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. The Schedulable flag defaults to on for every new employee. They appear as shift-assignment candidates immediately. To exclude someone, clear the Schedulable checkbox 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 can be granted Create, Edit, Delete, and Approve permissions for shifts and schedules through Admin → Roles. 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 Admin → Schedule Settings:
- Location-Based Hierarchy (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.
- Pending Approval — locked for editing; waiting for an approver to approve or reject it. Not visible to employees.
- 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.
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.
- Shift on — a preference to be scheduled during specific dates.
- Schedule change — a request to modify an existing assignment.
Every request has a priority (High, Medium, or Low; default is Medium) and follows the statuses Pending → Approved / Denied / Cancelled. 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 |
You can adjust these weights per run. 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. The Show external shifts setting (on by default) controls whether these blocks appear. 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 and on the Open Shifts board. You can claim one you are eligible for — your location, team and role must match, 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 Claims. If you see open shifts you can’t claim, ask your manager about the location, team or role they require.
I’m sick or running late — how do I tell my manager?
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. For time off further ahead, request leave instead; 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 — only published schedules are visible to employees. Check the status on the Schedules page.
- Approval is blocking publication — if Require approval before a schedule is published is on, the schedule sits in Pending Approval until an approver acts. Go to Admin → Schedule Settings to check whether approval is required.
- 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 is recorded in the shift’s change history.
“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 you set per 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 — every assigned employee is notified when a schedule is published for the first time. A re-publish after edits sends an “updated” notification.
- Shift reminders — sent before each shift starts. The default is 4 hours before (admin-configurable per business); each employee can also adjust their own reminder window in notification preferences.
- Weekly digest — a summary of the upcoming week’s shifts, sent every Monday.
Notifications go through in-app, email, and push channels by default. 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.
- 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 iCal/CalDAV. Sync is triggered in real time when a shift is created, updated, or cancelled — and as a batch when a schedule is published or unpublished. Calendar sync must be enabled for the business and the employee must have an active calendar integration on their profile.
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. Accepted file formats are .csv, .xlsx, and .xls.
More help
- Shifts & Scheduling Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Shifts & Scheduling questions from these articles.