Building a week
A week is built in four moves: add the people, set what each of them can do, drop the shifts into the cells, and publish. This page walks through each move, what turns a cell red, and the difference between a draft and a published week.
See it on your own week
The four moves
In the order you make them.
1. Adding people
A person is a name and a role, and that is all the planner asks for. There is no address, no date of birth, no bank details and no photograph — none of it helps you place a shift, so none of it is stored. A person can hold two roles if they genuinely work both, and a role can be renamed at any time without disturbing the shifts already placed under it.
Someone who leaves is removed with one action, and their shifts go with them. Someone who comes back is added again as new.
2. Setting availability
Availability is held per person as a repeating pattern: the days they never work, the days they only do mornings, the evenings they can do. On top of that pattern sits the odd week — the one Saturday off, the college day that moves — which is set for that week alone and does not disturb the pattern.
Staff can mark their own availability from the share link. A manager sees the change the next time the draft is opened, and the cell simply stops accepting a shift. Nobody has to remember who said what in the kitchen on a Tuesday.
3. Placing shifts
A shift is a start time and an end time. Drag it onto a person's cell for a day and it sits there; drag it to another cell and it moves; drop a second one into the same cell and you have a split shift. Copying a whole week forward is one action, so a steady week is built in moments and only the differences need touching.
A cell a person is not available for refuses the shift — it will not take the drop. That refusal is the single most useful thing in the planner, because it makes the mistake that causes most of the phone calls impossible rather than merely visible.
4. Publishing
Publishing is one press, by one person. The week goes out on the share link, the print view is ready for the wall, and every change from that moment on is recorded as a change, with a name and a time. Until then the week is a draft, visible to managers only, that you can rearrange as freely as you like.
What turns a cell red
Two conditions, both fixed by you, never guessed by the planner.
Two things turn a cell red
An unfilled cell. When a role needs someone on a day and nobody is placed, the cell shows red with a dashed edge from the day you open the draft. It stays red until a shift is placed or the requirement is removed. Publishing with red cells is allowed — sometimes cover is found after the week goes out — but the print view carries the red too, so nobody mistakes an open shift for a quiet day.
A clash. When two shifts overlap on one person — a split shift dropped carelessly, or a cover accepted on top of an existing shift — both cells go red and the later one carries a note saying which shift it clashes with. The planner does not guess which one you meant; you decide, and the red goes.
A day marked off is not red. It is grey, and it does not take a shift at all, so it never needs your attention.
Draft or published
The one distinction everyone on the team needs to know.
A draft
Visible to managers only. Any manager on the account can edit it, and two can edit at once; the later edit to a cell wins and the other manager sees it within moments. A draft carries no history — move a shift six times and only the final place matters. You can throw a draft away and start from last week's published rota with one action.
A published week
Visible to everyone on the share link, printable, and recorded. Every change after publishing is kept with the name of the manager who made it and the time it was made, and the cell that changed carries a small mark in the print view so the wall copy and the screen copy can be compared. Swaps and cover on a published week are recorded against the shift itself, which is what the swaps and cover page is about.
Unpublishing is not a thing. If a published week must change, it changes in the open, with a record.
A sum on the week
Type your own numbers; the total is worked from them and nothing else.
Hours on the week
A small sum, worked on what you type: shift length multiplied by the number of shifts on the week, and shared across the people you enter. It is arithmetic, not advice — the planner shows a total the same way on the draft.
Type a shift length and a number of shifts and the total appears here.
What this page will not do
It will not calculate pay. The hours above are hours on a plan; they are not hours worked, and nothing here knows a rate. Take the record of the week to whoever runs your payroll.
It is not a time clock. Nobody clocks in, nothing tracks arrival, and the planner has no idea whether Tuesday happened as drawn. The full list is short and worth reading before a walkthrough.
See it on your own week