Shifts & Scheduling FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Shifts & Scheduling.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Shifts & Scheduling Overview.
Setup
Do I need to set up locations before I can create schedules?
Yes. Every shift belongs to a location. If no locations exist, you cannot create shifts. Go to Admin → Locations and add at least one location first.
Are new employees schedulable automatically?
Yes. Include in Shift Scheduling defaults to on for every new employee. They appear as shift-assignment candidates immediately. To exclude someone, turn off Include in Shift Scheduling on their employee profile.
What are the schedule period types?
Period type is detected automatically from your start and end dates:
- Weekly — a 7-day span starting on the business’s configured week start day.
- Monthly — starts on the first and ends on the last day of a single calendar month.
- Quarterly — starts on the first day of a quarter-start month (January, April, July, or October) and ends on the last day of that quarter.
- Custom — any date range that doesn’t match the above patterns.
A schedule’s start date must be from the current week or later (based on the business’s week start day).
What happens if I turn on approval but nobody has approve permission?
Admins and super admins are always included as fallback approvers. Even if no location manager has the Approve permission for schedules, your admins will receive the approval notification and can act on it.
Permissions and access
Who can create, edit, and publish schedules?
Admins have full access. Managers and custom roles are granted permissions in the Scheduling group at Admin → Roles & Permissions: View, Create, Edit, Delete, Publish and Approve for schedules, and View, Create, Edit and Delete for shifts. Employees without management permissions can view their own shifts, submit schedule requests, and claim open shifts — but cannot create or modify schedules.
Who gets routed an approval request?
That depends on the Who is asked to approve setting at Shifts & Scheduling › Settings › Schedule Settings:
- Managers of the schedule’s locations, then higher organizational roles (the default) — managers assigned to the schedule’s locations who have the Approve permission, or (if none are found) the schedule creator’s organizational superiors with Approve permission.
- All Eligible Managers — every admin and super admin, plus any user who holds the Approve permission for schedules.
In both strategies, admins and super admins are included as a fallback. The creator is never sent their own approval notification.
Day-to-day
What are the schedule statuses, and what can I do in each one?
A schedule moves through three statuses:
- Draft — you can add, edit, and remove shifts. Not visible to employees.
- Sent for Approval — waiting for an approver to approve or reject it. Employees can already see their own shifts on it, but the “schedule published” notice is not sent until it is approved.
- Published — visible to employees. Employees are notified, and shifts sync to connected calendars.
If an approver rejects a schedule, it returns to Draft with the rejection comments.
How is approving a schedule different from publishing it?
Publishing makes a draft schedule live: employees are notified and shifts sync to connected calendars. When Require approval before a schedule is published is off, there is no approval step: a manager publishes a draft directly with Publish Schedule. When it is on, the draft goes to an approver with Submit for Approval instead, and the approver’s Approve & Publish publishes it in the same step — there is no separate publish click after approval. Rejecting it sends it back to Draft.
What happens when I copy a schedule?
Copying creates a new Draft schedule for the target date range. Shifts are duplicated with dates adjusted by the offset between the source and target periods. You can choose which weeks to include and whether to copy staff assignments. Break configurations and staffing requirements are also copied. If the schedule name already exists, a suffix is added automatically.
What request types can employees submit?
Employees can submit three types of schedule requests:
- Day off — blocks them from shifts on the requested dates. Supports half-day (morning or afternoon), partial-day (a specific time window in 30-minute increments), and recurring patterns (weekly, every 2 weeks, or every 4 weeks). Recurring requests can repeat indefinitely until cancelled.
- Extra shift — asks to be given additional shifts on the dates they pick; their manager arranges it.
- Schedule change — asks to change their existing schedule; their manager arranges it.
Every request has a priority (High, Medium, or Low; default is Medium) and follows the statuses Pending → Approved / Denied / Cancelled. A request nobody reviews before its last requested date has passed is closed automatically: it shows Expired, and the employee is told it was never reviewed so they can submit a new one. When a day-off request is approved, the employee is automatically unassigned from any conflicting shifts.
What weights does the Auto-Assign Wizard use to rank candidates?
The wizard scores candidates across four factors, each with a configurable weight that must sum to 100:
| Factor | Default weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | 30 | Whether the employee’s availability covers the shift |
| Preference | 25 | How well the shift matches the employee’s stated preferences |
| Fairness | 25 | Employees with fewer upcoming shifts score higher |
| Role | 20 | Whether the employee’s role matches what the shift requires |
An admin sets these weights once, on the Recommendation Weights page, and they apply to every run — the wizard has no per-run weight control. When a shift has specific role requirements, a separate role-priority ranking runs first to fill critical roles before general positions.
