Calamari reviews

Pluspunten

We have decentralized operations, and our managers and HR love being able to see presence and location statuses of our employees in real time, and at a high level.
The Calendar function in the leave module allows for great oversight and enables more efficient resource management and allocation.
The time-sheet and leave reports available are robust and we love the download to excel feature, this perfect tabular format allows for deeper dives on trends, pivot tables etc within Excel.
It really is simple to use for employees and managers. The app keeps things simple to enable clocking in/out and applying for leave.
Really just very easy to navigate, after training our managers, no one has had to come back to us on how to navigate the system.
There are several clock in methods which allows for flexibility, eg smartphone clock-in, QR scans, and browser check-ins.
I must also commend the support team for providing excellent back-end support for our administrators! Keep up the great work and service

Minpunten

A few improvements could be made, such as allowing for attachment uploads from a smartphone for leave applications and for locations to be tagged when clocking in with a QR code.

Pluspunten

We use Calamari for a range of HR activities. The most useful features that we use on a daily basis include:
1. Absence Requests: Employees are able to request paid time off / vacations / unpaid leave etc in a formal and structured manner. The approval process is easy to calibrate and set up for managers. Provides an easy process where documentation can be added to support requests (such as medical leave notes).

2. Calendar feature: When payroll exceptions need to be considered, the calendar feature is an easy way to make any adjustments that need to be made. It also enables you to plan for staggering of vacations for employees inside the same department.

3. Employees: Easy to create a database of all employees where information from starting dates, salary etc. can be recorded and quickly accessed.

4. Reports: Functional and and easy to prepare using this feature.

Minpunten

As far as the requirements of our business go, Calamari offers all the necessary features (and additional ones) that we need. We have no complaints regarding the software that have come up in the time we have been using it.

Pluspunten

Very user friendly interface encourages our team members to use Calamari regularly.
The tool is also very simple to use so all in-house communication is strengtened because of that.
The Success team writes back within minutes and helps with literally everything so the communication between us/ our team and Calamari is great.

Minpunten

There are still some HR-friendly feautres to add. For now we find that Calamari is more intuitive for team members rather than Administrators.
For example, the ability to see the history of different kind of contracts and calculate the leaves accordingly, or setting reminders about medical check-ups and OHS is something we still hope to see.

Pluspunten

Working with my rep is so easy and has been the selling point on this platform.

Minpunten

It's almost over simplified sometimes.

Minpunten

i signed up. received the email, followed the link and only get a green screen asking you to "wait for a while".

and after a few HOURS ( you get it right, hours ), that so-called "while" is still there. refresh / quit browser do no help. same link goes to same screen with same words.

i received the mail at 0100, tried it on 0300, get the same result. so i contacted them via the webform.

i checked back on 0700. my mailbox got nothing - not even a acknowledgement of receiving my email, and surely nothing about why the while is still staying. and yes - same signup link still goes to the same page with the same words.

i'm still hopeful, so tried again on 1900 on the same day. now the best part arrived - the same link i tried said "my license expired and my account is blocked".

so, what Calamari suggesting, is that my signup license is "looking at their green screen and wait for a while" - but hey, i haven't looked at that for 14 days yet, why have my license expired SO SOON???

is Calamari a hoax for getting my email? the other "positive" reviewers sound SO TRUE, i just can't tell how can that be. i'm not suggesting fake accounts with fake reviews, but i doubt for this kind of performance and stability, how can i handle the attendance / leave management thing of my whole company to it ?

Pluspunten

Great value for the money, easy to learn, easy to manage

Minpunten

Could use more functionality, such as "batch editing" of employees so that I can select 10 employees at once and edit them all to the same "schedule"

Pluspunten

Calamari has everything you need to manage attendance efficiently.
1. Fisrt of all you can configure it according to your needs. For example I have created 13 approval flows for leave requests. Other solutions I'd tried before Calamari allowed me to create up to 4. During the whole set-up process I had an impression it was custom made. Unbelievable.
2. When you see absence calendar of all employees it is so much easier to plan work
3. You can add as many types of absences as you need
4. It is possible to integrate it with Jira - our Project Managers just love it! It makes their work much easier
5. There's a mobile app.
6. Reports - essential for payroll team, the board and HR
7. Calamari Team - fantastic and very helpful professionals
8. The price! Great value for money

Minpunten

I can't think of any cons at the moment.

