Quick Start Guide

Getting from a brand-new account to a published schedule.

Set aside about 30 minutes for your first location. Setup is the hardest part — once it's done, generating a schedule takes one click.

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Before you start

Have these two things roughly in mind:

The jobs people do at your business — cashier, cook, server, whatever you call them.
How many people you need on each job, and when. For example: two cashiers from 7am to 1pm, two more from 1pm to 7pm.

Step 1 — Create your account and location

Go to app.shiftreadyhq.com and sign up. You're the owner of the account.
Add your first location — the store name and address.

If you have more than one store, add just the first for now. Get one working before you set up the rest.

Step 2 — Add your positions

Positions are the jobs people do. Add one for each role you schedule separately.

Keep it simple. If a cashier and a server are genuinely interchangeable at your place, that's one position, not two. If they need different training, make them two.

Working the floor yourself?

Very common in a smaller shop. Tick the Owner position, set coverage for the hours you want in the next step, and make yourself the only person assigned to it — you'll get exactly those shifts and nothing more. You can turn it on or off any time from your own profile on the Team page.

Step 3 — Set your coverage rules

This is where you tell ShiftReady what a properly-staffed day looks like. For each position you set:

The hours it needs covering — and you can set different hours for different days.
Minimum staff — the fewest people you can run with.
Ideal staff — what you'd like if everyone's available.

The scheduler aims for your ideal number and warns you when it can't even hit your minimum.

Take your time here. Coverage rules are the single biggest thing that determines whether your schedules come out right.

Step 4 — Add your staff

Two ways, and you can mix them:

Invite them by email — they set their own password and fill in their own availability. Less work for you, but you wait on them.
Add them yourself — faster to a working schedule. You'll need their first name, last name, and an email address.

If you want a schedule today, add them yourself.

Step 5 — The three things that make someone schedulable

This is the part that catches almost everyone. A person must clear all three before the scheduler will put them on a shift:

Approve them. On your Dashboard. Until you do, they won't even appear in your team list.
Give them a position. Assign the jobs they do.
Mark them qualified. Assigning a position is not the same as marking them qualified. Anyone assigned a job but not marked qualified is treated as in training — scheduled only alongside someone who can train them, and not counted toward your staffing numbers.

If someone isn't showing up on schedules, it is almost always one of these three.

Step 6 — Availability (read this bit carefully)

Availability works the opposite way to how most people expect.

Leave every day unticked and that person is treated as fully available — any day, any shift. Usually what you want when first setting up.
The moment you tick even one day, every day you didn't tick counts as "can't work."

So if someone works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, tick all three. Ticking just Monday tells the app they can't work the other six days.

The hours have to fully cover a shift. If a shift runs 7am–1pm and someone's availability says 8am–5pm, they can't take it — they'd be an hour late. When in doubt, set their hours wider, or leave the day unticked entirely. The app shows you how many of your shifts their hours actually cover as you edit them.

Step 7 — A fairness tip worth 30 seconds

If several people do the same job, give them matching minimum and maximum weekly hours. ShiftReady uses those numbers to work out who should get roughly equal shifts. When people in the same role have mismatched settings, one can quietly end up with far more shifts than another — and it looks like the app playing favourites when it's really just following the numbers you gave it.

Step 8 — Generate your schedule

Pick your week and hit generate. You'll get a draft.

Your staff cannot see a draft. Review it, change anything, then publish. Publishing is what makes it visible.
The scheduler spreads shifts fairly, avoids putting the same person on more than five days, and avoids doubling someone up on two shifts in one day.
When it has to break one of those rules to keep you staffed, it flags that shift and tells you why. Nothing happens silently.
If it can't meet your minimum staffing at all, you'll get a warning naming the day and position.

If the schedule looks thin, the usual cause is one of the three gates in Step 5, or availability from Step 6.

What comes next

Coverage by text (paid plans) — when someone can't make a shift they tap "Can't make it" and you get a text immediately. Reply COVER and everyone qualified and available gets texted the open shift. First to reply YES gets it, and the schedule updates itself.

