Open shifts are shifts that haven't been assigned to a specific employee. They're useful when you need coverage but haven't decided who should work yet, or when you want to let employees volunteer to pick up extra hours. Managers can assign open shifts directly, or employees can request them through the app.

Getting There

Go to Schedule in the left navigation and open the schedule you want to work on.

Creating an Open Shift

Creating an open shift is identical to creating a regular shift — the only difference is you don't assign an employee. There are two ways to do it:

Leave the Employee field blank when adding a shift — any shift saved without an employee assigned becomes an open shift automatically.
Select "Open Shift" from the Employee dropdown — the employee picker includes an Open Shift option you can choose explicitly.

Set the date, time, role, and any notes or attached forms as normal, then save.

💡 Open shifts created from your Staffing Needs (by toggling on "Add required shifts" when building a schedule) work exactly the same way — they're added as open shifts ready to be filled.

How Open Shifts Appear on the Schedule

Open shifts appear at the top of the schedule, visually distinct from assigned shifts so they're easy to spot. In the Shift view (sorted by shift type), each open slot appears at the top of its role group — so you can see at a glance which roles still have gaps to fill.

The alerts bar at the top of the Employee view also shows a live count of Open Shifts across your schedule.

Assigning Open Shifts

Managers can assign open shifts directly from the schedule builder:

Drag and drop — drag the open shift onto an employee's row to assign it to them instantly.
Edit the shift — click or tap the open shift, select an employee from the Employee field, and save.

How Employees Pick Up Open Shifts

On mobile, employees can browse and request open shifts from the Open Shifts tab in the Schedule section. This tab shows all available open shifts on the published schedule. Employees tap a shift to request it.

When an employee requests an open shift, it appears in the manager's Requests → To Work section — both on the web and in the mobile app. The request shows the employee's name, the shift details, how many hours they're already scheduled that week, and the shift hours. Managers review the request and click Approve or Deny.

✅ Approving a request assigns the shift to that employee — it's removed from the open shifts list and appears on their schedule. Other employees who requested the same shift are automatically declined.

Managing Open Shifts on Mobile (Manager)

In the Schedule tab, tap Open Shifts at the top to see all unassigned shifts. From here you can tap any open shift to assign it to an employee directly, or remove it from the schedule entirely.

Publishing a Schedule With Open Shifts

When you publish a schedule, any open shifts are published along with the assigned shifts by default — employees can see them and request to pick them up. If you'd prefer to remove all unassigned shifts before publishing, check the Remove unscheduled shifts option in the publish confirmation panel before clicking Publish Now.

📋 Leaving open shifts published is a good way to let employees self-select for extra hours. Use Remove unscheduled shifts if you only want finalized, assigned shifts to be visible to your team.

Creating and Publishing Open Shifts