Jolt

The administrative side of the software is pretty intuitive, but advanced enough to really customize. I have not had a lot of time to play around with the other features just yet, but the scheduler is top notch. I especially like being able to make a template with unassigned employees. Every week I just drag and drop my crucial shifts to the people that can fit them and then build my schedule from there. Really the schedule building feature is just fantastic overall. I must have saved at least 6 hours of time every week since I started using Jolt if not more. Having availability and time off requests laid out over the scheduler is so nice. I employ a lot of college students whose availability can change weekly. Them having the ability to change their availability on the fly is incredibly useful for me. I used to compare my schedule to hand written notes and an availability spreadsheet. I couldn't imagine going back. Last thing I have to add is the customer service from Jolt is top notch. And I mean REALLY great. They set me up with a personal representative of which I have all contact information I need to contact at anytime directly. Every time I send an email to Jolt, it is answered almost immediately. If I bring up a question they don't have an answer for, the make an effort to find it and always get back to me. My rep Johnathan is like the friendliest guy I've ever talked to. The Customer service of this company is reason enough to purchase the software.

The fact that it is browser based. I don't care how fast your connection is, sometimes it's going to lag. Also, what's with needing an iPad for half the features?. What if I want someone to be able to see everyone on the schedule, but not change the schedule? And by far the most annoying thing is the Jolt Lite app. It's not intuitive so I end up putting availability in myself for employees that can't figure it out. The interface of the app looks pretty bare. Like a webpage from the late 90's. When I get a push notification, it would be nice if the app opened up to whatever it is I need to approve/deny instead of the default page I set, or the last page I was on. And availability is set as "unavailable to work?" It should really be changed to when the employee is available to work, or call it "Unavailability" or something, it's just confusing.

I love how easy it is to pick up on. I was capable of teaching myself with ease. I love the schedule and how employees can create a prefered avaiability as well as request off and swap shifts with others at my approval. It informs me immediately when someone makes a request, and I am able to set it so employees have to give x days prior notice for their request as well as a reason. I also enjoy the variety of options I have for creating my checklists. They can be as thorough as I want and notify me when I want. My employees also find Jolt easy to use. Most of them figure it out on there own and have had no problems using it. I also use their Jolt printer system, which is extremely useful and honestly could not have been created any better. The stickers do not leave residue! The support is also great. Theyre always open to ideas and tend to be very fast pace when assisting you. I love how willing they are to expand in new features/ideas. There are many other benefits to Jolt, but I have listed the big ones I discovered using.

My one con is the text notifications recieved from Jolt. You can set so that is a checklist is overdue, out of range, etc, you can be notified via text. This is a great thing; however, the texts can be overwhelming in the sense of how it is formated. It could be because I own an Android and not an Apple device (which is what I understand it is mainly used with), but my text notifications get broken up instead of being all in one. I have seen my co worker use her iphone with it, and her notifications are all in one. With that said, I have noticed they have been improving it.

How it has helped the store become more efficient.

I need labels I can adjust or have available for Raw Chicken to have all the information required by headquarters on one label.

The label feature for all food products has really helped us to drastically increase our food safety scores by clearly indicating when a particular product must be used by. We no longer have to mentally recall the hundreds of various hold times we have for all of our products and their ingredients, because all of that information is easily stored in the Jolt system and prints out with the touch of a button. The labels are also much higher quality than other sticker systems we have tried in the past, making dish washing much easier because they are removed easily with zero sticky residue.

The software, in our experience, is offline often. We contacted Customer Service multiple times to try to correct the issue but were instructed that we may need to send the entire printer back to be serviced and that we would get it back after the repair was complete in 2-3 months. The printer system is pricey to begin with, so it did not seem like an appropriate solution to be without what we were paying for, for multiple months. We also have issues with the calibration lining up with the stickers perfectly, but have discovered that if you gently pull on each sticker before printing it will line up more accurately.

Easy of Use, Customization, Features, Scheduling, Mobile App, Labels, Checklists and Information in Central Location

Goal setting not built in. App sometimes does not read (connect to) printer on the first attempt.