business gate schedule templates, shift swaps and overtime — and we found no public prices for any paid tier or add-on. 1 2 5

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Hosting location Outside the EU ⚠ unverified 0/4 pts 10 Report an error
Hosting options Not determined — uncited Report an error
Open source Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement Not determined — uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Sling

Is Sling European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Sling is based.

Where does Sling store data?

Sling stores customer data outside the EU by default, per the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026.

Does Sling have a free plan?

Yes. Sling has a free plan, per the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Sling?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates Ordio (3/5), Shiftbase (3/5) and gastromatic (3/5) highest among the other 27 Employee Scheduling products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Ordio (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Sling alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Terms of service — found from the homepage getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy — found from the homepage getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Roster building & demand planning — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Roster building & demand planning — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Working-time law & collective agreements — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Working-time law & collective agreements — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Mobile self-service for deskless staff — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Mobile self-service for deskless staff — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Works council & employee data — found from sitemap getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Payroll handoff & integrations — found from sitemap support.getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Payroll handoff & integrations — found from sitemap getsling.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →