Shifts

The Shifts page combines your published shifts and the team rota in one calendar. Staff with shifts:read start on the team rota (All shifts), drafts included, and can use the Assignee filter to see one person, one role, or My shifts. Everyone else sees My shifts. It is separate from the customer-facing Schedules calendar of bookable sessions.

Getting there

• Sidebar path: Operations → Shifts.
• Permission: every signed-in admin can see My shifts. Team filters need shifts:read; creating, editing, and deleting team shifts need shifts:create, shifts:update, and shifts:delete. Every signed-in admin can take open shifts and ask for cover on their own shifts; answering requests and posting cover for someone else need shifts:update.
• Badge: with shifts:update, the sidebar's Shifts entry counts the time-off requests and requests for open shifts waiting on you.

The week grid

The team week reads By person or By day: choose with the buttons beside the filters. Your choice is saved for your account and studio in this browser. A week filtered to one assignee, My shifts, and phones always read by day.

By person

The team week starts By person: one row per person and one column per day, starting on the Workweek starts on day in Payroll. The rows are:

• Open shifts first, with the shifts nobody is on yet for staff to claim.
• Everyone working that week, plus the rest of the team you can see so they can be scheduled too. With the Location filter set, or with shift access limited to some locations, that is the people with shifts there in the last four weeks.
• Shifts still assigned to an entire role, at the bottom, under the role's name.

Each person shows their scheduled hours and shift count for the week. A shift that runs past midnight counts each hour in the week it falls in: the night before the week adds its early hours to the first day without counting as one of the week's shifts, and the last night's hours after midnight belong to the next week. Hours over the weekly overtime threshold in Payroll are highlighted. With the Location filter set and access to every location, a person who also works elsewhere shows both figures (20h of 34h), and the highlight counts their whole week. Someone who has been deactivated keeps a row only for shifts they still hold, and new shifts cannot be added for them. A day they have approved time off is marked Time off (with the times when it is part of a day), and a day their availability rules out is shaded and marked Unavailable. Partly available days list the hours they are available.

Cards are coloured by duty label, so every Front desk shift shares a colour. A card with an amber corner clashes with something: another shift (drafts included), a session the person leads, approved time off, or their availability. Hover or focus it to see what; screen readers read the reason with the card.

To add a shift from the board, hover or focus an empty spot in a cell and select +: the shift form opens with that person (or Open shift) and day already chosen. Each column header shows the day's scheduled hours and how many people work it. Drag a card to another person or day to move or copy it.

The Week total row sums hours, shifts and people. With payroll:read it also shows an Estimated cost: each person's hours at their hourly rate, with overtime past the weekly threshold. A person who also works at a location the board leaves out carries a matching share of their overtime. People without a rate are left out and counted, and when nobody on the board has one it reads No pay rates set. Both link to the payroll details where rates are set.

By day

The day grid shows one column per day, from the same first day. On smaller screens, days stack into an agenda that scrolls to today, and a day with nothing on it shrinks to one line. Each card shows the assignee, time range, optional duty label and note, and (when viewing all locations) the location. One-day changes to a recurring shift are marked Changed, Covering for, or Cancelled. Role assignments are marked Entire role, overnight shifts say Ends next day, and today is highlighted.

Use the toolbar to move Previous / Next week or jump back to Today. The current week range is shown alongside. Today is the current day in your studio's timezone, so staff viewing from another timezone see the same week the studio does.

Filters

• Assignee: choose My shifts, All shifts, a staff member, or an entire role.
• Location: narrow the calendar to one location, or show All locations.

The team view always shows drafts, so a week being built is never hidden from the people building it. My shifts never shows drafts.

Your assignee and location preferences, like the layout, are saved separately for each account and studio in this browser. Returning to Shifts restores them. A shared URL takes precedence, and the browser's Back button restores the previous calendar selection.