How does the cross-schedule visibility (“ghost shifts”) feature work?
When you open a schedule, shifts from other published or pending-approval schedules at the same locations appear as read-only “ghost” blocks. This prevents double-booking employees across overlapping schedules. Each schedule has its own toggle — Hide shifts from other schedules / Show shifts from other schedules in the schedule page’s menu (shown by default) — that controls whether these blocks appear on it. Draft schedules are excluded so unpublished plans don’t leak across schedules.
For employees: swapping, giving away, picking up and calling out
How do I swap a shift with a coworker?
Post your shift in Shift Marketplace as Trade only (or ask the assistant: “swap my Thursday shift with a coworker” — it posts the trade for you after you confirm, and tells the coworker if you name one). A coworker applies by offering one of their own upcoming shifts. You review the applications and accept or reject them; when you accept one, both assignments swap in a single transfer and any other pending applicants are turned down. Until a trade is accepted, you are still on your shift. Trading for a shift that overlaps one of your own is possible only if your admin has turned on Allow trades between overlapping shifts.
How do I give a shift away (drop it)?
Post it in Shift Marketplace for pickup (or ask the assistant: “I need to drop my shift on Wednesday”). The listing is live at once — no manager approval is needed to post it. Posting it does not take you off the schedule: you stay assigned and responsible for working it until a coworker claims it and that claim is approved (instantly or by a manager, depending on your company’s approval mode).
How do I pick up an open shift?
Open shifts posted by management, and shifts coworkers have posted for pickup, appear in Shift Marketplace — the Find Shifts tab in Shifts & Scheduling. You can claim one you are eligible for — your location, team and role must match (an admin can open a location’s shifts to other stores by turning off its Location-Locked setting in Settings › Location Staffing Defaults), and it must not overlap a shift you already work. Depending on the approval mode, the shift is yours at once or your claim waits for a manager; pending claims show under My Pending Requests on the marketplace home (Waiting on approval on the phone). If you see open shifts you can’t claim, ask your manager about the location, team or role they require. If your company doesn’t use Shift Marketplace, there is no Find Shifts tab or list of open shifts to browse; ask your manager about extra work, or, if your company uses schedule requests, submit an Extra shift request.
I’m sick or running late — how do I tell my manager?
If your company uses Time & Attendance, report an absence or a delay on the shift (or ask the assistant: “I’m sick and can’t make my shift”). You can report on one of your own shifts on a published schedule that starts within the next 48 hours and hasn’t ended. Your manager is notified. The report does not take you off the schedule — your manager decides whether to release the shift. Without Time & Attendance there is no absence report: choose Can’t make it on the shift before it starts, or tell your manager directly. For a shift further ahead that you can’t work, open it from My Shifts and choose Can’t make it — your manager is told, so they can find cover. For time off, submit a Day off schedule request (or a leave request, if your company uses Leave Management). If you expected a shift and can’t find it, tell your manager directly.
When something looks wrong
“My employees can’t see their schedule”
The most common causes:
- The schedule is still in Draft — employees never see shifts on a draft. Check the status on the Shift Scheduler page. If Require approval before a schedule is published is on (Shifts & Scheduling › Settings › Schedule Settings), a draft must be submitted for approval; once it is Sent for Approval, employees can see their shifts on it, though the “schedule published” notice waits for the approver.
- The employee is not assigned to any shift — a published schedule is visible, but employees only see shifts they are assigned to (plus open shifts they can claim).
“The system won’t let me assign this employee to a shift”
The assignment checks a layered set of compliance rules. Hard blocks that prevent the assignment:
- Daily hour limit exceeded — the employee would exceed the maximum daily hours (default 12 hours).
- Weekly hour limit exceeded — the employee would exceed the maximum weekly hours (default 40 hours).
- Minimum rest period violated — less than the minimum rest gap between shifts (default 8 hours).
- Overlapping shifts — the employee already has a shift at the same time.
- Approved leave conflict — the employee has approved leave covering that date.
- Missing critical skill or certification — the shift requires a skill the employee does not have, or their certification has expired.
These defaults are configurable at Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings. Admins can override hard blocks for emergency coverage; the override, with the rules it bypassed, is recorded in the admin Compliance Audit Logs (Enterprise plans).
“An employee claimed an open shift but it says Not Eligible”
The marketplace eligibility check applies several gates beyond basic staffing:
- The employee is not in the shift’s scheduling team or location.
- The employee already has a conflicting shift at that time.
- The employee is missing a critical skill or their certification expired.
