Most shop rosters live in the owner's head, or in a WhatsApp message nobody can find by Wednesday. The roster in Tabs puts the week on one page: who is working, at which store, for which hours, doing what.
You'll find it in the menu under Work, as Roster.
How the roster works
Three ideas explain the whole page.
A shift is one person working at one store for one stretch of hours. It can carry a duty, a supervisor and a note.
A draft is a shift you've planned and nobody has been told about. Only people who manage the roster can see drafts. On the board a draft has a dashed outline and the word Draft.
Publishing is what makes a week real. When you publish, each person is told once about their shifts, and the shifts appear on their own pages.
So the rhythm is: draft the week, look it over, publish.
Adding a shift
Press Add shift, or press the empty cell for the person and the day you want. A panel opens at the side.
- Who and where. Pick the member and the store.
- The day.
- The hours. Press one of the usual shifts, or press Custom and set your own start and end, to the minute.
- Duty. What they're there to do.
- Supervisor and notes. Both optional. The note is for anything they should know before they start.
| Usual shift | Hours |
|---|---|
| Morning | 8am to 4pm |
| Day | 9am to 5pm |
| Evening | 12pm to 8pm |
| Night | 10pm to 6am |
A shift that ends at or before the time it starts runs into the next day, and the panel says so. A single shift can't be longer than 24 hours.
The duties are General, Sales, Fulfilment, Receiving stock and Stock control. A duty is a label. It helps you read the roster, decides which checklists the shift gets, and sends each new order's Fulfil order task to whoever is on Fulfilment duty at that store. It doesn't change what the person is allowed to do in Tabs. That's still their role.
The supervisor is a label too. It tells the person who to answer to that day and grants nothing.
Shifts that repeat
Under How it repeats, choose every day, every weekday, every week on that day, or the days of the week you pick. Then set Until, or leave it empty.
Tabs adds the shift to each day in the run as its own draft. Afterwards every one of them is a separate shift you can change, move or cancel without touching the others.
Two limits to know:
- One save adds at most 66 shifts. If the run you chose would be longer, Tabs asks you to pick an earlier last day.
- With no end date, Tabs adds 8 weeks of the pattern, counting from the first shift. After that, Copy last week carries it on, a week at a time.
Repeated shifts are drafts like any other, so each week still has to be published.
A worked example
Your Surulere shop opens at 8am, six days a week. Blessing does mornings from Monday to Saturday.
Press Monday's cell in Blessing's row. Store: Surulere. Hours: Morning. Duty: Sales. Repeat: on chosen days, with Monday to Saturday ticked. Until: the last Saturday of the month. Save, and Tabs adds a draft for every one of those mornings.
Next, the later shift. Add Tunde on Evening, 12pm to 8pm, with the same repeat. Now the overlap between noon and 4pm is deliberate: it's your busiest stretch and you want two people on the floor.
Now read the board. It shows each person's hours for the week and how many people are on each day. If Sunday shows nobody and you open on Sundays, you've found the gap before your customers do.
Publishing the week
Go to the week you want to publish and press Publish. It acts on the drafts showing: that week, at the store you've picked or at all of them. Tabs tells you how many drafts are about to go out.
When you confirm:
- every draft in the week becomes a published shift
- each person gets one notification covering their shifts
- each shift is handed the checklists set up for its store and duty
Publishing is all or nothing. If any draft overlaps another shift for the same person, nothing is published, and the board marks the shifts that clash. Fix those and publish again. This is the check that stops one person being rostered in Ikeja and Lekki at the same hour.
A published shift is a solid slip in that person's own colour. Each member keeps the same colour from week to week, so you can read the board by people at a glance.
Changing a week that's out
Edit a shift. Press it, change what you need and save. If it's published, the person is told it changed.
Move a shift. Drag it to another day, or to another person's row. A draft moves at once. A published shift asks you first, because someone is about to be told. Moving it to another person tells the first one theirs is cancelled and the second one they have a new shift.
Cancel a shift. Open it and cancel. The person is told. Removing a draft tells nobody, since nobody knew about it.
Copying last week
Most weeks look like the one before. Go to the week you're planning and press Copy last week. Every shift from the week before it is copied to the same day and time, as a draft.
Shifts that already exist in this week are left out, and so are shifts for people who are no longer active. Adjust what's different, then publish.
Reading the roster
- Use the arrows to move a week back or forward, and This week to come back.
- With more than one store, pick one store or all of them.
- Today's date is marked.
- Press any shift to see its details: hours, store, duty, supervisor and note.
- On a phone, the roster shows one day at a time.
What your staff see
A member who can't view the whole roster still has the Roster page. It's titled My shifts and lists their own published shifts from today on: the day, the hours, the store, the duty and the supervisor.
They're told in the bell when they get new shifts, when a shift changes and when one is cancelled. Their next shift also sits at the top of their My day.
Stores in different time zones
A shift's hours are the store's hours. 9am at your Lagos store is 9am in Lagos, wherever you happen to be when you write the roster. The panel says which clock it's using.
Who can do what
| You are | You can |
|---|---|
| Any member | See your own published shifts |
| A role that can view the roster | See everyone's published shifts |
| A role that can manage the roster | See drafts, add, edit, move and cancel shifts, copy a week, publish, and manage checklists |
A new role doesn't get either permission until you tick it. The owner has both.
What the roster doesn't do yet
The roster plans who should be working. It doesn't record who actually turned up. There's no clocking in, no time off requests and no approval step for swapping shifts.
If something goes wrong
"Nothing was published." At least one draft overlaps another shift for the same person. The clashing shifts are marked on the board.
A person is missing from the picker. Only active members can be given a shift. Someone who is suspended, or who hasn't accepted their invitation yet, can't.
Your staff member says they weren't told. They may have turned those notifications off. See notifications.