Draft and published shifts

A shift is either Published or a Draft:

• Published shifts appear in My shifts for the assigned person or every active staff member with the assigned role. Publishing or changing a published shift emails the affected staff.
• Draft shifts are hidden from staff and never send email. Use them to plan a rota before it is final. Their cards have a dashed border and a Draft badge.

Build a week as drafts, then publish it in one go, so each person gets one email for the week instead of one per shift. Staff can still take an open shift that overlaps one of their drafts: a draft is not a commitment until it is published.

Common tasks

Add a shift

1. Select Add shift in the toolbar to open the shift form. The date starts on today in the studio's timezone, or on the first day of the week on screen when that is a different week. With one person or role chosen in the Assignee filter, the form starts with them assigned. From the By person board, select + in a cell to start with that person and day.
2. Under Staff, search for and choose the person, then choose the Location. For a shift nobody is on yet, choose Open shift instead: see Post an open shift. From the By person board, each person is listed with what to know about the day: Time off, Unavailable, the shift they already work (Working 9am-5pm), and their hours that week. People free that day are listed first.
3. Set the Date, Start time, and End time. A shift may cross midnight (end time earlier than start time).
4. Under Repeats, choose Does not repeat, Weekly, or Every other week.
5. For Weekly, pick the weekdays under Repeats on. The start date's weekday is chosen to begin with. Select Weekdays (Mon to Fri) for the whole working week in one go: this is how a Monday-to-Friday rota is entered as one shift instead of five. At least one day is required, and for Weekly the start date need not be one of the chosen days. Every other week runs on one weekday, every second week counted from the start date, so choosing a day moves the start date forward to the first such day.
6. Optionally add a Duty label (e.g. Front desk, Opening) and a Note. The duty label suggests the labels your studio already uses, so one duty keeps one name (and one colour on the board), or type a new one.
7. Check the Status: Published (emails the person) or Draft (hidden until you publish). A new shift starts as a draft, except one starting today or tomorrow, which starts as published so a same-day fix reaches the person straight away. Change it either way.
8. Select Create shift, or Save and add another to keep the form open with the same person, location and times for the next shift.

As you fill the form, it checks the shift against the person's week and says when it clashes with another shift (drafts included, marked draft shift), a session they lead, approved time off, or a window they've marked unavailable. Saving shows the same overlaps as a Scheduling conflict warning. The warning is advisory, you can Create anyway.

New shifts go to a person, not to an entire access role. Shifts assigned to a role before this change keep working: they still follow current membership, including My shifts, conflict checks, and scheduled-hours totals, and are marked Entire role. Editing one can keep its role or move it to a person, but cannot move a shift to a different role. Availability is a per-person setting.

Edit or delete a shift

Select any shift card to reopen the form with its details. Change what you need and Save changes, or select Delete shift and confirm.

When the shift repeats, choose what the change applies to under Apply changes to:

• This shift: only the day you opened. Change who works it, its times, or its note, or select Cancel this shift to take that day off the rota. The rest of the series is untouched. A changed day shows a Changed badge, a day someone else covers says Covering for the usual assignee, and a cancelled day stays on the grid with a Cancelled badge. Select Reset to series (or Restore shift for a cancelled day) to make it follow the series again.
• This and following shifts: the day you opened and every later one. Earlier days stay as they were. Delete this and following ends the series the day before.
• All shifts in the series: the whole series. Its Series start date is the first day the shift runs rather than the day you clicked. Days already worked keep who worked them and when: a change to the assignee, location, times, recurrence, or status of a published series that has started applies from today on, including today's shift. Deleting the series removes today's and later days and keeps the days already worked on record. An end date can't be moved before a day already worked.

One-day changes stay with their day when you edit the series from either of the other two options, as long as the series still runs on that day. Someone covering one of those days is emailed when a series edit moves it or takes it away.

A series made earlier to repeat Daily or Monthly keeps that pattern when edited. Those two options are offered only for a series already using them.

Opened from My shifts, a repeating shift (or a day already changed) can only be changed for that day. Switch to the team schedule to change the whole series.

