Shifts & scheduling

Shifts & scheduling turns your team into a working weekly rota. You create the positions people work (Server, Chef, Host), drop shifts onto a week grid, publish the week to email everyone their schedule, and then track who actually clocked in against what you planned, including labour cost. Your staff get their own My Shifts view to see upcoming shifts, clock in and out, set their availability, and request time off.

Before you begin

Shifts & scheduling lives under Team in the sidebar. Managers land on the weekly Schedule grid; everyone else lands on their personal My Shifts view.

Available on plans that include Shifts & scheduling. Viewing the schedule requires the View schedule permission. Building, editing and publishing the rota (the manager week grid), editing timesheets, approving time off, and managing positions, coverage targets and pay rates are each separate permissions you grant to trusted staff. The restaurant owner has every permission by default; an employee with only View schedule sees the personal My Shifts view.

How the pieces fit together

Before you start clicking, it helps to know the five building blocks and how they connect.

Positions

The roles you schedule people into, such as Server, Chef or Host. Each has a colour and an optional default hourly rate. A shift always belongs to a position.

Shifts

A single work slot: a position, a date, a start and end time, an optional break, and either an assigned employee or “open” (unassigned). Shifts are draft until you publish them.

Coverage targets

How many people of each position you want on the floor for each service period (for example, three servers for Dinner). The grid then flags days that fall short.

Time off & availability

Employees tell you the days and hours they can (or cannot) work, and request whole days off. You approve or deny the requests.

Timesheets

Once shifts are published, staff clock in and out. The timesheet compares scheduled hours to actual hours, works out labour cost from pay rates, and lets you approve the period.

Draft versus published

Everything you build in the week grid starts as a draft. Draft shifts are visible only to managers, so you can rearrange the week freely without confusing anyone. When you are happy, you publish the week: the draft shifts become published, they appear in each employee’s My Shifts view, and every affected employee is emailed. Publishing is the moment the schedule becomes real for your team.

Step 1 — Set up your positions

A position is a role someone works. You need at least one before you can add shifts, so this is the natural first step.

1. Go to Team in the sidebar to open the Schedule.
2. In the toolbar, click Positions.
3. Click Add position.
4. Fill in the form and click Create.

The position form has these fields:

• Name — what the role is called, for example Server, Chef or Host.
• Color — a hex colour like #6b7280 used to tint the position’s shifts on the grid so the week is easy to read at a glance.
• Default hourly rate — optional. Used later for labour-cost reporting when an employee has no specific pay rate of their own.
• Active — turn a position off to hide it from new shifts. Existing shifts keep their position, so nothing you already scheduled disappears.

Tip

You do not have to leave the grid to add a position. When you create a shift, the position picker has a New position… shortcut that creates one on the spot and selects it for you.

Worked example. A small bistro creates three positions: Server (green), Host (blue) and Chef (red). Later they take on a seasonal Runner position for summer, then switch its Active toggle off in autumn — the summer shifts stay on the record, but Runner no longer clutters the shift form.

You can edit a position (pencil icon), toggle it active or inactive (the switch), or delete it (trash icon). Deleting only hides it from new shifts; historical shifts keep it.

Step 2 — Build the week

The Schedule grid is a seven-column week, one column per day. Each row is a position (or an employee — see the toggle below), and every cell is a day you can drop a shift into.

The manager week grid. The toolbar navigates weeks, switches grouping, copies the previous week, and publishes.

The toolbar across the top gives you:

• Previous week / This week / Next week — move between weeks. The label shows the current week range.
• A By position / By employee switch — group the rows either by position (who is needed where) or by employee (each person’s week on one row).
• Copy previous week — copies last week’s shifts into this week as fresh drafts, so a stable rota takes seconds to rebuild.
• Publish week — see Step 4.
• Coverage targets, Positions, Time off, Timesheet and Manage team — shortcuts that appear based on your permissions.

Add a shift

1. Click an empty cell in the day and position row you want to staff. The New shift dialog opens with that position and date already filled in.
2. Choose an Assignee, or leave it as Leave open to create an unassigned shift you can fill later.
3. Set the Date, Start and End times.
4. Optionally add a Break (minutes) value and Notes.
5. Click Create.

Creating a shift. Leave the assignee as Leave open for a shift you will fill later.

A few things worth knowing about shifts:

• Open shifts. A shift with no assignee shows as Open on the grid. Use these to block out the work you know you need before you have decided who does it.
• Overnight shifts. If the end time is earlier than the start time, the shift runs past midnight into the next day — perfect for late closes.
• Double-booking guard. If you assign someone a shift that overlaps one they already have that day, the dialog warns you. It does not stop you: click Save anyway to double-book deliberately.
• Drag to move. Grab a shift and drag it to another day (or, in the by-employee view, onto another person) to reschedule it without reopening the dialog.
• Default position. If an employee has a default position set, picking them as the assignee pre-selects it for you.

To change or remove a shift, click it to reopen the dialog, edit the fields, and Save — or use Delete.

Plan your coverage

Coverage targets tell the grid how many people you want per position for each service period, so understaffed days jump out at you. You set service periods up under Bookings; coverage targets reuse them.