Pluspunten

We are a smaller company so we don't have what you would call "Standard" requirements for time off requests. However, Calamari has thought of everything and the little details and options to edit the limits on the requests is amazing! It's also super easy to use.

Minpunten

We haven't run across any dislikes yet. Just a learning curve going from our old system to our new system. However, the HR Reports are super helpful!

Pluspunten

All our staff are enjoying the how easy it has begun to notify management of leave and sick leave and how instant everything is!

Minpunten

Daily notifications of who is absent from office are not categorized by absence type eg: sick leave or vacation leave should be mentioned near the name of the absentee.

Pluspunten

very easy to set up and automates the process of managing annual leave / remote work / birthdays. Very convenient and simple way for employees to request leave and for managers to sign it off. Also works well the integration with slack / teams / email so easy for people to stay in the loop

Minpunten

I don't have any complaints about the software

Pluspunten

I like that I don't have to think about it much, love the Slack integrations for my team and how easy it was to transition from our old process into Calamari. It's simple, clear, and for a small team it has everything I need. The customer support team has always responded promptly when I need anything, and we were even able to extend our trial period in the beginning and converted to a paying customer shortly after.

Minpunten

So the most annoying thing, and this is a small issue, is not being able to select a range of dates on the calendar by clicking on the days themselves. Again, it's a small thing, but it's something I'm used to in other situations, and so I frequently make the mistake of forgetting it's not possible on Calamari. I suppose the other thing is that it's not always immediately clear how to make use of some of the finer features, and so I simply haven't been bothered to find out if they're even there. For example, I spent a little while searching once for whether we could only make it possible for employees to request annual leave in the future if they will have accrued it by the specified date (and not just if they have already accrued it, if that makes sense), but it wasn't obvious how to do so or even if it were possible, so I just kind of left it. These relatively minor complications are the kind of thing that someone in a rush will just leave in the moment, because they've more important things to do, but will be annoying over time.

Pluspunten

We could build in our leave policies so that Calamari enforces the rules automatically (e.g., who is eligible to take school visitation leave, awarding some leave annually and some by days worked, different minimum durations for different leave types, etc). It offers very granular control over the setup, and is very intuitive and smooth once setup.

Minpunten

The downside of having such detailed control options is the steep learning curve in the implementation process. Fortunately, the customer support staff are great and really helpful with figuring everything out. I'd like Calamari to implement an "edit" feature for approved leave requests, which would be more convenient than cancelling and resubmitting.

Pluspunten

It's a new way of absence & leave management. You can plan and track all types of vacation, paid time off, sickness and you can do it without old, annoying paper forms. You'r always few mouse clicks from your dreamed vacations ;) Another wery importand feature is clock in/clock out - it's super easy to use especially with bluetooth beacons support. Place a token in your office reception and install/configure calamari app on our phone. That's all! You can forget about clockin in/out ever again. It will by done automaticaly when you enter/leave your offiice. If you don't want to use beacons or when you'r work from home you can still clock in/out "manual" from mobile app. It's worth to mention that calamari has super helpfull customer service.

Minpunten

Beacon support for Android phone still need some fine-tunning compareing to iOS version. Except that - it's just perfect!

Pluspunten

Manages employee hours, vacations, and sick days without a glitch. Also works great with iBeacon. I purchased and configured an iBeacon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019G0VS64/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), and configured it to work with the free Calamari app on each employees mobile. The result is that the software could keep track of every employee the second they walk in, and their last exit from the office every day.

Minpunten

I have not really had anything that I didn't like. I had trouble deleting employees who left our company, but the support staff were very prompt, helpful, and friendly.

Pluspunten

I really enjoy the ease of use and how the customization. We have unique time off policies and teleworking policies. The system can accommodate all type of policies.

Minpunten

The sync or integration with Google was a little challenging. We had to contact the support team a few times to get it fully integrated and working properly. However, the support team was responsive and helpful.

