Shift scheduling lets managers build the weekly roster from reusable shift templates, while TimeLeaf checks every assignment against approved leave, qualifications and your working-time rules. It is on the Professional plan and above. Generated rosters and shift offers (Shift Automation) need the Business plan and above.
This page is the reference. For a step-by-step guide to building a week, see Build the Shift Roster.
Where to find it
- Shift Schedule (in the admin menu under Scheduling, or Shift Scheduling in a manager's user menu) opens the Weekly Roster, with links to Preference Periods, Recurring and Templates.
- Scheduling › Shift Roles and Scheduling › Shift Rules in the admin menu hold the admin set-up.
The roster shows the manager's team: the people whose manager they are. Vacant shifts with no holder are visible to every manager.
Shift templates
A template is a reusable shift such as "Early" or "Night". Open Shift Schedule › Templates and click New Template.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name and Color | How the shift appears on the roster. |
| Start Time, End Time and Break (min) | The shift's hours and unpaid break. |
| Overnight shift (crosses midnight) | Tick for a shift such as 22:00–06:00. |
| Anchor time zone | The clock the hours are read on: Company time zone, or a specific zone such as the site's. Everyone on the template works the same moment, wherever they live. Employees see the shift converted to their own time zone. |
| Required roles | How many people of each role the shift needs, for example 2 cashiers and 1 supervisor. The roster shows coverage against these. |
| Task tags | What the shift involves, such as driving or lifting (admins). Used by work restrictions. |
Assigning shifts
On the roster, click + in an employee's day to open Assign Shift.
- Pick a Template, or Ad-hoc (custom times) and enter the Start Time and End Time. The dialog names the time zone the times are in.
- Optionally pick a Role. Roles the employee is qualified for are listed first; picking one they aren't qualified for asks you to confirm.
- Add Notes and click Assign Shift.
A shift assigned by hand is live straight away. The employee gets a notification and an email in their own language, and again if you move or retime their shift.
Checks on every assignment
Before saving, TimeLeaf checks the assignment against:
- Approved leave on those hours.
- Another shift the person holds that overlaps, including one that is out to offer.
- The role's qualification and any required training, as at the shift's date.
- Work restrictions recorded for the employee.
- Your working-time rules, if you've set them: minimum rest between shifts, contracted weekly hours, the legal daily maximum, weekly rest, average weekly hours, night work, and young-worker limits. These are set on overtime policies and under Settings › Working Time; see Overtime & Time Bank.
If anything stands in the way, TimeLeaf lists every reason in one message and asks whether to assign anyway. Confirming overrides exactly the reasons you were shown; if a new one appears before you save, you're asked again. Each override is recorded in the audit log. An overlap with a shift the person is actually working can't be overridden.
The roster also marks people who are On leave or Restricted on a day, so you can see it before you assign. When leave is approved for someone who already has shifts on those days, the shifts are released as vacant so they can be covered, and employees see This overlaps with N scheduled shifts when they request leave.
Roles and qualifications
Under Scheduling › Shift Roles, admins create roles such as Cashier or Forklift Driver with New Role, and give them to employees:
- Manage members lists who holds the role. Each person can have a Valid until date, for example when a licence expires. A qualification is valid through that date and stops counting for shifts after it. Blank means it doesn't expire.
- Required training names the courses a role needs. Add courses under Training courses on the same page, with Valid for (months, blank = never expires). Record each employee's completions in their employee record (Edit › Training). Someone is qualified for a shift only if their role is valid and every required course was completed by, and hasn't expired on, the day of the shift. Giving the role to someone without the training asks you to confirm first.
- Task tags sets what the role involves. Tags are managed under Task tags on the same page.
Qualified today shows how many people hold each role today.
Work restrictions
Admins record restrictions in an employee's record (Edit › Work restrictions), for example after an injury. A restriction runs from Starts on to Ends on (blank for open-ended) and can set:
- Max hours a day.
- A night window (From and Until) the person can't work in.
- Blocked tasks: task tags they can't do.
- Excluded locations: sites they can't work at.
A shift that breaks a restriction is skipped by roster generation and shift offers, and assigning by hand asks you to confirm. The optional reason is visible only to admins and the employee's manager; nobody else sees why.
Recurring shifts
A recurring pattern rosters one employee on the same shift on the same days every week. Open Shift Schedule › Recurring and click New Pattern: choose the Employee, the Shift, the Days, a Starts date and optionally Ends (optional), then click Create & generate.