Setup note: each employee replies YES once to a confirmation text before the system can text them. New hires won't get coverage texts until they have.

Clock in and out — two ways, either or both. Covered below.

Timesheets and payroll export (paid plans) — approved hours export as a CSV for your payroll provider.

Clocking in and out

You don't have to use this. If you already have something that works, keep it. The scheduler stands on its own, and so does call-out coverage.

If you do switch over later, run both systems side by side for a full pay period first. Compare the hours and make sure they line up before retiring the old one. Not because we expect a problem — it's just the sensible way to change anything that touches people's pay.

Option 1 — Scan a code on a dedicated screen

A tablet, spare phone or old laptop at your location shows a code that staff scan with their own phones.

Two things to know before you set it up:

That device needs to be dedicated to the job. It sits where staff can reach it, showing the code.
Setting it up logs you out on that device — deliberately. Once paired, it holds nothing but a key that displays clock-in codes. No account is signed in on it, so nobody can pick up that tablet and get into your business. You stay logged in everywhere else. Unpair it any time to get the device back.

The code refreshes every 30 seconds, so a photo taken earlier won't work. Staff also need to be signed into ShiftReady on their phone — the first scan of someone's first shift often lands on a sign-in prompt; once they sign in, scanning again goes straight through.

Option 2 — Clock in by location (GPS)

Staff tap a button and clock in without scanning, as long as they're physically at your location. Off until you turn it on.

Go to the location's settings on a phone, standing at the location. The app reads coordinates off the device you're holding — doing it from a desktop at home puts your business in the wrong place.
Choose Use my current location. The app checks the reading is accurate enough and warns you if not.
Set how far from that point counts as "at work." Default is 500 feet.
Switch GPS clock-in on.

Location is checked on our servers, not on the phone — so it can't be faked by telling a phone to report somewhere else.
Weak signal isn't punished. A fuzzy location is allowed for rather than turned away.
Too far away? Staff are told the distance and pointed at the scan option instead of hitting a dead end.
A phone can block location in two places — the browser and the phone's own settings. If someone says they allowed it and it still won't work, it's usually the phone's system setting.

Which should you use?

Staff clock in with their own phone either way. Neither works on a phone that's dead or left at home — see below.

Use both if you can. GPS is easier day to day; the scan screen covers the cases GPS won't — someone who won't allow location access, a weak signal, or someone genuinely out of range. If you only want one to start with, the scan screen is simpler to set up.

You can always enter time yourself

Whatever the clock says, you have the final word. In Timesheets you can add, edit or delete a punch at any point — before a shift, in the middle of one, or days later when someone flags a mistake.

A dead battery, a phone left at home, a cracked screen.
Someone forgot to clock in and is already working — add the punch with their real start time and leave the clock-out blank; they're on the clock from that moment.
Someone forgot to clock out — edit the punch and put the right finish time in.
A new hire who hasn't signed in yet — their hours still get recorded from day one.

Worth telling staff up front, so nobody works an unpaid shift thinking they're stuck: if your phone's out of action or you forget to clock in, just tell your manager and they'll put your hours in.

Plans

Free — one location, up to 10 people. No card, ever. Stay on it as long as you like.

Growth and Pro — more locations and staff, plus coverage-by-text and payroll export. Both start with a 30-day free trial. The trial does ask for a card when you start it, but nothing is charged for 30 days, and you can cancel before then at no cost.

Stuck?

The most common problems, in order:

Someone isn't being scheduled → check the three gates in Step 5. Approved? Position assigned? Marked qualified?
Someone's barely getting shifts → check their availability (Step 6). Ticked days limit them; the hours must cover the whole shift.
Schedules look unbalanced between people doing the same job → check their minimum and maximum hours match (Step 7).
Someone can't clock in by location → check GPS is switched on for that location, that the coordinates were captured at the site on a phone, and that they allowed location access in both the browser and their phone's settings.
Someone's phone is dead, at home, or they forgot to clock in → add or edit their punch yourself in Timesheets, any time, including mid-shift.

If none of those explain it, get in touch — we'd rather hear about it early.

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