Pluspunten

Calamari helps my company handle holidays. It allows me to easily control, monitor all absences and what is really helpful helps me to decide if I should accept holiday request, when someone in my team had requested and this request has been already accepted! That is the core functionality for me :)
I really love integrations that Calamari provides me!
At first: GSuite (by Google) - I do not have to worry about creating new accounts and I can see all of absences in my Google Calendar (this is my favorite) .
Another huge integration is with Slack, which is main messenger in my company. I can just accept and decline requests without login in into Calamari!
On the other hand I really like is Calamari support, those guys (especially Hubert) are fast as lightning, very thoughtful, proactive and they for sure will help you configure your instance. Communication with them is pleasure :)

Once Calamari is configured is maintenance-free, and very very comfy!

Pluspunten

However, Kamil is a great help, very patient when I suddenly get called into a conference meeting and is always willing to support and understand your needs.

Minpunten

The only down side is that it only has holiday and absence on there and nothing else.

It would be brilliant if Calamari explored the market and expanded the systems functionalities such as adding a performance management section, recruitment section and incorporated all HR jobs into one system.

Pluspunten

We love Calamari! From new users who find the interface very simple to use from administrators who can customize teams, approval flows, weekly schedules, accruing PTO, and reporting, Calamari does it all! There are always new updates which we are loving and find them super easy to implement and make our experience even better. Highly recommend this product!

Minpunten

The only improvement that I would suggest would be to allow the employee list to be sorted by your preference. Such as the ability to put the last name first; Smith, John.

Pluspunten

As a startup, I was looking for a perfect solution for leaves and attendance management. By using Calamari,
you can approve your employee’s leaves from your fingertips. And every detail you need is available on their dashboard.

Minpunten

Having issues sometimes with the attendance management as the beacon system doesn't work with us well yet. Hopefully, they will fix it in future as I have faith in them.

Pluspunten

We like that calamari syncs with Slack and the Google calendar, which gives the whole team a good overview of who´s at the conference, on vacation, working remotely etc. Also, the approval system is easy for managers as they can approve or reject requests via slack. The tool is easy to use and intuitive. I´d like to point out the super fast, friendly and excellent technical support team, namely reps who are always happy to help :-)

Minpunten

Sometimes downloading reports at the end of the month is slow.

Pluspunten

- Easy of use
- Interface
- Functionalities

Minpunten

- Price (do not like user/license model because if you are in the limit of users and you have a flexible number of employees it is a pain in the ass to pay more if you are going to have more than 50 only for several months and you want to pay for the whole year subscription).
- Lack of customising (if you have very concrete situations, you do not have too much freedom to customize)

Pluspunten

It covers many fuctions and it is flexible in case of special working hours conditions or special holidays requests. We use it for example for the normal holidays as well as for home office, unpaid holidays, sickness of the child of an employee, spcial days off due to a master or a course, etc.

Minpunten

If a contract of a employee changes during his period at our company (for example from a 40 hours contract to a 32 hours one), it is difficult to modify the terms in Calamari. It is possible though, so it is still fine.

Pluspunten

Calamari is easy to implement, administrate and use. The customer support and the flexibility of the team is outstanding. The tools is feature rich but clean in design. New features and improvements are added on a regular basis and the roadmap is made transparent. Integrations to google, slack or other tools are in built. Customizing to specific needs is possible. Calamari increased management and transparency on absence/leaves significantly.

Minpunten

Nothing in specific. If something was missing or did not work as intended we always found a quick solution

Pluspunten

Transparency, choice between different groups and the approval flows. Easily adding new employees to the system and editing employee data. Easy transfer of data into excel tables.
Modeling the types of absences is very easy and transparent.
Everyone is equally accessible.
We like the quick response of the Calamari Group!!
We recommend this software to all types of companies!

Minpunten

The price could be slightly more optimal, otherwise it is OK. We would like to have a chance to insert collective holidays, to put all employees in the calendar at the same time. However, the Calamari group always helps.

Pluspunten

Calamari is an easy to use HR system, with easy and simple setup for any organisation. It convenient and easy to access as it is a web-based system. The system can cater for both local and international organisation with option to customize according to the country's holiday requirements.

Minpunten

They still lack in their mobile application but they are improving with each update. They have bug fixes off and on but their customer service are swift to tackle the bugs in the software.