🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator, Schedule manager
🌐 Subscription plan: All
ℹ️ Important read: Scheduling explained ; How to change personal notifications in Planday.
⏱️ Reading time: 3 min.
✅ Required steps: Create or edit shifts.
In this guide, you’ll learn how schedule-related notification features help administrators alert employees about shift changes. From automated processes to customisable alerts, you can keep your team informed with minimal effort.
Notify employees of shift creations, deletions and updates
When creating, updating, or deleting a shift in the schedule, you can notify the assigned employee by sending:
Messages (free) – Send an in-app push notification.
SMS (paid) – Send a text message notification.
How to notify an employee:
When creating or editing a shift > Tick Message or SMS, then select Save.
When deleting a shift > Open the shift, select Delete, choose the notification method, then confirm deletion.
Important notes about SMS charges:
If you, or your managers, choose SMS to notify employees, SMS charges may apply in your billing. Even if SMS notifications were disabled during setup, managers can still select SMS instead of in-app messaging when performing certain actions (for example, cancelling a shift or sending time critical information to staff).
To avoid SMS costs, we recommend using in-app messages and informing managers that sending SMS notifications may result in charges.
Currently, SMS notifications cannot be completely disabled across the platform.
Automate schedule-related activities
Set up and automate common repetitive tasks for the schedule under Settings > Your organisation > Scheduled jobs.
These notifications include:
Punch Clock automatic punch-out: this option punches out everyone clocked into a shift at a certain time. This is useful if your business closes at a certain time and employees forget to punch out from their shifts.
Timesheets - FTP uploading of CSV file: this option allows you to automate your timesheet exports from Planday to your server via FTP/SFTP.
Schedule Plan SMS - Multiple Days: this allows you to send an SMS to all employees who work in the coming days that you selected with their timesheets.
Schedule SMS - Same day: this allows you to send out an automatic SMS notification to employees on their working days.
Learn more about these scheduled jobs in How to create and use scheduled jobs.
Schedule-related notifications for admins
Go to Planday web > Settings > Your organisation > Notifications to add managers that should be notified about requests for Swap approvals or Shift requests. This way, your managers can receive email or SMS notifications when these requests await approval.
Learn more in Set notifications on shift swaps or shift requests.
Automatic Open shift notifications in the Planday app
When a Schedule manager creates an open shift, only the relevant employees are automatically notified. Notifications are based on each employee’s role, department, and availability, helping reduce manual messaging and keeping employees informed without needing to constantly check the app.
Important notes about shift notifications:
Open-shift notifications are not sent immediately. They are usually sent a few minutes after the last schedule change and can sometimes take up to 10 minutes to be delivered. Additional edits may delay the notification slightly.
Admins cannot disable automatic open-shift notifications for employees. However, employees can manage these notifications in the Planday app by going to Profile > Notifications and turning off alerts for open shifts.
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