1. In the schedule toolbar, click Coverage targets.
2. In the matrix, each row is an active position and each column is a service period. Type the number of staff you want in each cell.
3. Leave a cell empty for “no target”.
4. Click Save.

Once targets are set, each day on the grid shows a small coverage summary per service period — how many shifts are published, how many are still open, and how many guests are booked — so you can staff up to match demand.

Caution

Coverage targets need service periods to exist first. If the matrix is empty, create your service periods under Bookings and come back.

Worked example. A restaurant sets its Dinner service period to need 3 Servers and 1 Host. When they build Friday and see only two servers scheduled for Dinner, the coverage summary flags the shortfall, and they add a third open shift for someone to pick up.

Step 3 — Handle availability and time off

Two separate things flow in from your team, and both help you build a fair rota.

Availability is a recurring pattern — the days and hours a person generally can or cannot work (for example, “available Mon–Fri 5pm–11pm”, “unavailable Sundays”). Employees set this themselves in My Shifts.

Time off is a specific request for whole days off (a holiday, an appointment). Employees submit these, and a manager approves or denies them.

Approve time-off requests

1. In the schedule toolbar, click Time off.
2. Review the pending requests — each shows the employee, the dates, and their reason.
3. Click Approve or Deny.

If approving a request clashes with a shift that person is already scheduled for, you get a Scheduling conflict notice. It is advisory only — the approval still goes through, and it is up to you to reassign or cancel the overlapping shift.

Step 4 — Publish the week

Publishing is what makes the schedule official.

1. When the week looks right, click Publish week in the toolbar.
2. The confirmation tells you how many employees will be notified.
3. Click Publish & notify.

Every draft shift for the week flips to published, appears in each assigned employee’s My Shifts view, and each affected employee receives an email with their schedule. You can keep editing after publishing — add, move or remove shifts and publish again to send the updates.

Tip

Build the whole week as drafts first and publish once. That way your team gets one clean schedule email rather than a message for every small change.

Step 5 — Track hours and labour cost

After a week is published and worked, the Timesheet shows scheduled hours next to what actually happened, and turns it into a labour-cost figure.

1. In the schedule toolbar, click Timesheet.
2. Set the From and To dates. It opens on the current week; you can pick any range up to 62 days.
3. Read each row: scheduled time, clock-in and clock-out, break, worked hours, the variance against the plan, the pay rate, and the labour cost.
4. Check the totals at the bottom: Scheduled (h), Worked (h) and Labor cost.

Scheduled versus actual hours, with pay rates rolling up into labour cost and range totals.

Each row carries a status so you can see at a glance what needs attention:

• Open — the employee has clocked in but not out yet.
• Completed — clocked in and out, ready to approve.
• Needs review — something looks off, such as a very long shift.
• Approved — locked; the hours and cost are frozen.
• Missing — a published shift with no clock-in at all.

You can correct records directly:

• Edit a time entry to fix a clock-in or clock-out, change the break, or add a note.
• Add entry on a shift nobody clocked into, to record the hours manually.
• Export CSV to download the range for payroll.

Set pay rates

Labour cost comes from each employee’s hourly pay rate. Rates are kept as an append-only history, so a raise is a new rate from a chosen date rather than an overwrite.

1. In the timesheet, click Pay rates.
2. Choose an employee to see their rate history.
3. Under Add rate, enter the Hourly rate, pick a Position (or All positions), and set the Effective from date.
4. Click Add rate.

If an employee has no rate of their own, the position’s Default hourly rate is used. If there is no rate anywhere, that row is counted as “without a pay rate” in the totals so you know to fill the gap.

Approve the period

1. In the timesheet, set the range you want to close out.
2. Click Approve range.
3. Confirm. Completed entries are frozen and approved; open and needs-review entries are skipped.

Worked example. At the end of the week a manager opens the timesheet for Monday–Sunday. Two servers each worked slightly over their scheduled hours (a positive variance), one shift shows Missing because someone forgot to clock in — the manager adds a manual entry — and the total labour cost reads €1,240.00. They click Approve range: the completed entries lock, and the manual entry they just added is approved with them.

The employee view: My Shifts

Staff without manager permissions get a focused My Shifts page with three tabs. This is also what you see if you are testing the employee experience.

The employee-facing My Shifts view: upcoming shifts, availability, and time-off requests.

Shifts

A week-by-week list of the employee’s published shifts, each with its date, times, position and any break or note. When a shift is happening now, a Clock in button appears; after clocking in, an elapsed timer runs and the button becomes Clock out. Clocking out asks for an optional Break (minutes). An employee already clocked in on another shift cannot clock into a second one.

Availability

The employee adds recurring availability windows: a Start time and End time, the Days of week it applies to, whether it means Available or Unavailable, and an optional note. This is the pattern you build the rota around.

Time Off

The employee submits a request with a Start date, End date and optional Reason, then sees all their requests below with a status of Pending, Approved or Denied. They can cancel a request while it is still pending.

Tip

Encourage staff to keep their availability current and to request time off early. Both show up while you build the week, so an accurate picture up front means fewer conflicts to untangle later.

Related

• Service periods — the windows your coverage targets are measured against.
• Roles and plans — how permissions decide who can build the rota versus see their own shifts.
• Team & Scheduling overview