Is MedAligna more expensive than When I Work?

It depends entirely on headcount, and the crossover is around twenty to thirty people. When I Work publishes $5 per user per month on Pro, so thirty people is about $150 a month and sixty is about $300. MedAligna is $99–$249 per location per month and does not move when you hire. Below twenty people they are cheaper; above thirty we usually are, and the gap widens with every per-diem nurse you add.

Does When I Work do credential tracking?

Not in the sense a clinic needs. The distinction that matters is not whether a date can be stored but whether an expired credential can stop somebody being scheduled. In MedAligna that check runs in the database under a row lock, so a nurse whose licence lapsed last month cannot be assigned or claim an open shift.

Can When I Work produce a CMS PBJ file?

It is a general workforce scheduler and PBJ is a skilled-nursing federal filing, so no. If you run a facility that files quarterly, that is usually the deciding factor on its own — MedAligna builds the file from hours already captured rather than from a separate re-keying exercise.

We use When I Work for clinical and non-clinical staff. Is that a problem?

It is a genuine reason to stay. MedAligna is built around clinical roles, positions and credentials, so scheduling a car park attendant in it is possible but not what it is for. If a single tool across the whole operation matters more than clinical enforcement, keep what you have.

What is a good When I Work alternative for a medical practice?

One that enforces what a practice is actually held to. MedAligna blocks expired credentials and OIG-excluded staff at the point of assignment, holds ratios against census with acuity weighting, produces the CMS PBJ file, and prices per location rather than per seat — published, with a 14-day trial and no sales call.

Comparison · verified August 2026

When I Work alternatives for clinics and care teams

When I Work is general-purpose employee scheduling: rotas, shift swaps, a time clock and team messaging, sold per user per month to any business that runs shifts. MedAligna does the same scheduling for healthcare specifically, priced per location, and enforces the rules a clinic is held to — licence expiry, rest gaps, nurse-to-patient ratios and the CMS staffing file.

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At a glance

When I Work publishes $2.50 per user per month for a single-location team, $5 for Pro and $8 for Premium, with time tracking as an add-on on the paid tiers (their pricing page, 2026-08-04).
MedAligna is $99–$249 per location per month, flat. It does not move when you hire.
The crossover is roughly twenty to thirty people: below that a general scheduler is cheaper, above it a per-seat price keeps climbing and a per-location price does not.
The difference that is not about money: a general scheduler has no concept of a lapsed RN licence, an OIG exclusion, a nurse-to-patient ratio, or the quarterly CMS Payroll-Based Journal file.
If you run a small team, track no licences and file no PBJ, When I Work is cheaper and does the job — that section is on this page too.

What When I Work is genuinely good at

It is a mature, well-built scheduler with a large mobile user base, and the things a general workforce tool should do well it does well: building a rota quickly, swapping shifts, messaging a team, and clocking in and out. Its pricing is public and self-serve, which in this market is not the norm — most healthcare scheduling vendors will not quote a number without a sales call.

It is also genuinely cross-industry, which is an advantage if your organisation is not only clinical. A practice that also runs a retail dispensary, a café or a car park is scheduling all of it in one place, and a healthcare-specific tool would make that harder rather than easier.

For a small team it is inexpensive in absolute terms. At ten people on the entry tier the whole bill is a rounding error, and no per-location product competes with that.

Where a general scheduler stops being enough

The gap is not features in the abstract — it is that a clinic is held to rules a restaurant is not, and a scheduler that does not know those rules cannot enforce them. Every one of the following is something a general workforce tool has no reason to have built.

A lapsed licence is still schedulable

A general scheduler can store a certification date and remind somebody about it. What it cannot do is refuse the assignment. In MedAligna an expired credential blocks the shift in the database, under the same lock that stops two nurses claiming it at once, so the rota cannot contain a nurse who is not licensed to be on it.

No federal exclusion screening

Scheduling somebody on the OIG exclusion list into a Medicare-funded shift is a billing problem, not a rota problem, and it is not something a general tool screens for.

No ratios, acuity or HPRD

Coverage in a general scheduler means "is somebody on this shift". In long-term care and acute nursing it means staff held against a census, weighted for acuity, reported as hours per resident day. Those are different questions with different answers.

No CMS Payroll-Based Journal

For a skilled-nursing facility this is often the single reason to buy scheduling software at all: a quarterly federal file of staffing hours by employee, by day, by CMS job code. MedAligna generates it from hours already captured rather than having somebody re-key a quarter into a separate system.

Per seat is the wrong shape for a nursing roster

Healthcare rosters carry per-diem and float staff who may work twice a month and still need an account. On a per-user price every one of those is a full seat; on a per-location price they are free. This is why the crossover arrives earlier than headcount alone suggests.

Which one is actually right for you

These are different products for different buyers, and the honest split is by whether clinical rules apply to you rather than by which is better.

