Staff hours: plan the week, publish it, and see what it costs

Who is staff hours for?

Shops, cafés, restaurants, takeaways and service businesses where people work different hours on different days. If you plan the week on a whiteboard or in a group chat, and spend Sunday evening answering "am I in tomorrow?", this is for you.

It is not offered to wholesale businesses.

What does it do?

• Gives managers a week view: staff down the side, days across the top, hours in each cell.
• Publishes the week, so each person is told their hours by message and sees them on their phone.
• Offers open time slots that the first person to claim them gets.
• Handles swaps and time off, with the manager approving.
• Matches planned hours to clock-ins, approves timesheets, and shows labour as a share of sales.

How do I switch it on?

Staff hours comes with Payroll, which is off by default and is an add-on your EasyTaskr contact switches on. Your staff are the same people as your payroll employees, so there is one list to keep.

Once it is on, owners and managers see Staff hours in the menu. Staff see My hours instead. Someone without planning rights who opens Staff hours is pointed to My hours.

What does the week view show?

Staff hours opens on this week. The line under the title says how many hours are planned and how many are not published yet. Move with Last week and Next week.

Tap an empty cell to add hours, or tap existing hours to change them. The drawer asks Who (or an Open time slot (anyone can take it)), the Day, Starts and Ends, an Unpaid break, an optional Role, Where (which site) and a Note. Hours can run past midnight.

On a phone, the week shows one day at a time.

Step by step: plan and publish a week

1. Open Staff hours and move to next week with Next week.
2. From the menu, choose Copy last week to start from last week's pattern. The copies arrive as drafts.
3. Change the cells that are different this week: holidays, a busy Saturday, a new starter.
4. Add an open time slot for any hours nobody is down for yet.
5. Look at Labour this week: planned hours as a percentage of sales.
6. If the share is too high for a quiet week, trim hours before you publish.
7. Press Publish. You see how many people were told by message and how many in the app only, because they have no phone number.
8. During the week, open Requests to decide from the menu to approve swaps and time off.
9. At the end of the week, open Timesheets and press Approve for the clock-ins.
10. Choose Download CSV if your payroll is done elsewhere.

What do staff see on their phone?

My hours is built for a phone. It shows how many hours the person has in the next 7 days and, in order:

• Can you take these?: swaps a colleague has asked them to cover, with Yes, I can and No.
• Coming up: their published hours. Ask for a swap lets them ask a named colleague.
• Open time slots: "First to take one gets it." with Take it.
• Time off: Ask for time off with dates and a reason.

Until the manager publishes, Coming up says their hours will show there and that they will get a message.

How do planned and actual hours compare?

Each published block of hours is matched to the clock-in that overlaps it. A clock-in more than 5 minutes after the start counts as late; no clock-in by the end counts as missed. Clock-ins that were never planned are flagged too.

Timesheets lists every clock-in for the week with a pill: Approved, Clocked in or To approve. Open one to change the Hours to approve before approving, for example when someone forgot to clock out. Approve with the count approves all the remaining ones at once.

How does the labour share work?

Labour this week costs the planned hours and the worked hours from each person's pay rate. An hourly rate is used as it is; a day rate is divided by the standard day; a monthly salary is divided by the hours in a month. Sales come from the till and orders.

A worked example: a café plans 210 hours this week. At an average cost of 12 an hour that is 2,520. Sales last week were 9,000, so planned labour is 28% of sales. If you aim for 25%, you need to plan about 22 fewer hours, or expect more sales.

What mistakes should I avoid?

Publishing late is the big one. Staff plan their lives around the week, and a plan published on Sunday night causes swaps and no-shows. Copy last week early in the week, make the changes, and publish by mid-week where you can.

The second is leaving phone numbers out. People without a phone number on file only see their hours in the app, and the publish message tells you how many those are. Add the numbers on their employee record and they are told by WhatsApp or text from then on.

The third is approving timesheets without looking. A forgotten clock-out can turn an eight-hour day into twenty. Open anything that looks long and change the Hours to approve before you approve the rest in one go.

What does it not do yet?

• Staff hours cannot be switched on without the Payroll add-on.
• It does not check working-time rules or minimum rest between days for you.
• Wholesale businesses do not get it.
• Hours can be exported as a CSV, but not sent straight to an outside payroll provider.

Related features

Approved hours feed overtime and no-pay in monthly payroll where that is used. Sales for the labour share come from the POS till and orders, and your end of day close. Our guide to running a restaurant covers planning staff around busy times.