Zoho makes good software for everyone, and Workerly is its temp-staffing tool — scheduling, e-timesheets, AI matching, invoices through Zoho Books, with pricing printed on their site. Credit where due: they publish, like we do. The real difference is upstream of any feature: one product was built by a toolmaker for every business, and one was built by a former agency owner for exactly yours. Their side of this page is from their site. Ours is priced on it.
Temp scheduling, e-timesheets, AI matching — invoices through Zoho Books, pricing on their site. Their words.
The whole agency in one product — ATS + CRM built in, clients on text, humans approving. Priced below.
Who built it, and which desk they were sitting at. Everything else follows.
Zoho builds good tools. We had to run an agency with ours.
Respect first: Zoho is one of the great software toolmakers, Workerly is its temp-staffing app — scheduling, e-timesheets, AI matching, invoicing through Zoho Books, per their own site — and they publish their pricing, which almost nobody in this industry does. We're not going to pretend any of that away.
Here's the honest fork instead. A toolmaker builds for every business at once, and it shows in the shape: in the Zoho world, temps live in Workerly, candidate pipelines in Recruit or CRM, money in Books — capable apps, connected by integrations. TempGuru was built the other way around: a founder who owned staffing agencies, building the one system she needed — orders, fill, dispatch, clock-in, timesheets, invoices, with an ATS and CRM built into Pro, and a client interface that's literally a text thread.
Neither origin story is a moral virtue. But software remembers who it was built for, and this page is one long demonstration of that memory. Their side comes from their site; ours is priced at the bottom.
Is TempGuru a Zoho Workerly alternative? Yes — for W-2 temp agencies that want the whole operation in one product: a built-in ATS and CRM on Pro, clients ordering by text through Guru, AI-ranked fills a human coordinator approves, geofence clock-in, same-day invoicing, QuickBooks sync. Published pricing: $254–$424/month plus 2–2.5% on billed shifts.
If you need scheduling and e-timesheets for a very small desk — especially inside the Zoho ecosystem you already run — Workerly is a sensible tool at a price they print plainly. This page is for the desk that's becoming a business.
Scheduling organizes your desk. Guru works your client's Saturday.
Most staffing tools — good ones included — organize the agency's side of the counter. The catering manager whose wedding block just doubled doesn't live on your side of the counter.
Read the panel: 7:58 on a Saturday morning, six more servers and two bartenders for a 4pm call, TIPS certs required, a lost invoice re-sent to the venue's AP — all of it from the client's phone, in the thread they'd use to text their florist. No portal, no login, no learning your software to give you money. Your coordinator sees every word and approves every add; what vanished is the phone tag and the re-keying.
That's the difference between software that manages temps and software that answers the client — and in staffing, the client's Saturday is where contracts are actually won.
In any demo, ask to see the client's morning, not the recruiter's dashboard. What does the client touch? What did they have to install? Ours is a phone number they already have.
Everyone matches now. Ask who signs.
Workerly's site advertises AI-powered matching of temps to jobs — genuinely table stakes in 2026, and we're glad the industry got there. The questions that separate platforms come after the match.
On Pro, the ranked list arrives with its reasoning printed — fifty-eight banquet shifts, the TIPS cert, the two late arrivals this spring — and a named human coordinator approves every assignment before anyone gets a confirmation. That's not ceremony. It's the decision-support posture that lines up with NYC's AEDT rule and Colorado's AI Act, which now makes meaningful human review of adverse decisions a right. When a regulator, a client, or a worker asks “who decided?”, your answer is a person's name, every time.
And because AI should grow the agency, not just fill Tuesday, Pro includes the operator-written AI-for-staffing playbook and a weekly cohort on AI lead generation and AI-built websites. Take the same test into every demo: rank a live order, show the reasons, and tell me who approves it.
What should separate AI staffing tools? Not whether they match — most do, Workerly's site included — but whether the ranking shows its reasoning, who approves the assignment, and whether the vendor teaches you to use AI beyond the fill. Pro: visible reasons, human approval, playbook and weekly cohort included.
General-purpose tools serve everyone. W-2 agencies aren't everyone.
A staffing agency that employs its workers carries weight most businesses never lift: workers' comp, wage-and-hour exposure, certification tracking, and now AI-hiring rules with teeth.
Pro is built for that weight, on purpose. Certs are checked on the way into a shift, not after an incident. Geofence-plus-selfie clock-in produces time records you can defend. Every AI recommendation carries visible reasoning and a human signature — the shape NYC's AEDT rule audits for and Colorado's AI Act now writes into law. This is employer software, built by someone who carried an employer's liability, not a marketplace and not a general-purpose scheduler dressed for staffing.
None of that is a claim about what any other product does or doesn't do. It's a claim about where our defaults point — and defaults are what you're actually buying.
Whatever you demo, ask one compliance question from your real life — a cert, an audit, a wage claim — and watch whether the answer is a feature or a workaround.
Zoho publishes pricing. So do we. Now price the year.
This is the rare comparison where both vendors print their numbers — theirs is on their site, per temp; ours is right here, flat plus a service fee. We genuinely respect that, so let's make the comparison worth having.
