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Schedules and shifts

The schedule is where your staffing plan turns into reality. OrderUp's scheduler handles weekly builds, swaps, time off, and the labor-compliance alerts that keep you out of trouble.

Building a schedule​

Open Staff → Schedules and pick the week. You have three ways to fill it in.

  • Drag-and-drop. Click an empty cell in the grid and drag to create a shift. Drag the edges to resize. Drag the body to move.
  • Apply a template. Templates are full weeks of shifts you've saved as reusable patterns ("standard summer week," "Sunday brunch heavy"). Apply a template to a blank week and tweak from there.
  • Copy from prior week. Right-click any week and choose Copy from previous week. Useful when staffing barely changes.

Each shift carries a job title, start time, end time, and an optional section or station. If your bar has two bartender slots and the floor needs three servers at 6pm, the scheduler makes those distinct positions so an employee knows exactly where they're working.

Shift swaps and pickups​

Once published, employees see their schedule on the POS and (if you've enabled the staff portal) on the web. They can:

  • Request a swap. Pick a coworker and propose a trade. The other employee approves or denies; either way a manager reviews before the change goes live.
  • Drop a shift. Mark a shift as available for pickup. It shows up in the open-shift pool.
  • Pick up an open shift. Any eligible employee — same job title, no overtime conflict — can claim it; a manager confirms.

Configure who can do what under Settings → Scheduling. Some operators let leads approve swaps directly; others require a manager every time.

Time-off requests​

Employees submit requests from their POS profile or the staff portal. A request includes start date, end date, reason (vacation, sick, personal, jury duty), and an optional note. The scheduler shows pending and approved time-off as overlays on the schedule grid so you don't accidentally put someone on shift when they're out.

Approve or deny from Staff → Schedules → Time Off. Approved time-off blocks scheduling and feeds payroll if the employee is salaried or has accrued PTO.

Compliance and alerts​

The scheduler watches for the things that get restaurants in trouble:

  • Overtime risk. If the shifts you've drafted push someone over your weekly OT threshold (typically 40 hours), the cell turns yellow and a banner explains by how much.
  • Daily OT. California-style daily OT (over 8 hours) and double-time (over 12) flag separately so you can plan around them.
  • Missed-break risk. If a shift is long enough to require an unpaid break (per state rules) and you haven't carved one out, the scheduler warns you and offers to insert it.
  • Minor labor laws. Schedule a 16-year-old past 9pm on a school night and the cell goes red. Configure thresholds under Settings → Restaurant Settings → Operations → Compliance.
  • Predictive scheduling. In jurisdictions that require advance notice (Seattle, NYC, Oregon), the system flags last-minute changes that would trigger predictability pay.

Alerts are advisory by default. If you want to block publishing until they're resolved, turn on hard enforcement in scheduling settings.

Publishing the schedule​

A draft schedule is invisible to staff. When you click Publish, the system:

  1. Locks the schedule (further edits become changes that are tracked separately).
  2. Sends a notification to every affected employee — push to the POS, plus SMS or email if they've opted in.
  3. Logs the publish event for predictive-scheduling compliance.

Publishing is per-week. You can publish three weeks out, two weeks out, one week out — whatever your operation and local laws require. We recommend at least 14 days where it's not a legal requirement; in regulated cities, the law usually says 14 days.

If you click Publish and see a warning that no shifts were found for the week even though the grid shows shifts you expect to publish, don't dismiss it as a fluke — it means the restaurant's timezone doesn't match the week being shown, so the publish didn't actually reach any shifts. Check Settings → Restaurant Settings → Location → Timezone and try again.

After publishing​

  • Edits. Any change after publish is logged. Employees see a "schedule updated" notification with what changed.
  • Coverage gaps. If someone calls out, drag the shift onto another eligible employee, or click Open Shift to broadcast it to the pickup pool.
  • Labor reporting. The Labor Report (under Reports) compares scheduled vs. actual hours, so you can see where you over- or understaffed and tighten the next build.

For the day-of mechanics — clocking in, breaks, and fixing time entries — see Payroll.