New shifts and reassignments need an active staff member and an active location. A day already given to someone who has since been deactivated can still be retimed or cancelled.

Editing keeps staff informed automatically: reassignment tells removed recipients the shift was cancelled and newly assigned recipients they have a shift. People who remain assigned through a role/person change do not receive a cancellation. Publishing, unpublishing, and material schedule changes notify the affected assignees.

Before deleting an access role, remove or reassign its shifts. Deleting a staff member who covers a day of someone else's shift hands that day back to the shift's own assignee. The day keeps any other change, so a cancelled day stays cancelled. The delete dialog lists those days as kept. A day the person covered on a series that has since been reassigned to them is part of their own shifts, so it is removed with them and is not listed as kept.

Move or copy a shift

On the By person board, drag a shift card to another person, another day, or both. To copy it instead, hold Alt (Option on a Mac) as you drop. Without a mouse, hover or focus a card and select its move button (the four arrows in its corner), then choose Move to or Copy to, a day, and a person or Open shifts. The menu offers only the places a drop would take, and each choice saves the same change as dropping the card there.

• A one-off shift moves as it is. Drop it on Open shifts to post it for staff to claim. An open shift given to someone, or moved to another day, closes the requests staff made to take it, and Undo doesn't reopen them.
• A day of a repeating shift changes only that day, never the series. Given to someone else on the same day, it becomes a cover, as This shift in the form does. Moved to another day, that day is cancelled on the series (its Cancelled card stays) and a one-off shift with the day's times and note takes its place. The series' other days are untouched. A day of a repeating shift can't be dropped on Open shifts.
• A copy is always a new one-off draft, so nobody hears about it until you publish it.

If the shift would clash with something the person already has, the same warning as in the form lists the clashes: select Move anyway to go ahead, or cancel. The card moves straight away and goes back if the change can't be saved. A message confirms each move, with Undo for ten seconds. When the shift is published, the people on it are emailed about the change, as for an edit in the form. Undo refuses, rather than overwrites, a change someone else has made to the shift since. Taking back a copy, or a day of a repeating shift moved to another day, removes the shift it added, so Undo is offered for those only with shifts:delete at the shift's location.

Shifts can't be moved or copied to or from a day already past. A shift someone has clocked in to stays on its day, from the board or the form. Cancelled days, one-off shifts with their own day-level change, and one-off shifts still assigned to an entire role are edited from the form. Moving needs shifts:update at the shift's location; copying, and moving a day of a repeating shift to another day, need shifts:create there too.

Plan next week from this one

In the team view, select Copy to next week and confirm. Every one-off shift of the week on screen is copied into the following week as a Draft, on the same weekday and with the same assignee, times, duty label, and note. A day changed for one person, like a cover, is copied as changed, and an open shift is copied as open. A shift assigned to an entire role is copied as an open shift for staff to claim, since new shifts no longer go to a role, and the confirmation says how many were. With a location chosen in the Location filter, only that location's shifts are copied.

Some shifts are left out, and the confirmation says how many:

• Repeating shifts, which already continue into next week on their own.
• Cancelled days.
• Shifts for inactive staff or at a closed location.
• Shifts next week already has, so copying twice adds nothing the second time.

The calendar then moves to next week, ready to adjust. A shift next week already has includes a day of a repeating shift at the same time for the same person. Weeks run from the Workweek starts on day in Payroll.

Publish a week's drafts

With shifts:update, the team view's toolbar shows how many drafts the week on screen has (3 unpublished) and a Publish (3) button. With no drafts, it reads Nothing to publish and is disabled.

Select Publish to see what it will do before anything is sent:

• Who gets an email: each person and how many new shifts their email lists.
• Conflicts: a draft that overlaps another shift (published or draft), a session the person leads, approved time off, or their availability. Select a conflict's day to go back to the week and fix it. Conflicts are warnings: Publish anyway still publishes.