TimeLeaf generates the shifts straight away and keeps each running pattern generated a set number of weeks ahead, checked once a day. Admins set how far ahead with Generate Recurring Shifts Ahead (weeks) under Settings › Working Time (1–26, default 4).
- Each day goes through the same checks as an automatic assignment. A day the employee is on leave, or one that would break a rule, is skipped and the reason is shown.
- You can Edit, Pause (and resume) or Delete a pattern. Changes apply to days not generated yet; shifts already on the roster stay as they are.
- Patterns stop at an employee's leaving date and aren't generated for people who have left.
- A pattern created before automatic roll-forward shows Not rolling yet. Start or edit it to keep it generated ahead.
Generated rosters (Shift Automation)
On the Business plan and above, with Shift Automation switched on by an admin under Settings › Working Time › Modules, TimeLeaf can build a roster from employees' preferences.
Open a preference period
Go to Shift Schedule › Preference Periods and click New Period. Set the Period Name, the Schedule Start and Schedule End the roster covers, and when submissions open and close (Submissions Open, Submission Deadline). Employees are notified and rank their preferred shifts for each day.
Add your own preferences (optional)
On the period's page you can flag employees you'd like on a particular shift and day. Flags count when the period's rule uses the Manager Preference signal; they never override leave or the rules.
Close and generate
Click Close Submissions, then Generate Roster. TimeLeaf fills each template's slots from the people who submitted, scarcest role first, skipping anyone a check rules out.
Preview and publish
Click Preview Roster. It shows who was placed, which slots are unfilled, and who couldn't be rostered on which day and why. The generated shifts appear on the roster marked Draft; employees can't see them yet and nobody has been notified. When you're happy, click Publish Roster: the shifts appear on employees' dashboards, and each person gets one notification and one email saying how many shifts they have.
Draft shifts already count when TimeLeaf checks for clashes and working-time limits, so you can't assign someone on top of one by mistake. A draft shift can't be offered out until the roster is published. A roster that has already been generated can always be published, even if Shift Automation is later switched off.
Shift Rules
Scheduling › Shift Rules decides how generation and shift offers rank candidates. Click New Rule and choose a Scoring Mode:
- Ordered tiebreakers: a Priority Order of signals, where the first one that differs between two employees wins.
- Percentage-based: Signal Weights that add up a score.
The signals are Preference Rank (the employee's 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice), Seniority, Manager Preference and Fairness Rotation (how often they got their top pick recently). Tick Set as default rule for new preference periods for the rule new periods use.
Vacant shifts and shift offers
A shift with no holder is vacant and stays on the roster as a visible gap. Fill it by:
- Assigning it directly to someone.
- Offering it out (Business plan and above, with Shift Automation on). Click Offer out on the vacant shift. TimeLeaf sends offers to qualified, available employees, one at a time or in waves, ranked by the default shift rule. Anyone a check rules out is skipped, and the roster tells you who was skipped and why.
Employees answer in the Shifts offered to you card on their dashboard, linked from the offer's notification and email. The first to accept gets the shift; if someone else got there first, or the offer expired or no longer fits their schedule, they're told and nothing changes. Switching Shift Automation off stops new offers; offers already sent can still be answered.
Times employees can't work
Employees can mark when they can't be rostered: a weekday that repeats, or a range of dates, for the whole day or part of it (up to 100 entries, no reason). They do it under When I can't work on their shift preferences page. It applies at once and needs no approval. Roster generation, shift offers and overtime offers skip them for those times, and assigning them by hand shows Employee has marked this time as unavailable, which a manager can override. Shifts already rostered stay; the roster shows Marked unavailable on them. Managers never see a reason.
Swapping shifts
Two employees can exchange two upcoming shifts. On their dashboard, an employee clicks Swap on one of their own upcoming shifts and picks a colleague's shift in the same role. The colleague sees the request in the Shift swaps card and accepts or declines; the person who asked can cancel it any time before it is final. Nothing changes on the roster until the swap is complete.
TimeLeaf checks the swap for both people, each against the shift they would receive and against their own overtime policy: working-time limits, rest, contracted hours, qualifications and training, restrictions, approved leave, times they marked as unavailable and double-booking. If either person would break a rule, the swap is refused and neither shift moves. Employees can't override this; a manager who wants it anyway can move the shifts by hand from the roster, where the usual confirmations apply. The checks run again at the moment the swap is completed, so a shift that has changed, been cancelled or started in the meantime stops it.
