Building and publishing the schedule

Navigate to the Schedule tab from the menu at the top. The schedule shows one location at a time: the one picked at the top toolbar.right, Bynext default,to your name. To work on another location, pick it there.

• Moving between weeks: use the arrows beside Today, or the calendar button beside the dates to jump to any week. Week and Day switch between the whole week and a single day.
• The summary at the top right adds up what is on screen: shifts, hours, projected labor cost, and how many shifts are still unpublished.
• Each day's heading shows that day's shifts, hours and labor cost.
• Filters: narrow the schedule willto one department, one job role or one employee, or type in Find a person. Anything you do from the Options menu, such as publishing, applies only to what the filters leave on screen.

How the schedule is laid out

The schedule is grouped by job role. Each job role has a row for every employee who works it at this location, and a House shifts row at the top for shifts that don't have anyone on them yet, unless house shifts are switched off (see House shifts and open shift pickup). Click a job role's heading to collapse or expand it, or click its pin to keep it at the currenttop week.of your schedule.

UseNext to each employee's name you'll see:

• Their projected cost for the dateweek, controlsbased on their pay rate or salary. Click any cost figure to see how it was worked out. An Administrator can switch the cost off, or leave salaried pay out of it, on the Settings page.
• A bar showing their hours this week across every job role they work. The bar is green while they are comfortably under the location's hours limit, turns orange once they pass the warning level, and turns red when they are in overtime. The limits are set for each location on the Locations page.

What the colors mean

A small speech-bubble icon on a bar means the employee left a note. Click the day to read it. You can also click Published, Unpublished or Shadow at the top of the screenpage tofor movea forwardreminder orof backwardwhat betweeneach weeks.one Make sure you are viewing the correct week before adding or editing shifts.means.

Step 2: Review Availability & Time-Off Requests

Before adding shifts, review employeeCheck availability and any time-off requests on the schedule.

Availability and time-off requests are color-coded to make conflicts easy to spot:

• Availability Colors

  • RED - Not available for the whole day
  • GREEN - Only available for part of the day

• Time-Off requests colors

  • RED - Requesttime off for the full day was approved
  • ORANGE - Request off for part of the day was approved
  • BLUE - Still has a pending request off that needs to be reviewed by a manager

Any notes added by the employee will also be visible on the schedule.

Reviewing this information first helps ensure employees are only scheduled when they are available and prevents conflicts before shifts are added.

Step 3: Add Shifts

To add a shift,you start byadding selectingshifts. the day and employee row where you want the shift. There are three ways to open the Shift Editor:

1. Double-click in theThe schedule cell

   shows

2. Right-click in the cell and select Schedule Employee

   1. Or select a shift shortcut from here without needing to go into the shift editor

3. Single-click the cell to highlight it, then click the blue + button in the bottom-right corner of the screen

Any of these options will open the Shift Editorthem so you can enterplan around them, but it won't stop you from scheduling somebody who has asked for the shiftday details.off.

Add a shift

Inday in an employee's row. A menu opens with New shift… and the Shiftlocation's Editor,shift youshortcuts canfor eitherthat selectjob role. Click a Shift Shortcutshortcut to automaticallyadd that shift immediately, or click New shift… to fill in preset start and end times, or manually enter the shiftdetails times.yourself.

To enter times manually:

• Click into the Start or End time field

• Begin typing a time to quickly filter the list (for example, typing 9 will show 9:00 AM, 9:30 AM, etc.)

• Select the correct time from the dropdown

An end time is required for scheduling and calculating weekly hours, but you can choose to enter an End Display (such as Close, 1st Cut, or 2nd Cut) to control what employees see on the schedule. This allows you to schedule the actual end time while displaying a more realistic or operational label to staff.

You can also addclick notes+ toAdd shift at the top of the page, or + Add beside a job role's name, and choose the employee in the form.

1. Job role and Employee: filled in from the row you clicked. The employee list shows everyone who works this job role here. Anyone already working at that time is grayed out, with the shift ifthey're youworking, needbecause nobody can be in two places at once. Choose House shift - nobody yet to provideadd additionala details,shift that someone can pick up later.
2. Day: any day of the week on screen.
3. Starts and Ends: type a time or choose one from the list. Typing 4p, 4:30p or 16:30 all work. The length of the shift is shown between the two times.
4. End Display (optional): what the employee sees instead of the end time, such as section assignments, firstClose or second1st cut,cut. Use it when the end is flexible: a cut that depends on how busy it is, or closer.a Theseclose notesthat willmay appearrun late. Hours and labor cost are still worked out from the end time.
5. Start from a shortcut: fills in the times and End Display from one of your shift shortcuts. The shortcut you picked stays highlighted until you change the start or end time yourself. When you edit a shift, the shortcut it matches is highlighted.
6. Note (optional): anything the employee needs to know, such as their section. They see it with their shift, in the app and on the printed schedule,schedule.