Every draft with a day in that week is published, for everyone and not only the assignee filtered to, but only at the chosen location when the Location filter names one. A repeating draft is published as a whole series, including its days before and after that week, and the dialog says how many repeating shifts that covers. Instead of one email per shift, each person gets a single email listing all of their new shifts, including any day of a series they cover for someone else. Drafts for inactive staff or at a closed location stay drafts.

Post an open shift

An open shift is a one-off shift with nobody on it yet, which staff take themselves. In the shift form, choose Open shift under Assign to. Open shifts are single days, so the recurrence options are hidden; assign someone first to make a shift repeat.

Select A manager approves who gets it to collect requests instead of letting the first person take it. Open shifts show as Open shift on the grid, with Claims need approval when they do. A draft open shift is hidden from staff until published.

You can still assign an open shift directly by editing it. Any requests waiting on it are then declined. Making an assigned shift open again posts it afresh: earlier requests and answers are cleared, so anyone can ask again. Changing an open shift's day, times or location clears its requests the same way, since they were made for the old time. A cancelled day can't be posted as open: restore it first.

Publishing an open shift, or posting it already published, emails the staff who could take it (see Take an open shift) with a link to it. A week published at once sends each person one email listing every open shift they could take.

Ask for cover

When you can't work one of your published shifts, select Can't work this beside it on My work or the staff app's Work tab. Add a reason for your manager if you like, then select Ask for cover. The shift stays yours, marked Needs cover, and is posted as an open shift with a Cover label that a manager approves. Colleagues who could take it are emailed, and so are the managers of its location, with your reason. This holds for a shift lead or manager asking about their own day too. Until someone is approved you can Withdraw the request, and the shift is simply yours again; anyone who asked for it is emailed that it is no longer open.

Once a manager approves someone, the day becomes theirs: they are emailed that they have a new shift, and you that your shift is covered. Only one day at a time is released: the rest of a repeating shift stays yours. A shift for a whole role, one that has started or that someone has clocked in to, and a cancelled or draft day can't be released.

If a manager posted cover for your day, it reads Your manager posted this for cover, and only a manager can withdraw it. On a day your approved time off covers, the shift reads You're off: cover requested (or You're off: your manager posted cover) once there is cover, and Your manager will reassign this until then.

Post a shift for cover

With shifts:update at the shift's location, you can post a day of someone's published shift for cover yourself. Open the card's menu on the By person board (the move button in its corner) and select Post for cover, or open the day in the shift form (for a repeating shift, apply changes to This shift) and select Post for cover. Posting emails everyone who could take it, so you confirm it first. The first eligible person to take it gets it, no approval needed, unless you tick A manager approves who takes it in the confirmation to choose who gets it from the requests instead. The day stays with its assignee, marked Needs cover. Withdraw cover in the same places takes it back while nobody has it. Taking a one-off reassigns the shift itself; taking a day of a repeating shift hands over that day alone.

Cover follows the day it is for. Editing the day's times or location moves the cover with it, and requests made for the old time are cleared, so anyone can ask again. Cancelling the day, giving it to someone else, moving the shift back to draft, or deleting the shift removes the cover and its requests. Whoever had asked for it is emailed: that it went to someone else when you gave the day away, otherwise that it is no longer open. Posted cover is never copied by Copy to next week, and hours and labor cost count the day once, for whoever works it. To change cover itself, change the day it covers or withdraw it. Undoing a move is refused once the moved day is posted for cover: withdraw the cover first.

Take an open shift

Published open shifts in the week on screen, at active locations and not yet over, are listed under Open shifts on My shifts. (On the team view they are on the week itself, in the board's Open shifts row or as Open shift cards.) My work and the staff app's Work tab list the ones in the next two weeks, and the tab shows how many you can take. Select Take shift to add it to your schedule straight away. If someone else got there first, you're told it has already been taken.

When a manager approves who gets the shift, the button reads Ask for shift. Your request then shows as Requested until it's answered, and you can Withdraw it in the meantime. A request that went to someone else shows Not given to you.