- The shift falls on a contracted day off (when the business uses Hard block mode for contracted days off; the default is Soft prompt).
- The employee is set to a fixed primary location and the shift is at a different location.
- The shift has role requirements and the employee’s role does not match any role that still needs filling. A role can also be filled by the job functions set to cover it in Shifts > Settings > Role-Based Eligibility (for example, Assistant Store Manager covering Store Manager). Covers work one way, and the shift’s own job function always fills first.
The “Not Eligible” tooltip on the marketplace listing shows the specific reasons.
“I edited a shift but the employee’s calendar didn’t update”
Calendar sync triggers when a shift’s start time, end time, name, location, or status changes. If the edit only changed other fields (notes, staffing requirements), no sync fires. Bulk operations that publish or unpublish an entire schedule trigger a batch resync for all assigned employees. If the calendar still shows stale data, check that the employee’s calendar integration is active and sync-enabled under their profile.
Compliance and rules
What are the default compliance limits, and where do I change them?
| Rule | Default | Where to change |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum daily hours | 12 hours | Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings → Work Hour Limits |
| Maximum weekly hours | 40 hours | Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings → Work Hour Limits |
| Minimum rest period between shifts | 8 hours | Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings → Work Hour Limits |
| Daily hours warning threshold | 80% of limit | Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings → Warning Thresholds |
| Weekly hours warning threshold | 80% of limit | Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings → Warning Thresholds |
| Maximum consecutive shift overlap | 30 minutes (allowed by default) | Admin → Compliance → Work Policy Settings → Consecutive Shift Overlap Settings |
At 80% of the daily or weekly limit, the scheduler shows a warning but does not block the assignment. At 100% it becomes a hard block.
What does “contracted hours enforcement” mean in auto-assign?
When the Auto-Assign Wizard fills a schedule, it respects each employee’s contracted hours target (derived in priority order: their contracted hours, the role-based default, or 40 hours per week). The enforcement mode, which an admin sets once on the Recommendation Weights page and which applies to every run, controls how strictly:
- Strict (the default) — the employee will not be assigned beyond their contracted hours.
- Soft only — the employee can be assigned beyond their hours, but their candidate score is reduced.
- Off — contracted hours are ignored during assignment.
Notifications and calendar
When do employees get notified about their shifts?
- Schedule published — when a schedule is published for the first time, everyone on its scheduling team (or, for a schedule with no team, everyone at its locations) and anyone rostered on it is notified. With Who hears when a schedule is published set to Only people rostered on that schedule (Settings › Schedule Settings), only the rostered people are. A re-publish after edits sends an “updated” notification to the same people.
- Shift reminders — sent before each shift starts. The default is 4 hours before; an administrator sets the lead time for the whole business (Reminder time (hours before shift) in the admin notification settings). Employees cannot set their own reminder window.
- Schedule Summary — an email listing the week’s shifts, sent every Monday. Someone with no email address gets it in the app instead: one notice under Schedule Management saying how many shifts they have that week, linking to My Shifts. Their own Schedule Summary switch still decides whether they get it.
In each person’s notification preferences, Schedule Management and Shift Reminders start on in-app, email and push; Open Shifts starts on in-app and email; Schedule Summary is email only. SMS (text messages) is an opt-in channel. Once an administrator turns SMS on (Admin → General Settings → SMS Settings), each employee who adds and verifies a mobile number and switches SMS on in Account Settings → Notifications can be texted for:
- Shift Reminders — before each shift starts.
- Schedule Management — only notices marked urgent, such as the notice a manager gets about a new High-priority schedule request.
- Open Shifts — when a new open shift is posted, and when a manager marks one urgent. This also needs SMS Notifications switched on in Shift Marketplace → Settings, and each employee switches SMS on for Open Shifts in their own notification preferences (it is off until they do).
Which calendars can shifts sync to?
Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and an iCal subscription feed. Google Calendar and Outlook sync in real time when a shift is created, updated, or cancelled — and as a batch when a schedule is published or unpublished; this needs calendar sync enabled for the business and the employee’s own connection to that calendar. The iCal feed is read by the employee’s calendar app on its own refresh schedule (Google Calendar checks every 12–24 hours).
Licensing and limits
Does Shifts & Scheduling require a licence?
Yes. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps. It is not active for a business until they opt in.
Are there limits on CSV imports?
Yes. Shift and schedule CSV imports accept files up to 5 MB and 2,000 rows. Imports of 200 rows or fewer run immediately; larger files are processed in the background. Only .csv files are accepted — save a spreadsheet as CSV before importing it.
More help
- Shifts & Scheduling Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Shifts & Scheduling questions from these articles.