Click Add shift. The new shift appears in notificationstan: sentit is saved, but nobody can see it until you publish it.

Sail Scheduling checks every location, not just the one on screen: it won't let you schedule someone at two locations at the same time.

Change, move and copy shifts

Click a shift to thesee employee,its details and inwhat you can do with it.

• Edit shift opens the form again. Double-clicking a shift does the same.
• Unassign takes the employee appoff whenand they view their schedule.

  Click OK to addmoves the shift to the schedule.

  job

  Oncerole's House shifts row. It's only offered while house shifts are switched on.

• Publish publishes just this one shift.
• Copy copies the shift. Then click an empty day on any row, in this week or another, and choose Paste.
• Remove deletes the shift. You can also select a shift isand added:press the Delete key.

Drag and drop

Drag a shift to move it to another day, to another employee, or to another job role that the same employee works. Hold Ctrl (or Alt) as you let go to drop a copy instead. While you drag, days where the shift can't go are shaded, and a label under the shift tells you what will happen when you let go, or why it can't.

On a phone or tablet, press and hold a shift until it lifts, then drag it.

Undo and redo

Made a mistake? The two curved arrows beside Week and Day undo and redo your last changes, including publishing, copying and applying a template. You can also press Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y (Cmd+Z and Shift+Cmd+Z on a Mac).

Fill a week quickly

You don't have to build every week from scratch. The Options menu has four shortcuts:

• TheCopy shiftschedule willfrom appearlast inweek lightcopies tan,last indicatingweek's thatpublished shifts into this week.
• Copy a day onto other days copies one day's shifts onto any other days of this week. You can also hover over a day's heading and click its copy button.
• Apply a template to this week adds the shiftshifts isfrom unpublished.a schedule template you've saved. See Schedule templates.
• IfClear anunpublished employeehours worksremoves moreevery than one job role, scheduling them for aunpublished shift in onethe roleweek, will cause that shift to appear in their other job role rows in light gray. These "Shadow Shifts" helpso you quicklycan seestart whenover. Published shifts are left alone.

Everything these shortcuts add is unpublished, so you can check it first. Afterward, a summary tells you what was added and what was skipped, and why, for example because an employee is no longer at this location or is already scheduled,working preventingat accidentalthat overlappingtime. shifts.Look it

over before you publish.

Copy schedule from last week doesn't check time off. It can put an employee on a day they have approved time off. Check the time off bars after copying. Applying a template and copying a day can skip approved time off for you.

Publish the schedule

Nobody can see a shift until it is published. When the week is ready, open Options and choose Publish all, then confirm.

To publish only part of the week, use the filters first. For example, filter to the Server job role to publish just the servers' shifts. With a filter on, the menu says Publish filtered and publishes only what's on screen.

Step

Published 4:shifts Review,turn Adjustblue, &and Balanceemployees Coverage

see

• Review each day to ensure proper staffing

• Check total scheduled hours per employee

  • Total hours for each shift are displayedthem in the bottom-rightapp corner of the shift.
  • Total weekly hours for each employee appearand on the left-handwebsite sideright underaway.

    

    Publishing doesn't notify anyone. Employees are only emailed, texted or sent a push notification when you send the employee’sschedule name(see below). That way you can publish, make final changes, and jobsend role.once Thisyou're totalhappy includeswith allit.

    shifts

    Changing acrossa allpublished job roles.

• shift

  MakeA adjustmentspublished asshift neededhas tofewer avoidoptions: over-Details, Unassign, Unpublish and Copy.

  

  To change its times or under-scheduling

  remove
it,

Editingfirst, make your change, then publish it again. To give a shift

• Shifts can be edited at any time before they are published. 
  • Double click on thepublished shift to get back into the shift editor
  • Right click on the shifts and click "Open" or "Delete"
  • Select the shift, and the blue circle in the bottom-right corner will change to show options to edit or delete the shift. 
• A shift can be dragged to a different dayemployee, let them trade it through ShiftHub, or unpublish it and change it yourself. Options also has Unpublish all (or Unpublish filtered) for the whole week.

  Send the schedule to your team

  When you're ready for everyone to hear about their shifts, open Options and choose Send published shifts to employees.

  

  1. Everyone with a published shift this week who hasn't been sent it yet is already ticked. Change the ticks if you need to: Select all, Clear and Only those not yet sent help you pick, and By job role lists people under their job roles.
  2. Click Send.