You see only open shifts at the locations your access reaches. Taking or asking for one is refused if it overlaps another of your published shifts or a session you lead, if it falls during your approved time off, or if it is cover for a day you asked to be released from. The same test decides who is emailed about new open shifts.

Answer requests for open shifts

With shifts:update, requests waiting on you are listed under Shift requests, for the locations you manage, grouped by shift with each person's scheduled hours that week at those locations. A shift marked Cover is someone's day they asked to be released from. Select Approve to give the shift to that person, who is emailed that they have it. Every other request for the same shift is declined at the same time, and those people are emailed that it went to someone else. Approving is refused if the shift now overlaps another of that person's shifts or a session they lead, or falls during their approved time off. Select Decline to turn one request down; the person who asked is emailed. Requests that can no longer be granted are left out: the shift went back to draft or has passed, its location closed, or the person asking was deactivated.

Set availability

With a single staff member selected in the Assignee filter, select Availability to open their availability editor:

• Weekly template: recurring windows (a day plus a start and end time) describing when the person usually works. A window whose end time is earlier than its start time runs past midnight into the next day, like a shift. Add or remove windows and Save template. Saving the template replaces it wholesale, so if a colleague changed it while your editor was open the save is refused rather than applied: nothing is written, the windows on screen are replaced with the ones they saved, and a notice above Save template says so. Make your changes again on top of theirs and save.
• Date exceptions: one-off overrides for a specific date, marking the person available or unavailable, all-day or for a time range (which may also cross midnight), with an optional note (e.g. Vacation). The date starts on the current day in your studio's timezone. When no weekly template is set, other dates have no availability restriction. Once a weekly template is set, days without a template window are unavailable. Exceptions affect their date and any part that runs past midnight.

Availability drives the conflict warnings shown when you schedule a shift, and when you assign an instructor to a session on the Schedules calendar. It never blocks a save, it only warns.

Every staff member can also keep their own availability, without any shift permission. On My shifts, select My availability; in the staff app, open Work → Availability. Staff get a simpler editor than managers: one line per weekday set to Any time, Only these hours (one stretch, which can run past midnight) or Not available, then Save availability. At least one day must be workable. A day a manager set with several windows shows them under As set by a manager until the staff member picks something else. Staff do not add date exceptions: being away on a date is a time-off request, which a manager approves. Exceptions added before this change still show, still count, and can be removed. This is the availability of your login. If you also have an instructor entry, its availability is set separately, by a manager, from the Assignee filter.

Behind the scenes a weekday set to Any time, when other days are restricted, is stored as two template windows, midnight to noon and noon to midnight, because one window cannot start and end at the same time. Managers see those two windows in their editor.

Time off

The Time off tab of Shifts (/shifts/time-off) is where staff ask for time off and managers decide it.

Request time off

Under Request time off, choose the first and last day, either All day or a time window taken on each of those days, a type (vacation, sick, personal or other) and an optional note, then select Send request. The first day can be yesterday or later, so a sick day can be logged the morning after. A request covers at most a year. A date problem shows under the date it concerns. Once you choose dates, the form says how many of your published shifts they land on ("You're scheduled for 2 shifts in these dates"), counting only the hours you asked for; sending the request does not change those shifts. After a request is sent, the form starts over.

A request needs someone else who can decide it (see Review requests). If nobody can yet, for example because you are the studio's only Owner, the request is refused with a message saying so. Someone else first needs access at least as wide as yours, including managing shifts where you work; for an Owner, that means a second Owner.

My requests lists your own requests and their status: Pending, Approved, Declined or Cancelled, with the manager's note if they left one. You can withdraw a pending request, or cancel approved time off until its last day has passed; the people who could decide it are emailed when approved time off is cancelled. A decision is final, so to change declined or cancelled time off, send a new request.

In the staff app, the same form and list are under Work → Request time off.

