Next week's rota, filled without the ring-round.
Prefer Solutions is a rota planner that holds one week at a time for a small team — a café, a shop floor, a front desk, a workshop. It shows who is free before you give a shift out, records every swap against the shift it changed, and prints a week people can read from across the room.
See it on your own week Look at a draft week
A draft week, as it sits on the screen
Days run across, people run down, and a shift is a block you drop into a cell. Nothing about it needs explaining to someone who has run a wall rota.
How to read it: a navy cell is a placed shift. red, dashed, is an unfilled cell or a clash. grey is a day that person has marked off. the cover note shows who agreed and when.
One week at a time, for small teams
Availability before allocation
Swaps recorded against the shift
No payroll, no time clock, no HR advice
What the planner does
Four jobs, done properly, and nothing bolted on the side.
Week view
Seven days across, your people down. Drag a shift onto a person and it sits in that cell; drag it again and it moves. Split shifts stack in the same cell. Every column shows what is still open for that day.
Availability held per person
Each person carries their own pattern — the days they never work, the evenings they can do, the one Saturday they need off. A cell they are not available for will not take a shift, so a wrong allocation cannot happen by accident.
Swaps and cover
A swap is proposed from the shift itself, agreed by the other person and the manager, and written against the shift with a name and a time. Cover works the same way: the shift is offered to whoever is free that day, and the first yes takes it.
Print view and share link
A published week prints on a single sheet in a size people can read from the door, and the same week opens from a share link on a phone. Each person sees their own shifts in full and everyone else's by role.
Record of the week
When the week is over, what was actually worked is kept: the published rota, every swap and cover with who agreed it, and every change a manager made after publishing. It is a plan and its amendments, kept in one place.
A walkthrough on your week
We do not send a demo of a made-up café. You send one real week, we build it in front of you on a shared screen, and you keep the draft. That is the whole sales process.
How we work
What happens between your first message and a rota on the wall.
From first message to your first published week
It starts with a message through the form. We reply from [email protected] and ask for one real week — the sheet on your wall, photographed on a phone, is enough. On a shared screen we add your people, set the availability you tell us about, and place the shifts you already know. That draft is yours to keep whether or not you go on.
If you do go on, the next week is built by you, with us on the call for as long as you want us there. The first published week goes out on the share link, the print view goes on the wall, and the first swap request that comes in is usually the moment it makes sense. Hand-over is a short written note of the settings we chose together and why.
There is no installation and nothing to keep updated on your side. The planner runs in an ordinary browser, on the laptop behind the counter as happily as on a phone in a back room.
What we value
A rota should fit the people on it, not the other way round — that is the line on the top of every page for a reason. We would rather show you an unfilled cell in red than quietly place someone on a day they said they could not do. We use plain words: draft, published, swap, cover, off. If a screen needs a manual, we have built it wrong.
One week at a time is a deliberate limit. A manager plans a fortnight at most and lives in the week; the planner holds that shape rather than a month-long grid nobody looks at.
What we turn down
Chains with several sites and a manager at each: they need a different kind of tool and we say so on the first call. Anyone who needs the rota to feed pay: we do not calculate wages and will not pretend to. Anyone who wants to know where staff are from their phones: we track nobody. Agencies placing temporary people across many employers: the availability model is built for one team, and stretching it would make it worse for everyone else.
Saying no early is cheaper for both sides than a walkthrough that goes nowhere.
Questions people ask before a walkthrough
Answered the way we answer them on the call.
Does it work out wages?
No. It holds who is on shift and when; nothing in it knows an hourly rate, and we keep it that way on purpose. The moment a rota tool touches pay, every swap turns into a pay query. The record of the week prints and copies as plain text for whoever does your payroll.
Is it a clocking-in system?
No. Nobody clocks in or out, and the planner does not know whether anyone turned up. The record of the week is the rota as published plus every change a manager wrote against a shift afterwards — a plan and its amendments, not a timesheet.
How many people can a week hold?
A team one manager genuinely plans for: the size that fits on a single wall sheet. A café's whole crew, a shop floor, a front desk and its cover, a workshop. If you run several sites with their own managers, this is the wrong tool, and we will say so on the walkthrough rather than after.
Can two managers edit at once?
Yes, on a draft. Each change carries the name of whoever made it, and the later edit to a cell wins, which the other manager sees within moments. Publishing is one person's action, so a week can never be half published by two people at once.
What do staff see?
A share link to the published week: their own shifts in full, everyone else's by role and time, and a button to propose a swap or offer cover. They see no availability but their own and never a draft.
Can we try it on our own week?
That is the only way we show it. Send one real week — a photo of the wall sheet is fine — and we build it with you on a shared screen, then hand you the draft to keep. There is no made-up café to click around in.
Where is our data held?
On servers in the European Union, under your own account, holding a name, a role and the shifts worked per person and nothing else. Remove a person and their shifts go with them; close the account and every week goes with it.
Bring one real week. We build it while you watch.
No slide deck and no sample data. A photo of last week's wall sheet is enough to start, and the draft we build together is yours to keep.
See it on your own weekContact
One mailbox, one form, one place.
Reach the desk
- Mailbox
- [email protected]
- When someone reads it
- Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:30, Irish time. There is no weekend desk; a message sent on a Saturday is read on Monday morning.
- Quickest route
- The form on the walkthrough page asks the four things we need, so the first reply can already propose a time.
Where we are
- Placed in
- Cork, Ireland
- In person
- Cork city and county, where a walkthrough at your own counter is often the easiest.
- By shared screen
- Anywhere in Ireland. The walkthrough works the same way on a call, with your week on the screen between us.
