Staff shifts & hours

Shifts puts your team's rota on a calendar with your sessions behind it, adds up everyone's hours, emails each person their own shifts, and exports totals for payroll. It's off by default.

Turn shifts on

1. 1

   Switch it on

   In Settings → Company, under Features, turn on Enable staff scheduling. A Shifts item appears in your menu.

2. 2

   Check your team is there

   Shifts can only be assigned to people on your team, so add anyone missing under Settings → Team first. See Admins & staff.

Add a shift

Open Shifts from the menu. There are Day, Week and Month views; Week is where most rotas get built.

1. 1

   Draw it, or use the button

   Drag down a day column to draw a shift, or press Add shift in the header and fill in the times.

2. 2

   Pick the days and people

   Tick every day the shift runs and everyone on it. Session creates one shift per day, with a bar per person.

3. 3

   Add a note if it helps

   Notes such as "opening" appear on the shift and in each person's email.

To change a shift, click it to edit its date, times, person or note. You can also drag it to a new time, or in Week view sideways onto another day, and drag its top or bottom edge to change its length. Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) while dragging to leave a copy behind. To copy a shift without dragging, for example on a phone, open it, set the date and times you want, and press Duplicate.

Read the week

Your sessions show behind the shifts in grey, so a session with nobody on it stands out. Along the top, everyone working that week is listed with their total hours; click someone to show only their shifts. Each person keeps their own colour, on their initials here and on every shift they work, so you can pick them out at a glance.

If you run more than one site, the site buttons narrow the rota and the hours to one site. On All, sessions are hidden from behind the shifts, so pick a site to see them. The week starts on the day set under Settings → Company → Regional settings.

Email your team their shifts

1. 1

   Open the sheet and set the dates

   Press Email shifts at the end of the row of names. It starts on the week you're viewing; change the dates to send any period.

2. 2

   Choose who to send to

   Everyone with shifts in that period is ticked. People with no email address can't be sent to, so add their address under Settings → Team. With one site picked, the email covers that site only.

3. 3

   Write your message and send

   Your subject and message are remembered for next time, and the preview shows what one person will receive.

Each person gets their own email with only their own shifts, so nobody sees anyone else's working pattern.

Export hours for payroll

Export hours shows each person's total for the week, split by site, and downloads it as a CSV. It always covers every site.

What your team sees

Staff get a read-only My shifts page showing only their own week and hours. Admins see their shifts on the main rota.

Anyone can also see their own shifts in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook: select Add to your calendar on My shifts to create a calendar link.

Common questions

1. Can staff add their own shifts? No. Only admins build the rota.

2. Why does my week look empty when I know there are shifts? If a name along the top is selected you're only seeing theirs, so click it again. Also check you haven't picked a site nobody is working at.

3. Can I use it on my phone? Yes. On a phone the rota opens on the Day view, starting on a site with people working that day. Week and Month are on a laptop or tablet.

4. Do shifts show on my booking page? No. Nothing about your rota is visible to customers.

5. What happens to my team if I turn it off? Shifts disappears from the menu and staff lose My shifts, but every shift is kept for when you turn it back on.

6. Everyone's times look wrong by twelve hours. The rota and the emails use your venue's clock. Check 12-hour or 24-hour under Settings → Company → Regional settings.