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Scheduling
Scheduling explained
Scheduling explained

This article introduces you to scheduling in Planday, including its various views, functions and tools.

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

🎯 For Admins and Schedule managers.


What is the schedule?

The Schedule is at the heart of Planday. You will likely use it daily to manage your operations. This article will help you to get an overview of the Schedule page in your web browser. You can navigate to the Schedule from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

You can use most of the functions described in this article in the desktop browser and the Planday app. More details about scheduling can be found in the article Getting started – Set up your business and the collection of articles on schedule.


Select the appropriate view of your schedule

In the upper left area of your schedule, you can decide which Department's schedule you wish to see, change your view setting, and select which period should be displayed.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

Choose a Department

In Planday, each Department has its own schedule. You can select which schedule you want to display from the drop-down list if you have set up several departments.

Select Employees, Groups or Positions view

There are three views in the Schedule: Employees, Groups and Positions. You will find one view most valuable depending on how you set up Planday. Try all three options to see which view works best for you.

Set a period or date to view

Select from the drop-down list which period you would like to display. The options available are Day, Week, 2 Weeks, and Month. In addition, you can click on Today to jump directly to the current date and use the arrows to the left and right to move backwards and forwards in the calendar.


View settings, Schedule templates, and Tools

In the upper right area, you can take further actions regarding the Schedule, such as enabling optional features, creating and editing templates, accessing several functionalities and applying filters.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.003.png
Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

View settings

This menu gives you a list of options to enable on your schedule. These include settings for Shifts, Schedule, Finance and Auto schedule (Pro/Enterprise only).

Templates

Under the Templates dropdown menu, you can create a Schedule template, edit existing ones, save your current schedule as a template and roll out a template in the Schedule. You can also quickly copy the current week to the next week.
You can find much more information about Schedule templates in this article.

Tools

You can approve multiple shifts from the Tools dropdown menu, delete the current shifts on the schedule, print the schedule, export the Schedule as a CSV file, hide or show periods on the schedule, view your schedule history, and much more.


What are the different shift statuses

For a detailed overview of working with shifts, see the articles create, edit, move, copy or delete shifts.

A normal shift is displayed with the employee's name and time; by clicking on the shift, you can view more information or edit the shift.

Shifts can also have different colours to provide a quick status. The screenshot below shows six common examples of shifts you may encounter in Planday.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

🔴 (1️⃣ Monday) - Open shift: If you have a Shift that you need to be covered, but don’t know who can cover it, then create it as an Open shift for employees to request. Open shifts are easy to recognise by their red colour in the Schedule.

🔴 (2️⃣ Tuesday) Open shift (requested): When one or more employees apply to take an Open shift, you can immediately see it in the Schedule with the text Shift request. Assign the Shift and inform the employee to make sure you have all shifts covered.

🟢 (3️⃣ Wednesday) Approved shifts: When a Shift is marked as ready for payroll, it turns green in the schedule. This makes it easy to see which shifts have been approved and which are still awaiting a manager's approval.

🖍 (4️⃣ Thursday) Shifts with a Shift type: Use Shift types to record illness, training or another special event that distinguishes a Shift from a normal Shift. Shift types are created with a colour code and can be viewed directly in the Schedule. Administrators can always create and edit existing Shift types.

⏱ (5️⃣ Friday) Shifts with Punch in time: If you are using the Punch Clock, you can see the exact times employees have clocked in and out of their shifts on the Schedule. In this example, an employee clocked in at 7:08 and clocked out at 15:05.

🟡 (6️⃣ Saturday) Shift for sale: If an employee can't work their assigned shift, they can offer it to their colleagues with the right skill set to cover it. A shift offered for sale will appear on the manager’s schedule as yellow, providing an opportunity to help out. See here Open shifts, Shift requests and Shift swaps for Schedule managers and see here how employees can swap, hand over and sell shifts via the Planday app.


See a daily overview and shift count

Press the Shift count at the top of the schedule to see an overview of shifts and availability for the day. You can choose to only see specific types of shifts by pressing the settings ⚙️ icon. This also allows you to send messages to specific sets of people; for example, you might want to message only employees working on a day.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

How to see payroll costs and revenue on the schedule

At the foot of the schedule, you can input your revenue for the day and compare it to your outgoing payroll costs. If you have set a goal percentage for payroll costs against revenue, you can see a visual indicator here to keep you up to date.

Enable this by going to View Settings and turning on Revenue or Payroll hours & costs under the Finance settings.

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

Visualise Contract rules and employee management

Planday EN Screenshots for HC.001.png

Using the Employees view on the schedule, you can see the following functions and shortcuts:

  1. See when you have deviated from an employee's contract
    If you have set up Contract rules for your employees, you can see a visual indicator around their profile picture to see if they match their contracted hours. In the example below, Maria has a green ring around her profile, indicating she matches the exact amount of hours in her contract. A user with insufficient hours has a yellow ring, and a red ring shows around a user scheduled for too many hours.

  2. Edit an employee's profile or get a shift overview:
    Hover your mouse over an employee's name to reveal options. You can quickly edit (✎) their information right from the Schedule. You can also press the overview button (shown in step 2) to see a Shift overview of an employee or send a direct message.

  3. Manage employees:
    Reorder the list of your employees on the Schedule in the order you want to see. Create custom sections to organise employees. This view will be visible when you sort your schedule by Custom.

  4. Prioritise the order of your employees:
    Press Sort by to reorder your employees in the schedule. You can also toggle between ascending and descending order by clicking the sort icon on the right of each option.


See related articles:

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sche, sched, rota, how to plan your rota, Get to know the desktop rota, how to schedule, how make a shift, Get to know the desktop schedule, make rota
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