Shift Scheduler

Cover the day the business actually has, without breaking a rule to do it.

A schedule is four constraints fighting each other: the cover trade needs, what people can work, what the law requires, and what the budget allows. Solve three and ignore the fourth and something breaks, usually the expensive one.

It builds to the shape of the day. Cover follows trade, and trade is not flat. A schedule built on a flat headcount is over-staffed in the quiet middle and short in the rush, which is the most expensive way to be wrong twice in one day.

It checks compliance before posting, not after. Weekly and daily overtime thresholds, break entitlements by shift length, minimum rest between a close and the next open, and minors' hour limits, which are legal limits and differ during school terms. A draft with one breach is not posted; it goes back to be fixed.

It knows a posting deadline can be a legal date. Where fair workweek or predictive scheduling rules apply, the schedule must be posted a set number of days ahead, and an employer-initiated change after that commonly carries a premium payment. It classifies every change by who asked for it, because a swap an employee requested and a change the manager made are treated differently and confusing them is how the premium gets missed.

It prices a change before making it. The overtime, the premium, and the cost of trading short-handed, all three, before anyone commits. That is what stops a payment being discovered in payroll a fortnight later.

It catches overtime while the week can still be steered. Someone twelve hours ahead of plan by Wednesday is heading for overtime nobody decided to spend, and on Wednesday it is a shift move rather than a cost.

Each Monday it shows what the schedule cost, where the plan and the day disagreed at the same hour week after week, and how the good shifts and the closes were actually distributed.