Planning shifts

The shift plan is included in the Pro plan. On the Starter and the free plan, people clock in and out, but there is no planning.

The weekly grid

Open Shift plan on the left. You see one week: rows are people, columns are days. At the top, you switch the calendar week.

Creating a shift

1. Click the empty cell for the person and the day.
2. At the top, choose a template (early, late, night — depending on your industry’s working-time model), or type in Start and End by hand.
3. Optional: Label (for example “Bar”, “Early shift”, “Crane”), Project and a Note.
4. Save.

The result: The shift is in the plan as a draft. It is not yet visible to the person — that requires publishing.

Open shifts

At the very top of the grid there is a separate row Open shifts (“not assigned to anyone”). Clicking the + in the day cell creates a shift there that does not yet belong to anyone. You can assign it later using the small assign … selection field on the card; conversely, Release in the shift window turns an assigned shift back into an open one. Handy if you know that someone has to be behind the bar on Saturday, but not yet who.

No conflict preview runs for open shifts — without a person there is no rest period and no absence to check. The check only happens at the moment you assign it.

Conflict check — the real tool

Zeitflex checks before saving and points out problems, instead of letting them surface only in the month-end close:

If the business works with Trust-based working time, the notices about the timing of work (overlap, daily and weekly planning) are dropped. Rest period, absence and mini-job limit remain — that is the law or money respectively, and does not depend on the working-time model.

The mini-job check is the point that saves the most money in everyday work: anyone who schedules the temporary worker for one shift too many in December breaks the annual limit — and you would otherwise only notice in the payroll run. See The mini-job limit.

Publishing the plan

As long as a plan is a draft, only management sees it. With Publish plan:

1. Click Publish plan at the top. The button shows in brackets how many drafts the displayed week contains.
2. Zeitflex asks: “Publish N shifts?”
3. Confirm.

All drafts of the displayed week are published — not individual shifts. Zeitflex then reports how many shifts were published and how many people were notified.

What happens after publishing

Publishing is the actual act. Until then, a shift is something management is considering; from then on it is a commitment. Specifically, it triggers five things:

1. The person sees their shifts. Employees only see published shifts in the shift plan and in the app. Drafts remain invisible to them — including drafts that concern them.

2. One message per person. Every scheduled person receives exactly one push notification for the week, not one per shift: “Shift plan published — For the week from 09.03., 4 shifts are scheduled for you – the first on Tue, 10.03. at 07:00.” No message goes out for open shifts without a person. The message depends on the personal switch Shift plan & shift start under Notifications; anyone who has set quiet hours there does not receive it during that time — and does not get it later either. The shift is still in the app. See Notifications and quiet hours.

3. Reminder 45 minutes before the start. Every 15 minutes, Zeitflex checks which published shifts start within the next 45 minutes and sends the person “Your shift starts soon — Things get going at 07:00 · Bar (until 15:00).” Open shifts and deactivated people are not reminded. This message also depends on the switch Shift plan & shift start. Zeitflex reminds exactly once per shift — the 15-minute cycle does not generate a second message.

4. The calendar subscription follows. Anyone who has subscribed to their shift plan in their own phone calendar only gets their own published shifts there — never drafts, never other people’s shifts. The calendar polls the feed at its own interval; Zeitflex recommends it refresh once per hour. See Your shift plan in your own calendar.

5. Target versus actual begins. Only published shifts count in the target/actual comparison and trigger the notice “Shift missed” when nobody clocks in. Anyone who has connected a third-party system (till, workforce scheduling) receives the event “Shift plan published” with the week, number of shifts and number of open shifts — see Connecting Zeitflex to other systems.

Changes after publishing do not fall back to draft. Anyone who moves a published shift changes it with immediate effect; the person receives “Shift plan changed — Your shift on Tue, 10.03. has been changed to 09:00–17:00.” If the shift is deleted, they get “Shift cancelled — Your shift on Tue, 10.03. (07:00–15:00) has been removed.” In the calendar subscription, a deleted shift disappears at the next refresh without a separate cancellation note — Zeitflex does not keep deleted shifts.

Every publication is recorded with the week, number and notified people in the business’s log.

Planned versus worked

After the week, Zeitflex shows for each day and person what was planned and what was actually clocked — including missed shifts. You will find this in the timesheet and in the reports.

What the shift plan cannot do (yet)

• No automatic staffing suggestion. You create the shifts yourself; copying works (see Copying a week).
• No availability as master data. “Zofia can never do Mondays” is not stored anywhere.
• No target staffing per position. Zeitflex does not tell you that two people are missing behind the bar on Saturdays.
• No applying for open shifts by staff.
• No publishing of individual shifts. It is always the whole week.
• No conflict check when copying a week. The copy process itself does not report anything; the conflicts then appear on the shifts in the grid.

If you are missing one of these points, write it under Feedback. The feedback goes to the operator; there is no public ideas list with voting in Zeitflex.

Frequently asked questions

I published the week and then forgot a shift. Do I have to publish everything again?

No. Create the shift — it is created as a draft — and click Publish plan again. Only what is still a draft is published; the already published shifts remain untouched, and only the newly affected person receives a message.

An employee says she did not receive a message.

Check three things: is the switch Shift plan & shift start on for her under Notifications? Was the time of publishing within her quiet hours — then the message was suppressed, not postponed. Is the app signed in on her phone? The shift itself is in her shift plan in any case; the message is only a pointer to it.

Can I publish a week for everyone but hold back one person?

Not directly. The whole week is published. The workaround: only create the shifts of the person being held back once they are fixed, and then publish a second time — only the new drafts go out.

Why the reminder 45 minutes beforehand, when the shift is in the plan anyway?

Because the plan is read when it is published — and then not again for two weeks. The reminder reaches the person on their way. Anyone who does not want it switches off Shift plan & shift start under Notifications; however, this also turns off the messages about publication, changes and shift swaps.

Still stuck?

Write to support. If you plan almost the same thing every week, save yourself the work: Copying a week. If someone cannot make it at short notice: Shift swap.