Sling by Toast: Compare Sling Lite and Sling Pro

In this Article:

Overview of Sling Lite vs. Sling Pro
Sling Lite
- Scheduling Import
- Newsfeed & Announcements
Sling Pro
- Bi-Directional Timesheet Sync
- Projected Sales Mapping
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Overview of Sling Lite vs. Sling Pro

Feature	Description	Sling Lite	Sling Pro
Scheduling
Shift scheduling	Organize and manage employee work schedules	✅	✅
Shift alarms	Automatically remind employees of upcoming shifts	✅	✅
Shift offers	Allow employees to offer their unwanted shifts to coworkers	✅	✅
Available shifts	Easily see which shifts need to be filled	✅	✅
Time off requests	Approve or deny employee requests for time off	✅	✅
Number of employees	Allow more than 50 employees	✅	✅
Schedule templates	Save time by reusing weekly schedule templates	❌	✅
Unavailability	Avoid scheduling unavailable employees	❌	✅
Calendar sync	Sync your full work schedule to your personal calendar apps	❌	✅
Auto-assigning	Allow Sling to auto-assign shifts based on your rules	❌	✅
SMS shift alarms	Alert employees of upcoming shifts via SMS	❌	✅
Communication
Newsfeed	Share news with your team via targeted, themed pages	✅	✅
Announcements	Send important information to your entire team's home screens	✅	✅
Private messaging	Communicate with employees one-on-one	✅	✅
Group messaging	Communicate with multiple employees in group chats	❌	✅
Time tracking
Remote time clock	Employees can clock in from their mobile device via the Sling app	❌	✅
Mobile time tracking	Employees can clock in from their mobile device via the Sling app	❌	✅
Timesheets	Track hours worked in one simple report	❌	✅
Bi-directional timesheets	Time clock entries sync from Sling to Toast POS and vice versa	❌	✅
Early clock-in prevention	Prevent employees from starting their shifts too early	❌	✅
Auto clock-out	Automatically end a shift if employees forget to clock out	❌	✅
Geofencing	Ensure employees are on-site when clocking in and out	❌	✅
Attendance reports	Report on total hours and shifts worked	❌	✅
No-show reports	Track and manage shifts that employees miss	❌	✅
Sick call-out reports	Track and manage shifts that employees call out on	❌	✅
Late arrival reports	View and manage employee tardiness	❌	✅
Labor costs
Labor cost management	Keep track of your labor costs and compare against sales reports	❌	✅
Labor budgeting	Set and stay on budget while building schedules	❌	✅
Overtime management	Track, analyze, and prevent excess overtime while scheduling	❌	✅
Projected sales sync	Sync Toast sales data to schedule the right amount of labor	❌	✅
Clopening alerts	Get help preventing clopen shifts	❌	✅
Holiday pay	Assign extra pay to shifts on holidays	❌	✅
PTO management	Approve and track paid time off requests	❌	✅
Payroll reports	Aggregate and sync timesheet reports for payroll processing	❌	✅
Employee documents	Save important documents and set expiration alerts	❌	✅
Task management
Shift tasks	Assign tasks and checklists to shifts	❌	✅
Task templates	Reassign recurring tasks with templates	❌	✅

Sling Lite

Sling is Toast's leading employee management platform that simplifies scheduling, centralizes team communication, and provides insightful labor cost analytics to provide you with greater control over your labor. All Toast customers have access to Sling Lite, free of charge, as long as they are a Toast customer. If you haven't already onboarded with Sling, select this link for directions.

With Sling Lite, you can manage employee time off, availability, and shift trade requests. With either Sling Lite or Sling Pro, restaurants can onboard all locations into one account or use multiple accounts, one for each location or set of locations (additional fees may apply). There is no limit to the number of employees you can add.

Time clock entries do not sync from Sling to Toast POS and vice versa. Shifts will not sync over with Scheduling Lite.

All Sling Lite accounts are free with basic features.

Scheduling Import

If you use another scheduling software and you're considering migrating to Sling by Toast, you won't have to manually copy over the schedules you've already created. With Scheduling Import, schedules from your previous software will sync through Toast Web directly into Sling. Since those schedules are already in Sling when you get started, this feature enables you to immediately begin using Sling and maximize your 15-day trial with Sling Pro.

Newsfeed & Announcements

All Sling Lite accounts have access to basic communication features like newsfeed and announcements. Customers can use newsfeed to post important information to themed pages for broad communication. Announcements can also be used to display messages to all team members upon loading the Sling app.

Sling Pro

Sling Pro offers useful and insightful features that a Sling Lite account does not:

Time clock (allowing for mobile time tracking, auto clock-out, and other time clock rules), geofencing, and timesheet reports.
- The bi-directional timesheet sync feature allows Sling time clock entries to sync to Toast timesheets. This means employees can use Sling's mobile time clock, which is especially helpful for BOH or remote staff.
Labor cost management tools, including budgeting, overtime tracking and prevention, labor reports, and more.
- With projected sales sync, your data will work for you and offer an estimate of the sales you might expect on a given day.
Full messaging capabilities, including newsfeed, announcements, and private and group messaging.
Task management tools like shift tasks and task templates.

When you're ready to upgrade to Sling Pro, you can do so via Toast Shop where you can see more details and pricing.

Bi-Directional Timesheet Mapping

Whether an employee clocks in/out using a Toast device or the Sling app, the time entries will sync to both Toast and Sling, eliminating the need to make manual adjustments, copies, or spreadsheets. Managers can edit timesheets on Sling and those edits are reflected in Toast. Sling timesheets will sync to Toast and over to Toast Payroll, if applicable.

Projected Sales Mapping

Many restaurants use sales forecasting in their scheduling by manually predicting sales based on historical data, holidays, and trends. This data is then used to create schedules with the appropriate levels of staff, but this process can be both time-consuming and prone to error. With Sling Pro, it can see your real-time sales data directly in Toast Web and use this to more accurately estimate the scheduling needed on a given day. Users can also override this projection based on events or other increased sales opportunities. See the Projected Sales section in Sling by Toast: Wages and Labor Cost for more details on this feature.