Ours: Essentials $254, Pro $424, Scale from $999 — per month billed annually, $299/$499 monthly, plus a 2–2.5% service fee on billed shifts. $0 setup on every plan, migration included, branches $99. Price a full year for your actual roster on both sites, then price what isn't on either invoice: the client who stays because ordering is a text, the Friday that bills itself, the pipeline living in the same product as the shift. Software cost is a line item. The operation is the number.
Whatever the per-seat or per-temp math says anywhere, our switch itself costs nothing: roster, clients, and rates migrated with you, included, on every plan.
How much does TempGuru cost? Essentials $254/mo, Pro $424/mo, Scale from $999/mo billed annually ($299/$499 monthly), plus a 2–2.5% service fee on billed shifts. No setup fee, migration included — published at tempguru.co, and Zoho publishes Workerly's pricing on its own site.
Follow the invoice. It tells you whose world you're in.
Per Zoho's site, Workerly's invoices flow through Zoho Books. Ours flow to QuickBooks. That single sentence decides more of this comparison than any feature list.
Full honesty, both directions: if your agency's books already live in Zoho Books, count that seam against us — switching would add a step to your ledger, and pretending otherwise would break this page's one rule. But if your accountant lives in QuickBooks — like most small American agencies' accountants do — then the gravity runs the other way, and the clock on the panel is your Saturday: reception ends 10:47, venue approves from the after-party at 11:14, invoice out 11:26, books already square.
Money paths are the stickiest part of any software decision. Pick the platform whose ledger you already trust, and let that choice outrank the demo gloss — ours included.
One question sorts this chapter: where does your accountant live — Zoho Books or QuickBooks? Answer that before you demo anything, including us.
Outgrowing a tool is good news. Act like it.
If you're reading a Workerly-alternative page, some part of your agency has stopped fitting in a scheduling tool. That's not a software failure — it's growth — and the move should cost accordingly: nothing but the plan price.
No setup fee on any plan. We migrate your roster, clients, and rates ourselves, included. Your data stays exportable every day you're a customer, billing runs annual or monthly, and both numbers are printed one chapter up. The week on the panel is the first one on the other side: pipeline in the built-in ATS, deals in the CRM, the first client order arriving by text and filing itself — the agency running as one product instead of a stack of good intentions.
Bring the weekend that outgrew your current setup — the doubled wedding block, the cert scramble — and watch Pro run it live, order to invoice. Growth should feel like this.
Two published prices. Two demos. One Saturday to run.
You can price both platforms tonight without talking to anyone — enjoy that; it's rare here. Then let the demos settle what pricing pages can't.
Bring the same Saturday to each: the doubled block, the TIPS certs, the venue that lost an invoice, the 11:26pm books. Watch who your client has to become, where the pipeline lives, whose name is on each approval, and which ledger the money lands in. The platform that makes that Saturday boring is the one your agency should grow up on.
The agencies already running on Pro.
“I've been staffing events for over thirty years, and I've never seen anything like Pro. The software just runs, start to finish. This industry has never had a tool like this.”
“I run a same-day labor company, not a tech company. Pro made AI something my front desk actually uses every morning. We're filling more orders, and we finally show up when people search for labor in Knoxville.”
“We're a specialty shop, so knowing the work and moving fast is the whole game. Pro put AI into our daily operations. My team runs the desk with it now, answers quicker, and we're getting found for the exact roles we staff.”
Asked before switching.
Is TempGuru a good Zoho Workerly alternative?
For W-2 temp agencies ready to run the whole operation in one product, yes: a built-in ATS and CRM on Pro, clients ordering by text through Guru, AI-ranked fills a human coordinator approves, geofence clock-in, same-day invoicing, and QuickBooks sync — at a published $254–$424/month plus 2–2.5% on billed shifts.
We run other Zoho apps — do we have to leave them?
No. Pro replaces the staffing core; keep whatever else you love. One seam to weigh honestly: our ledger sync is QuickBooks. If your books live in Zoho Books, count that step against us before you switch.
Does TempGuru have an ATS and CRM?
Yes — built into Pro, and organized around staffing's real objects: candidate pipelines and client relationships live in the same system that runs orders, shifts, timecards, and invoices.
What does switching cost?
The plan price. $0 setup on every plan, roster/client/rate migration included, data exportable throughout. $254/$424 billed annually, $299/$499 monthly.
Do our clients have to log into anything?
No. Orders, same-day additions, cert requirements, roster checks, timecard approvals, and invoice requests all run by text through Guru. A gray-label Client Hub exists for clients who want a dashboard.
How is TempGuru's AI different from Workerly's matching?
Zoho's site advertises AI-powered temp-to-job matching; matching is table stakes now. Pro's difference is what surrounds it: visible reasoning on every ranked candidate, a human coordinator approving every assignment — the posture NYC's AEDT rule and Colorado's AI Act point at — plus the AI-for-staffing playbook and weekly cohort included.
Is TempGuru built for W-2 agencies?
Specifically for them. Cert checks on the way into shifts, defensible geofence time records, human-signed AI decisions — employer software, built by a former agency owner who carried the employer's liability herself.
When is Zoho Workerly the better call?
If you're a very small desk that mainly needs scheduling and e-timesheets — especially already inside the Zoho ecosystem, with books in Zoho Books — Workerly is a sensible tool with pricing printed plainly on its site, and we respect the printing. When the agency itself is what you're scaling, come run a Saturday with us.