Review requests

Anyone with shifts:update sees Team requests: the requests they may decide. That is a request from someone whose access your own access covers (the same test the studio uses to decide who may manage whom), at every location their access reaches and where you can update shifts. Access that is not limited to locations, or a role with no permissions at all, reaches every location. In practice:

• An Owner decides everyone's requests, and an Owner's requests are decided by another Owner.
• A studio-wide manager decides the requests of staff with studio-wide or narrower access, such as instructors and front desk.
• A manager who can update shifts only at some locations decides the requests of staff whose access is limited to those same locations, even if the manager's other permissions reach further.

Being on someone's rota does not make you their reviewer. Nobody decides their own request: it waits for another manager.

A request can be approved or declined until its last day has passed. After that it leaves the requests waiting for a decision, and stays Pending in the requester's list until they withdraw it.

Show switches between requests waiting for a decision, upcoming approved time off, and the last 90 days of approved, declined or cancelled requests. Each request also shows:

• Covers N shifts: the requester's published shifts the time off lands on, with day, hours and location. Only the requested hours count, a day handed to the requester on the schedule counts, and a day handed to someone else does not. A shift at a location where you cannot update shifts shows its day and hours as at "another location".
• Also off: other people with approved time off on any of the same days. A manager limited to some locations only sees names of people with a published shift there.
• Approved this year: how many calendar days of the requester's time off have been approved in the studio's current year. A partial day counts as a day. It is a count, not a balance against an allowance.

Select Approve or Decline, optionally add a note for the requester, and confirm. When approving, the dialog lists the shifts the time off lands on, with a box beside each one you can post for cover, ticked to start. Once the approval is saved, every ticked shift is posted, and the dialog says which were and which were not (for example, if the day changed meanwhile). Tick A manager approves who takes each one to choose who gets them from the requests; otherwise the first eligible person to take each one gets it. Approving itself does not change the shifts: they stay assigned to the requester until someone takes the cover or you reassign them. Open the week on the schedule shows that week filtered to the requester. The requester is emailed the decision. The people who could decide a request are emailed when it is sent, and again if approved time off is cancelled. A decision is final: a manager cannot undo an approval, but the requester can cancel it until it is over.

Time off on the schedule

Approved time off shows on the Schedule tab, on each day it covers. On My shifts you see your own. With shifts:read you see the team's, filtered like the shifts around it: who is off and when, never the type or note. A location-limited reader sees the time off of people with a published shift at their locations during the weeks shown; drafts and shifts that have ended do not count.

Approved time off is also part of the conflict checks. Scheduling someone over it, or assigning them to teach a session on the Schedules calendar then, warns the same way unavailability does. Pending and declined requests never warn.

Scheduled and worked hours

To compare the plan with what happened, open Reports and select the Staff tab. Its labor report totals, per person and location, the hours scheduled here beside the hours worked on the time clock, the variance between them, overtime, and labor cost. Scheduled hours reflect real elapsed time in your brand's timezone, so a fixed shift correctly counts as 7 hours on the spring-forward day and 9 on the fall-back day, and a shift that runs past midnight at the edge of the date range counts only the part inside it. A day changed on its own counts as changed: a cancelled day counts for nobody, a retimed day at its new times, and a day handed to someone else for them.

Shifts assigned to a role are reported as coverage under the role, not as hours of the people who hold it, so past hours stay put when someone changes role. Shifts assigned to a staff directory entry that is linked to a staff login count as that login's, the same person whose clocked time they are compared with.

Each row also counts shifts and days. The day count is the number of days worked. The shift count is the number of shift records behind them, and a series edited after it started is two records (the days before the edit and the days from it on), so it can count twice in a range that spans the edit.

Tips

• The staff schedule is not paywalled, it's available regardless of your plan's booking features.
• Location-scoped shift permissions limit team scheduling to the allowed locations. Availability management requires studio-wide shift update permission.
• If the grid can't load you'll see an error with a Try again action. Refresh and retry.