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Understand the structure of Planday
Understand the structure of Planday

Get familiar with the structure and terms used to organise your company and employees in Planday.

Saad Saeed avatar
Written by Saad Saeed
Updated over a week ago

🎯 For admins new to Planday.

Get to know the desktop schedule here.

Various levels of structure are available in Planday for organising your company and your employees. In this article, you'll learn more about these levels, the most essential elements that constitute them and how they can be used to structure your business.

In Planday, your business and the organisation of your employees can be structured into Departments and Employee groups.

The scheduling functionality has additional subdivisions into Sections, Positions, Shifts and Shift types. You can see this overview in the illustration below, with an example screenshot at the end of the article.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png
  1. Department: A department is a workplace unit often created for each company's physical location. Each department has its separate schedule in Planday. Example: Restaurant Northport, Restaurant Eastend. Learn more in the Create and edit Departments article.

  2. Employee group: This level indicates in which role or function an employee works. You can manage an employee in several Employee groups, provided the qualifications allow it. Example: waiter, receptionists, cooks etc. Learn more in the Create and edit Employee groups article. As an additional unit, you can also consider creating Employee types, for example, permanent employees, part-timers and interns. This can help distribute Payroll supplements or allocate Contract rules. Learn more in the Create and edit Employee types article.

  3. Section: Several positions on the schedule can be grouped in a category to indicate different workplace activity areas—for example, First floor, Front desk etc.

  4. Position: A position can specify what an employee is responsible for during their shift. Example: Service tables 1-10. Learn more about points 3 and 4 in the article Scheduling with Positions and Sections.

  5. Shift: A shift is used to specify an employee's working hours on the schedule. Each shift can be assigned to a maximum of one employee. Learn more in the Create, edit, move, copy, and delete shifts article.

  6. Shift type: Shift types allow you to specify special features of shifts, separating them from regular shifts. Examples: No shows / Overtime / Trial shifts etc. Learn more in the Creating and Using Shift types article.


Example: Structure of Planday in practice

The following illustration shows an example use of the structure of Planday with a fictional clinic setup.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.002.png

When applied to a Planday schedule, this example structure can be seen in the following way. The screenshot shows a fictional UK Clinic schedule as (1.) Department.

Some shifts have been applied to the Nurses (2.) Employee group in Daylight Ops (3.) Section. Employees will work in Clinic room A (4.) Positions.

While Thompson Flash has a normal (5.) Shift from 07:00 to 15:00, Mary Jane is there at the same time for training work (6.) Shift type is applied.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

Each company and its organisation of workforce is unique. When setting up Planday, you can choose how to leverage the structure based on your operational needs. See the screenshot above as an example. Especially in the setup phase of Planday, it is worth reading this article to get a better overview.

💡 To dig even deeper into scheduling, you will find the article Get to know the desktop Schedule and the collection of articles on scheduling helpful.


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