Field notes › Choosing software
Ten questions to ask in any rostering software demo
Every rostering demo follows the same script. Clean data, a tidy week, a confident click through the happy path. The product looks great because demos are built to look great. Your job is to drag the demo onto your messy reality, and the fastest way to do that is to arrive with questions the sales deck does not answer. Here are ten.
Compliance questions
1. What happens when I book someone without the right ticket? The sharpest question on the list. Some products warn you and let the booking through anyway. Some block it outright. Make them show you, live, with a worker who is missing a competency. The difference between flagging and blocking decides whether the system protects you on a bad night or just decorates the mistake.
2. Where does the check run? A check that runs in the browser can be skipped by a stale tab, a bulk operation or a second user working at the same time. A check that runs on the server before the booking exists cannot. Ask the question in exactly those words and see whether the presenter knows.
3. How do expiring certificates surface? How far ahead, and what does the reminder look like? A report you have to remember to run is not a workflow. Look for expiries surfacing weeks out, with reminder emails you can send in one click rather than a mail merge.
People questions
4. Do workers need to install an app? If yes, ask what happens with the workers who will not, because some will not. A portal that runs in the phone's browser removes the whole problem before it starts.
5. What can workers do for themselves? Set availability, see their own shifts, register interest in open shifts, upload certificates. Each one of those they can do is a phone call your office stops taking.
6. What do my clients see? Can each client site log in, see its own roster and only its own, and raise shift requests through the system? If clients stay outside the tool, the Monday email traffic stays too.
7. Can I see all my sites in one view? Multiple client sites, day and night shifts, swing patterns, one timeline. If the answer involves switching between separate rosters per client, ask how they prevent double-booking across them. Watch the pause before the answer.
Money and data questions
8. What does the price do when my casual pool doubles? Per-seat pricing and a lumpy casual pool are a bad mix. Get the price for your whole pool, not your average active headcount, and ask what admin is required to keep the bill down. Flat per-organisation pricing makes this question boring, which is the point of it.
9. Where is my data hosted, and is 2FA enforced? Two short questions that deserve two short answers. Hosted in Australia, and yes on every login, are the answers you want. Long, qualified answers here are a warning sign.
10. What does the audit trail record? Who changed what, and when, across bookings, certificates and requests. Nobody cares about this until the first dispute with a client or a worker, at which point nobody cares about anything else.
How to run the demo
Bring a real fortnight from your own roster, anonymised if you like, and ask the presenter to build it in front of you. The gaps show up within minutes, and so do the strengths. A vendor confident in their product will enjoy the exercise. A vendor who insists on sticking to their own demo data is telling you something worth hearing.
Mustr will happily face all ten, so book a demo and bring your hardest fortnight.