Shift Planning

What it does

Shift Planning lets a manager build the staff work schedule ahead of time. You lay out who works, on which day, and between which hours, on a visual timeline (a Gantt chart). You can plan by month or zoom into a single day, request and approve time off, and let the system generate a schedule for you based on your staffing rules.

Getting started

1. Open Staff → Planning.
2. Choose Month to see the whole month, or Day to focus on one day.
3. Tap (or click) an empty spot on a person's row twice to add a planned shift, then set the start and end time.
4. Drag a shift to move it, or click it to edit or delete it.
5. To fill the schedule automatically, use Generate Schedule — it assigns shifts based on your staffing rules. Use Clean Schedule to clear a month and start over.

Configuring the planner

Before you auto-generate a schedule, set up the planner under Staff → Configuration. It has two parts: the constraints every schedule must respect, and the staffing rules that say how many people you need on the floor. Both are used by Generate Schedule.

Shift Planning Constraints

These org-wide limits are obeyed by the auto-scheduler and checked on manual edits. Set the ones that matter to you:

• Max hours per week / Max hours per month — the most any one person may be scheduled in a calendar week / month.
• Max days in a row — how many days someone can work back-to-back before a day off is required.
• Min days off per week / Min days off per month — the minimum rest days each person must get.
• Default shift duration — the standard shift length the planner uses when generating.
• Min shift duration / Max shift duration — the shortest and longest a single shift may be.
• Min rest between shifts — the minimum gap between one shift ending and the next starting.
• Shift overlap — how many hours of overlap between consecutive shifts you'll allow. 0 means shifts run straight back-to-back with no handover overlap; a higher number lets one shift start before the previous one ends.

Staffing rules

A staffing rule tells the planner how many people you need, and when. Each rule is: a role, on one or more days of the week, between a start and end time, with a minimum number of staff on duty during that window.

To add one:

1. On Staff → Configuration, open the Staffing rules section and click Add rule.
2. Pick the role (for example cook or waiter).
3. Tap the days the rule applies to — one or several.
4. Set the start time and end time of the window.
5. Enter the minimum staff needed during that window.
6. Save. The rule appears in the list with an on/off toggle.

• Only enabled rules are used by auto-scheduling. Use the toggle to switch a rule off temporarily without deleting it.
• Add as many rules as you need to describe a day — for example "2 cooks, Mon–Fri, 12:00–15:00" for the lunch rush, plus "1 cook, every day, all day" as a baseline.
• Edit or delete a rule from its row. A rule's role can't be changed after it's created — delete it and add a new one if you need a different role.
• Even without any rules, the planner still keeps at least one person of each role present whenever you're open. Rules are how you ask for more than that at specific times.

Key things to know

• Only managers can create, edit, or auto-generate the schedule, and only managers can change the planner configuration (constraints and staffing rules) under Staff → Configuration.
• Understaffed days are highlighted so you can see at a glance where you don't have enough people to meet your staffing rules.
• Past shifts that didn't go to plan are shown in red. After a shift is over, the planner compares what you scheduled against what the person actually clocked. A shift is flagged when the person started late, finished early, or worked short of the planned hours.
• Opening a flagged (red) shift shows an Actual vs plan panel that spells out exactly how far off it was — for example "Started 15m late" or "Worked 1h 20m short".
• The red flags only appear if you have permission to view staff work shifts. If you don't, the schedule still works — you just won't see the comparison.
• Drag a shift onto another person's row to reassign it. Drop it on an empty part of their row and it moves there; if you also dragged it sideways to a different time slot, the time moves with it, so you can reassign and reschedule in one motion. Drop it directly onto that person's existing shift instead, and the two shifts simply swap places — each keeps its own original time.
• The understaffed highlight looks at the whole month. A day is only flagged for a role once that role has at least one shift scheduled somewhere in that month. Until then, its days stay unflagged, so a schedule that's only half filled in doesn't turn every row red.
• You can only add, move, edit, or delete a shift for tomorrow onward. Today's shifts and any shift in the past are locked — you can still click one to open and view it, but the Save and Delete buttons are disabled, and it can't be dragged, resized, or reassigned to someone else. This applies in both Month and Day view, so once a day has arrived, its schedule is frozen.
• Adding a shift on an empty part of the schedule takes two taps (or two clicks). The first tap is ignored on purpose — that space is also what you drag to scroll the schedule, so a single tap would open the add-shift dialog by accident every time you scrolled.
• Date labels follow the language you've chosen in the app, not your phone's or browser's language — so switching the app's language also changes how dates like "Wednesday, 21 October 2026" are written on the planner.

FAQ

Q: Why is one of my shifts red?
A: It's a past shift where the person's actual clock-in/out didn't match the plan — they started late, left early, or worked fewer hours than scheduled. Click it to see the details.

Q: How does the system know the actual hours worked?
A: From the staff clock-in/out records (Work Shifts). The planner lines up each planned shift with the matching person's clocked shift on the same day.

Q: Will future shifts ever show red?
A: No. Only shifts in the past are compared against actual worked hours. Upcoming shifts are never flagged.

Q: Can I let the system build the schedule for me?
A: Yes. Set up your staffing rules (how many people you need per role, per day, per time window), then use Generate Schedule.

Q: Where do I set up the staffing rules and limits?
A: Under Staff → Configuration. The "Shift Planning Constraints" card holds the limits (max hours, days off, shift lengths, rest, overlap) and the "Staffing rules" section is where you add per-role, per-day, per-time minimum-staff rules.

Q: I created a staffing rule but auto-generate ignores it — why?
A: Only enabled rules are used. Check the on/off toggle on the rule's row. Also make sure you selected at least one day and that the role actually has staff who can work that window.

Q: What does "Shift overlap" do?
A: It controls how much two consecutive shifts of the same role may overlap. Set it to 0 for clean back-to-back shifts (one starts exactly when the previous ends); a higher value allows that many hours of handover overlap per day.

Q: What happens if I drag a shift onto another person's row?
A: If you drop it on an empty part of their row, the shift is reassigned to that person. If you also dragged it sideways to a different time, the time changes along with the assignment — so a single drag can move someone to a new shift and a new time, as long as the target row was empty. If you drop it directly on top of an existing shift, the two shifts swap places instead, and each keeps its own original time.

Q: Why is a day marked understaffed even though I haven't scheduled that role for the whole month yet?
A: It shouldn't be — a role's days only get flagged once you've scheduled at least one shift for it somewhere in that month. Once that's true, any day in the month where the role has zero coverage during a staffing rule's hours is flagged, whether you're looking at Month or Day view.

Q: Why can't I move or delete today's shift?
A: The schedule locks a day once it arrives. You can only add, move, edit, or delete a shift for tomorrow or later — today's shifts and any past shift are read-only. You can still open one to see its details, but there's nothing to change. This keeps the schedule from shifting under people who may have already started their day.

Q: Why is my shift dialog showing a message that the shift can't be changed?
A: You opened a shift dated today or earlier. The dialog still lets you view it, but Save and Delete are disabled because past and current-day shifts are locked. Pick a shift dated tomorrow or later if you need to make a change.

Q: I tapped an empty spot on the schedule and nothing happened — is it broken?
A: No — adding a shift needs two taps (or two clicks) close together in the same spot. A single tap does nothing on purpose, since that same area is used to scroll the schedule.

Q: The dates on the planner are in the wrong language — how do I fix that?
A: The planner's date labels always follow the language you've selected inside the app, not your device's language. Change the app's language and the dates will match.