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Time to get scheduling!
If you haven't watched any of the videos so far, I recommend watching the Rostering video, as this is one of the more feature-rich areas of the platform. Alternatively, please follow the steps below to cover the basics of rostering.
This article is a high-level overview of the roster to familiarise yourself with what is possible in RosterElf. If you would like more help on a particular topic, you can search the knowledge base for the most suitable article or contact our team.
You can go to the Roster tab to follow along in your RosterElf account.
Topics
Showing and Hiding the Financial Summary
Adding, Copying, Moving or Editing a Shift
TIP: After you've done a few rosters, you may find a combination of Roster Views, Periods, and Filters can be used to achieve a significant level of roster management. Please remember to bookmark this page to come back here time and time again. Also, you can contact our support team to talk about your goals.
Roster Views
There are three main views in RosterElf to roster staff. Your preference may vary based on your role and the type of business you are in, or you may switch between different views throughout your day to get different perspectives on your staff coverage and costs.
At the top of your roster, you have a dropdown that will either say, By Staff, By Position, or By Site. You can switch between views at any time.
By Staff View
This is a popular view for users who know their staff well and know which positions they can work and sites they work at. It's also helpful to easily track the total hours each staff is being rostered for to ensure fairness and avoid expensive overtime costs.
It is often used by small to medium businesses but can also be used in conjunction with other views for larger businesses.
By Position View
It is ideal for hospitals, restaurants, call centres or any other business that needs to know they have the proper staffing levels in each position.
It is often used by medium to large businesses but can also be used in conjunction with other views for smaller businesses.
By Site View
For businesses that use sites as departments within their single location business - this is an ideal view to keep track of departmental labour costs and to ensure you have suitable staff in varied positions for the shift. One example could be a large entertainment venue with multiple kitchens, bars, and guest seating locations to ensure each area has sufficient coverage. Especially on a busy shift if moving staff from one area to another is needed on the day.
For businesses with multiple physical locations - similarly to the above, it allows you to get a good visual of your staff coverage in each location. If your staff cannot work across multiple sites due to logistical distance or other reasons, it helps you focus on each location whilst still seeing the entire company roster.
It is often used by medium to large businesses.
Roster Periods
Rosters can be viewed in Daily, Weekly and Monthly periods using the toggles at the top of your roster, as shown in the image above. You can switch between the periods at any stage. You can also change the roster period to suit your rostering cycle better. For instance, you may run a weekly roster starting on Wednesday and finishing on Tuesday, or you may run a monthly roster, but the roster cycle is from the 15th to the 14th of the following month.
TIP: You can quickly switch to the daily view for a specific day by clicking on the date at the top of the roster in the Weekly or Monthly view.
Using the date picker, you can quickly jump to different periods. The day you select will become the first day of the week in your view.
If you get lost, click the little calendar icon to the right of the date picker to get back to the current period (i.e. Today, this week or this month based on your daily, weekly or monthly view.)
Roster Filters
Roster filters can be combined with different view types and periods to help you see exactly what you need.
TIP: Filters help streamline your roster by focusing on specific details. However, they may lead to confusion if you forget to remove filters and schedule shifts that don't match your filter settings, causing those shifts to vanish from your current view. If you can't locate a shift on your roster screen, try using the filter reset tool.
Filtering Sites - The site selector allows you to roster all sites, a selection of sites or a single site in the current view. NOTE: If your business only has one site or your Assistant/Manager permissions cover only one site, this filter doesn't serve a purpose and will be hidden.
Filtering Staff - To quickly view a specific staff member's roster, you can select them in the staff selector.
Shift Types - You can filter your roster to see published or draft shifts separately or see both by selecting All Shifts.
Roster Warnings - Roster warnings update each time you make a change on the roster within your current roster view. Hover over the warnings and select which warning you want to filter by to fix any issues you wish to resolve.
Filter Resetting - You can clear each filter type separately or simultaneously by clicking on the filter reset tool.
Clear All - will revert all of the filters as described below.
Clear All Sites - will revert to all sites you can access.
Clear Staff - will revert to all staff.
Clear Shift Type - will revert to all draft and published shifts.
Clear All Warnings - will revert to all shifts, including those without warnings.
Showing and Hiding the Financial Summary
Labour costs are significant to any business and should be managed well. However, looking after good staff is equally essential to a business to avoid staff turnover. RosterElf allows business owners to set revenue forecasts and keep track of their labour costs and percentages.
The Financial Summary is simple to use but also very intuitive and can show you everything from a high-level organisation view to particular groups or individuals. However, not all users need the financial summary.
To hide the Financial Summary and get more screen real estate - click the left-facing arrow towards the top of the summary.
To show and pin the Financial Summary - click the right-facing arrow towards the top left of the roster.
If you only need to glance at the Financial Summary - you can hover your mouse over the left side of the roster, where you see the summary block tucked away.
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Whilst hidden, click the right-facing arrow to pin or hover over the white block on the left to glance at the summary. |
Whilst showing, click the left-facing arrow to hide the summary. |
Adding, Copying, Moving or Editing a Shift
Building and maintaining your roster is easy, with several intuitive features designed to save time and reduce repetitive behaviour.
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Weekly and Monthly View |
Daily View |
To add a shift, simply click on the plus button. On the daily view, this is to the left of the roster and on weekly and monthly views, you click directly on the cells within the roster. From there, you'll be able to complete the details for the shift, like the site, position, shift time and the staff you wish to roster. If you still need to decide who to roster, you can use the staff list, which uses our perfect match system to help you select the best staff.
The perfect match system checks which staff can work the site and position. It then checks if they are on leave, unavailable or already rostered onto a shift that conflicts with this shift. Once you set your payroll, the list will also show the shift's average pay rate for each staff so you can keep to a budget, if required.
If you still can't decide, you can mark the shift as an open shift, which will offer the shift to all qualified staff assigned to the site and position.
There are various other features like repeating shifts, custom break times and shift notes, which will be covered in other articles.
Copying shifts can be done in many ways. You can copy a single shift, a day, or a roster period. You can also save and upload roster templates.
To copy a single shift, you hover over the shift, select the copy button and paste it to another location on the roster.
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Copy a shift |
Paste a shift |
To copy a day, you need to be on the weekly or monthly view. Then, you click on the date header on the top of the roster and click on another day to paste it.
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Copy a day |
Paste a day |
The remaining copy features will be covered in other articles.
Moving shifts, also known as drag and drop, is as simple as hovering over the shift, and on the weekly or monthly view, click and hold the handlebar, then move it to a new location and release to drop the shift in place. For the daily view, you click and hold on to the coloured bar and release it when you want to drop the shift in place.
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Daily and Monthly View - Handlebars are the 10 small dots at the top centre of the shift and are used for drag and drop |
A shift mid-drag, ready to be dropped onto the following day |
Drag and drop is so versatile and simple. Depending on your current roster view, it can move shifts to different staff, days, positions, sites or timeslots and best of all, it always makes sense based on your roster.
Editing shifts is similar to moving shifts. You can achieve many of the same results, but it is best used when you have to change more than one part of the shift simultaneously. For example, when changing the staff member and position in one go. It's also used for things that can't be dragged and dropped, like editing the break time, changing the shift length, or adding a shift note. To edit, hover over the shift and click edit.
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Weekly or Monthly View - Edit Shift |
Daily View - Edit Shift |
Another form of editing is exclusive to the daily view. On the daily view, you will see left and right sliders that can easily adjust the shift length. The sliders default to 15-minute increments but can be changed in the Roster Settings.
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