Plan and publish a staff schedule

Staff Scheduling plans shifts for the people who work them in the selected Personal or team context. You plan in drafts; employees see a shift only after you publish it. Team admins manage the schedule, and a team admin can give other members a scheduling role (see Scheduling rules, roles and settings).

Set up

Open Staff Scheduling. Until the first week is published, Get started on Schedule lists the steps, each with a button. Only adding shifts and publishing are required.

1. Add the positions people work, such as Kitchen or Cashier, or start from a business type. See Set up positions, locations and qualifications.
2. Add the people who work shifts on Staff. See Add staff and invite them to see their shifts.
3. Plan your usual week: add the shifts of a normal week.
4. Publish the week.

Hide takes the list away for you in that team; Undo in the message brings it back. Get started is no longer shown once the team publishes a week.

See an example week in Get started opens Example schedule: a sample week for a small café, with sample people and shifts. Nothing on it can be changed or published.

Views

People shows the week with a row for each person and a first row of open shifts, with each person's paid hours for the week. Positions shows the week by position, Day shows one day by the half hour, Month shows how many shifts, open shifts and people off each day has, and List lists the week's shifts. Use the arrows to move between weeks, days or months.

Filter by position, or by location when there is more than one, and use Find a person in People and List. On a phone, People lists each person's week day by day, ending with their hours for the week. Days that have passed are greyed and offer no +.

Add shifts

Choose Add shift, or the + in the empty part of a person's day. Choose the date, start and end; an end before the start finishes the next day. The person, position, location, breaks and instructions are optional. Choose Nobody yet for an open shift, which can have up to 50 openings, each filled separately. A Starter shift fills in a saved time, such as Opening. Add as a draft saves it.

Breaks are unpaid unless they say paid, such as 30 unpaid or 15 paid at 10am, 30 at 1pm. To change a shift's times later, click its time and type them as you would say them, such as 9-5 or 10pm-6am.

A person can work more than one shift in a day: a morning and an evening shift, or two shifts back to back in different positions, such as four hours serving and four at the bar. Choose the + in their day again; the new shift will start when their last shift that day ends. Shifts that overlap are refused.

Every shift will be checked against the team's rules when you save it: overlapping shifts, time off, availability, positions, qualifications and the hour limits you set. A rule that blocks will stop the shift; a manager can override some rules with a reason, which will be recorded. A warning will let the shift be saved and will be shown on it.

Repeating shifts

Under Repeat, choose every week on that day, every two weeks, Monday to Friday, or every month on that weekday, and optionally Until a date. Repeats will be created as drafts 12 weeks ahead and are listed on Starters. To change or stop them, open one and choose More and then Change the repeating shift: change this shift only, this and later repeats, or every repeat from today, or choose Stop repeating after a date.

Fill a week from another

A week with no shifts yet offers Copy last week when last week had shifts, and Add a starter week once you have saved one. The same choices are under More:

• Copy a week into this one copies another week's shifts, with the same people or every shift as an open shift, and with or without instructions.
• Starter weeks adds a saved week to this one, or saves this week (or this week and next) as a starter week.
• Auto-fill open shifts proposes people for the week's open shifts using availability, preferred hours and fairness. Nothing changes until you choose Apply as drafts. Shifts nobody can take are listed under Still open.

Copied shifts and shifts from a starter week are drafts. Anyone who cannot work one will be taken off it, and the shift will be left open.

Starters lists the starter shifts (named times you choose when adding a shift), the starter weeks, and the repeating shifts. Add starter shift asks for a name and times; set its position and breaks in the list afterwards. Deleting a starter week leaves the shifts already added from it.

Change shifts

Click a shift to open it beside the schedule, and click any detail to change it. A draft has a dashed edge. Drag a shift to another day or person to move it; hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while you drop it to copy it. If the move breaks a rule, the shift will not move and you will see why; a manager can choose Move it anyway with a reason when the rule allows it.

More on a shift has Move or copy, Lock so only managers can change it, Discard unpublished changes, and Delete draft or Cancel shift. Open shift page shows its requests, Offer the shift, its published versions and its history.

Select shifts (in People, Positions and List) chooses several shifts. Choose Change selected to change who works them, move or copy them to another day, set their times, make them earlier or later, or change their position or location; Publish selected or Delete selected drafts acts on them too. Every selected shift will change, or none will. One change can include up to 1,000 shifts. Undo and Redo step back through your changes on the page.

See what is short

On Coverage, choose Add requirement and say how many people you need and when, such as 2 Kitchen from 11 AM to 2 PM on weekdays. A requirement for a particular date replaces that location's weekly requirements on that date.

The schedule will then list the times the planned shifts fall short under Short of people, with Add a shift and a button to add the open shifts needed. The Positions view will show each need, Day will show how many people are on of those needed at each half hour, and Month will show how many people each day is short. Open shifts do not count until someone is on them.

Publish

Choose Publish. The review lists every shift that will be added, changed or cancelled, the people who will be told, the people who could take the open shifts, times short of people, and anything to look at. People allowed to see pay rates also see the estimated pay. A conflict must be fixed or overridden before you can publish. Publishing with warnings needs a reason, which is recorded with the publication. To publish one shift, open it and choose Review and publish.

When you publish, each person will get one notification listing their changes, by email or app notification, as they chose. People who have not accepted their invitation will not be told. Drafts never reach anyone. A schedule editor can publish only if a team admin allowed it.

After publishing, a change to a shift is a draft until you publish again: the person keeps seeing the published version. Cancelling a published shift drafts the cancellation, with an optional reason the person will see, and the person will be told when you publish it. Keep this shift withdraws a cancellation that is not published yet.

Under More, Publication history lists every publication: when, by whom, and what changed for each shift. Download the published week as a PDF and Download it by position as a PDF contain published shifts only.

Reports

Reports covers the published schedule for a period: hours by person, position or location, times short of people, open shifts, hours over a limit, time off, publications, and labour cost for people allowed to see pay rates. When the team compares the schedule with Time Tracking, Scheduled and worked shows when each person started and stopped against their shift. Every report downloads as CSV.

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