  Each employee gets their own week by email, text message or push notification, depending on their notification settings. Only published shifts are sent. Afterward, an envelope icon appears on each shift that was sent.

  Print the schedule

  The Print section of the Options menu has three printouts. Each one shows published shifts only.

  • ClickSchedule by employee: everyone in alphabetical order, with the job role under each shift.
  • Schedule by job role: grouped the same way as the schedule. Someone who works two job roles appears in both, with their other shifts shown grayed out so they don't miss one.
  • Daily roster: one day's shifts on a single page, grouped by the location's day parts (such as Lunch and holdDinner). See The daily roster.

  The weekly printouts open in a new tab, with buttons to Download PDF, Download Excel and Print. The filters apply, so you can print one department's schedule on its own.

  

  On a phone

  On a phone, the shift,schedule thenopens dragin itDay view with a strip of days across the top. Swipe left or right to move itbetween days, tap the funnel button to afilter differentit, dayand fortap the sameround employe

+

menu.

You can use the Filters along the top to narrow in on specific departments, job roles, or individual employees.

• Filters work from top to bottom
  • If a higher-level filter changes after a lower-level filter is set, the lower filters will reset to All
  • If a higher-level filter is set first, only compatible options will appear in the lower filters

Step 5: Publish the Schedule

Once your schedule is complete, the next step is to publish it so employees can view their shifts.

To publish the entire schedule:

• Click Options in the top-left corner

• Select "Publish All"

This will publish all unpublished shifts currently displayed on the schedule.

Sometimes you may want to publish only part of the schedule while continuing to work on the rest.

You can use the filters at the top of the schedule to display only:

• A specific department
• A specific job role
• A specific employee

Once the schedule is filtered:

1. Click Options in the top-left corner.
2. Select Publish Filtered.

Only the shifts currently displayed by the selected filters will be published. All other unpublished shifts will remain unpublished.

Example: If you filter the schedule to show only Bartenders and select Publish Filtered, only bartender shifts will be published. Any shifts for servers, cooks, or other job roles will remain unpublished until they are published separately.

When the schedule is published:

• All shifts will change from light tan to light blue
  
  

• Employees will immediately see their scheduled hours in the app

• No notifications are sent to employees at this time

Publishing allows you to make the schedule visible to employees while giving you control over when notifications are sent.

Step 6: Send the Schedule to Employees

Once the schedule has been published and you’re ready to notify employees, you can send the schedule directly from the Schedule view.

To send the schedule:

• Click Options in the top-left corner

• Select "Send Approved Work Hours to Employees"
  
  

A pop-up will appear allowing you to choose which employees to notify.

• By default, all employees with a scheduled shift during that time period will be selected

• Use the options to Select All, Unselect All, or reselect only the scheduled employees

Once you’ve selected the employees you want to notify, click Send.

After the schedule is sent:

• A mail icon will appear in the top-left corner of each shift
  
  

• This icon indicates the schedule has been sent to the employee

Employees will receive their schedules by email or text, based on their notification preferences. They will also receive a push notification to the app

Step 7: Print the Schedule

If you need a physical copy of the schedule for posting or reference, you can print it directly from the Schedule view.

To print the schedule:

• Click Options in the top-left corner

• Select "Print / Export Schedule"

You can choose to print the schedule in two different formats:

• By Employee

  • Employees are listed alphabetically

  • Each shift displays the employee’s job role under the shift, so they know which position they are working that day
    
    
    

• By Job Role

  • The schedule is grouped into sections by job role

  • Employees with multiple job roles will appear in each applicable section

  • Shadow shifts will also appear, allowing employees to view all of their scheduled shifts in one section and avoid missing a shift listed elsewhere

Time-Saving Scheduling Options

If you don’t want to build a schedule from scratch each week, you can use one of the options below to speed up the process.

Copy Last Week’s Schedule

You can copy the previous week’s schedule into a blank week.

To copy last week’s schedule:

• Click Options in the top-left corner

• Select "Copy Schedule from Last Week"

Important things to know:

• This will copy all published shifts from the previous week

• Availability changes and time-off requests for the current week are not taken into account

• Be sure to review and adjust the schedule after copying to account for any changes

Use a Schedule Template

Schedule Templates allow you to apply a pre-built schedule to the current week.

To apply a schedule template:

• Click Options in the top-left corner

• Select "Schedule Templates"

• Choose "Apply Templates to Current Schedule"

Additional details:

• The schedule does not need to be blank

• You can have multiple templates for different job roles or scenarios

• You’ll have the option to:

  • Overwrite existing hours

  • Skip employees with approved time off

Click this link to learn more about creating Schedule Templates