🎯 For admins new to Planday.
Understand the structure of Planday.
Getting started with Planday is easy, but before scheduling, you must set up some basics such as create departments, employee groups, employees, and invite your employees into the system.
In this article, you’ll learn the basic steps to set up your organisation. Later, you will discover additional functions as needed, such as time tracking or managing wages and payroll. Every organisation is unique - decide for yourself how to use Planday’s functions.
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In this guide, we’ll use a small restaurant as an example, but the steps are the same for businesses in all industries. Follow the steps below to get started.
Create Departments
A department is used to represent a location or a department of your company or your organisation, for example, Front of House or Back of House. Each department has its own schedule. Read Understand the structure of Planday to know more about how your business fits into Planday.
Note: In a new Planday organisation, you will already have a department. If you plan to only use this one, you can go straight to editing this department. Please note that Planday’s Starter plan can only have one department.
To create a department, follow these steps:
Go to People > Employees and press the (+) button in front of All departments. Alternatively, you can also create or rename existing departments by going to People > Departments > Create Department
Give the Department a name, and if you've already created Employees you can add them to the Department.
Press Done when you have finished entering details about your department.
Learn how to Create or edit a Department in Planday.
Create Employee groups
Employee groups help organise your staff based on skills and the roles they perform in the business. Departments control where employees can work, while Employee groups control what roles or functions employees have, for example, Bartender. This information is important when creating the schedule so that you only assign shifts to employees who are suitable for the role.
Note: Employees can be assigned to multiple employee groups.
To create an Employee group, follow these steps:
Go to People > Employees > and press the (+) button in front of Employee group. Alternatively, you can also create or rename existing groups by going to People > Employee groups > Create employee group
Give the Employee group a name, and if you've already created employees you can add them to the Employee group.
In addition, you can also assign a wage. Read more about it in How to set and update your employees’ hourly wages.
Press Done when you have finished entering details about your employee group.
Learn how to Create or edit an Employee group for your staff.
Create and invite employees
You are now ready to create employees and assign them to Departments and Employee groups based on their roles in the business.
Go to People > Employees > and press the Create employee button.
When creating Employees, we recommend adding their contact information so you can invite them to Planday. In addition, you can assign your employees to Departments and Employee groups, which will determine which shifts they can cover in the Schedule. To do this, follow these steps:
Go to People > Employees and select Create employee.
Fill out their name and contact information. Required fields are marked with an asterisk.
Note: The employees’s username corresponds to the email address specified in their profile.
Add the employee to one or more Departments.
Add the employee to one or more Employee groups. You can then update the default wage applied via the Employee groups page.
After you've added the information, press Save.
Finally, you can choose whether you want to send a welcome message and login information directly with the invitation. Alternatively, you can do this later via Tools > Send invitations. It’s a good idea to send invitations once your organisation is set up and you’ve scheduled your employees.
Note: If you want to add multiple employees at once, you can use the Tools > Employee import via template option.
Learn How to create, edit, and invite employees in Planday.
Start scheduling
With Departments, Employee groups, and Employees created, you're ready to start scheduling. Go to Schedule > Schedule in the top menu, and choose wherever you want to create a shift. It's as easy as that.
In the Schedule, you can work in three views: Employees, Groups, and Positions. The examples in this article give you the steps to create shifts in the Positions view. Please have a look at this article for more on how to schedule using the Positions view.
Create shifts
To create a shift, click on the Schedule where you want to create the shift. Shifts can be created from any of the three views: Groups, Employees, and Positions.
Note: You can also create an Open shift if you don’t know yet who should have the shift.
Move shifts with drag and drop
To move a shift, drag and drop it to wherever you want. This feature is especially useful if you assign Open shifts from the Employees view or if you want to move a scheduled shift to another day.
Copy shifts
If you have the same shift on multiple days, copy the shift by holding down Alt/Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows), then drag and drop a copy of the shift until a small green plus icon appears.
Delete shifts
Shifts can be deleted individually, or bulk delete all shifts in a week.
Delete a single shift: In the dropdown below the shift, select Delete shift.
Delete all shifts in a week: Go to Tools in the top right corner and select Delete this week.
Create and use Schedule templates
When you’ve familiarised yourself with the schedule and want to bring down the time you spend scheduling, it’s time to dive into schedule templates. Read more in this article on Schedule templates.
Learn how to Create and use Schedule templates in Planday.
Set up Punch Clock and approve timesheets
Do you want to track your employees’ hours in Planday? With Punch Clock employees can start and end their shifts using the app, and you can approve time sheets for payroll from within Planday. In addition, you can always compare the scheduled shifts to what the employees actually worked. This is an excellent tool for continuously improving your schedule and controlling your staffing costs.
Learn how to Set up Punch Clock for your employees to clock in.
See related articles:
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