Stay with When I Work if…

You have a small team and no licensed staff whose credentials gate the work.
You schedule across clinical and non-clinical operations in one place.
You are under about twenty people and price is the deciding factor.
Your team already uses it, likes it, and nothing on the list above applies to you.

Look at MedAligna if…

You employ licensed staff whose credentials expire, and somebody currently tracks that in a spreadsheet.
You are a skilled-nursing or long-term-care facility that files PBJ.
You hold nurse-to-patient ratios, by state law or by policy.
You bill Medicare or Medicaid and need exclusion screening to be structural rather than remembered.
You have twenty-five or more people on the roster, including per-diem, and a per-seat bill is growing faster than the team.

MedAligna vs When I Work, row by row

Binary, verifiable facts only. No adjectives; an opinion is not a comparison.

Capability	MedAligna	When I Work
Published price	$99–$249 / location / mo	$2.50–$8 / user / mo
Price moves when you hire	No	Yes
Self-serve trial, no sales call	Yes	Yes
Shift swaps and open-shift claiming	Yes	Yes
Time clock	Yes	Yes
Geofenced clock-in	Yes	Yes
Team messaging	Yes	Yes
Credential expiry blocks the assignment	Yes	No
OIG exclusion screening	Yes	No
Nurse-to-patient ratios against census	Yes	No
Acuity weighting and HPRD	Yes	No
CMS Payroll-Based Journal file	Yes	No
On-call scheduling and escalation	Yes	No
Home-care visits with travel-time checking	Yes	No
Rest-gap and consecutive-day rules	Yes	Partial

When I Work is a trademark of its owner. MedAligna is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by When I Work. Comparison compiled from publicly available documentation and pricing pages, verified July 2026. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

The honest bit

When you should stay on When I Work

A comparison page that concludes everybody should switch is an advertisement, and this one does not. There is a real set of clinics for which When I Work is the better answer, and it is not a small one.

You are under about twenty people. The arithmetic is against us and we are not going to pretend otherwise: twelve people on their entry tier is well under our lowest plan.
Nobody on your team holds a credential that expires, or the ones who do are tracked reliably somewhere else and nothing has ever slipped.
You do not file PBJ, hold ratios, or bill federal programmes.
You schedule non-clinical staff alongside clinical ones and want them in one tool.
It is working. A migration costs a fortnight of somebody's attention, and "it is working" beats a feature list you would not use.

We would rather you stayed and told someone we were straight with you than switched and regretted it. This category is small, and reputations travel.

Moving across, if you decide to

01
Export your people
Take the roster out of When I Work as a spreadsheet and upload it. The importer previews every row and tells you which columns it ignored before anything is written.
02
Add contracted hours while you are there
It is the one column worth the extra minute: a nurse on a 24-hour contract should get her overtime warning at hour 25, not at hour 41.
03
Set each site's timezone
Before you build a schedule, because it decides which day a shift falls on. A site in Phoenix and a site in New York cannot share one.
04
Load credentials, then turn the rules on
Licences go in the nurse's own wallet; annual competencies import from your LMS. Once they are in, make the ones that matter blocking and the schedule starts refusing what it should.
05
Run both for one pay period
Export hours from each and compare the totals. If they disagree, find out why before you switch payroll over — that is the whole point of doing it in parallel.

When I Work questions, answered

Is MedAligna more expensive than When I Work?: It depends entirely on headcount, and the crossover is around twenty to thirty people. When I Work publishes $5 per user per month on Pro, so thirty people is about $150 a month and sixty is about $300. MedAligna is $99–$249 per location per month and does not move when you hire. Below twenty people they are cheaper; above thirty we usually are, and the gap widens with every per-diem nurse you add.
Does When I Work do credential tracking?: Not in the sense a clinic needs. The distinction that matters is not whether a date can be stored but whether an expired credential can stop somebody being scheduled. In MedAligna that check runs in the database under a row lock, so a nurse whose licence lapsed last month cannot be assigned or claim an open shift.
Can When I Work produce a CMS PBJ file?: It is a general workforce scheduler and PBJ is a skilled-nursing federal filing, so no. If you run a facility that files quarterly, that is usually the deciding factor on its own — MedAligna builds the file from hours already captured rather than from a separate re-keying exercise.
We use When I Work for clinical and non-clinical staff. Is that a problem?: It is a genuine reason to stay. MedAligna is built around clinical roles, positions and credentials, so scheduling a car park attendant in it is possible but not what it is for. If a single tool across the whole operation matters more than clinical enforcement, keep what you have.
What is a good When I Work alternative for a medical practice?: One that enforces what a practice is actually held to. MedAligna blocks expired credentials and OIG-excluded staff at the point of assignment, holds ratios against census with acuity weighting, produces the CMS PBJ file, and prices per location rather than per seat — published, with a 14-day trial and no sales call.