Under Admin › Settings › Working Time, Swaps Need a Manager's Approval decides what happens after the colleague accepts. On (the default), the swap waits for a manager: the direct manager of either person, or an admin, approves it from Shift swaps awaiting approval above the weekly roster; the two people swapping can't approve their own swap. Off, the swap completes as soon as the colleague accepts. Everyone involved is notified, in their own language, when they are asked and when the swap is confirmed, declined or can no longer go ahead.
Shift reminders
Employees get a reminder about an hour before a shift they hold starts, and, if timekeeping is on and they haven't clocked in, another about 15 minutes after it started. They arrive in the app, by push and in the employee's chat app, never by email and never to managers. Reminders go out in batches about every 15 minutes, so one can arrive a little late. Both are on by default and can be switched off under Admin › Settings › Working Time.
Job sites, routes and the Today board
For crews who travel to jobs, turn on Job sites under Settings › Locations (Professional plan and above). You can then add job sites with an address, map pin and geofence, and route shifts to them.
- The roster gets a By crew / By site switch and a Week / Today switch. By site shows who is going where; Today is the live board of who has checked in at each site.
- A shift can have a Route of one or more stops, each with a Planned arrival and Planned departure. Routing a whole crew is checked against work restrictions, such as excluded locations.
- On their phone, crew members see the day's route on their dashboard with directions, and check in and out at each site. Check-ins can clock them in automatically and be checked against the site's geofence; see the job-site settings in Time Tracking.
Jobs at customers' places
A job puts named people on one job site for a run of days: the same hours each day, one place for each person needed. It is for crews that go to customers' places, such as a small trades shop. Jobs need Job sites switched on (above) and the Professional plan or above. The customer is the job site, so there is no second customer list.
Book it.
- On a computer: Shift Schedule › Jobs › New job. Choose the Job site, an optional Job name, the Start and End time, the First day and Last day, which Days it runs (none selected means every day), Skip holidays at this site, Notes for the crew and who is going. Extra day and Skipped day adjust single dates. The Jobs list has Current and Ended tabs, a search box, and edit and cancel for each job.
- On a phone: Schedule in the menu under your name. It shows the week day by day, with Me and Everyone, and a banner when a job needs 1 more person. Tap Book a job, pick the customer (or add a New customer), the day, the start time and how long (1 h, 2 h, Half day or Full day), optionally Repeat every week on chosen days until a last day, and who is going.
Before anything is saved, TimeLeaf checks every person on every day against the same rules as a shift: approved leave, double-booking, qualifications, rest, working-time limits and the rest. It tells you who can't go on which days. A place nobody holds shows as needing someone. Everyone on a job gets a notice when it is booked, changed or cancelled.
Fill the places. On the roster, switch to By site. A site with a job shows places filled against places needed, such as 3 of 4. Open a place to use Assign someone, Replace…, Take off this day, or Offer out (Business plan and above, with Shift Automation on). Fill from the usual people… shows who would go where, and who doesn't fit, before it writes anything. On a phone, open a job day and use Find someone, or the options next to a person to find who can go instead.
When someone can't go. Creating or editing a job never overrides a rule: the preview tells you who can't go and which places would stay open. When you fill a place by hand, TimeLeaf lists every reason in the way. On a phone, Who can go instead? lists them and Book anyway… overrides exactly the reasons shown; on a computer, the confirmation does the same. The reasons follow the same privacy rule as leave elsewhere: an admin, an owner or the person's direct manager sees why, such as On leave; any other manager sees only Isn't available for leave, a time the person marked unavailable, or a work restriction.
Change or cancel. You can change one day's hours, add someone to a day, move a day, edit every day that hasn't started, or cancel a day or the whole job. Days that already started stay as they were. On a phone, cancelling shows an Undo for a moment. On a computer, cancelling asks you to confirm.
Workers can book too. An admin can let workers see their team's jobs and book their own. See Workers and jobs under Settings. A worker's list shows teammates only as Free or Busy, and a refusal for the worker reads This would break a scheduling rule for you, with no reason. Workers can't override a rule.
On the Business plan and above, jobs send three webhook events; see Webhooks.