Scheduling is front-loaded. The real work is at the start — getting your staff in and naming the shifts you use. After that most weeks are a copy-forward, and the job becomes keeping up with what changes. This page is the order to take it in.

Watch this first

Share it with your staff too. It explains the whole shape, not just your part.

Who should own this

Building the rota does not have to be the director's job, and past a dozen or so staff it usually should not be. An office manager or admin lives in these screens far more naturally, and you can give them the access to do it without handing over everything else.

What matters is that one named person owns publishing. One person pressing publish beats three people assuming.

Print these for your team

Bloomily - Building the schedule.pdf

Bloomily - Scheduling - Your schedule.pdf

The pack page on the status pill is the one that earns its printing. Pin it up next to whichever screen the rota gets built on.

Set up once

This is the part worth slowing down for. Get it right and most weeks after it are a copy-forward rather than a rebuild.

1. Get your people in

Being on your team is not the same as being on a week. Someone added but never given shifts appears on no Day Board at all — which reads like a broken screen rather than a missing shift.

→ Getting Started with the Team Section

→ Staff: roles, invites, scheduling, and certifications

2. Name the shifts you use

Shifts are the named time blocks a day is set from. Open Team > Schedule, click the ··· button at the top right, then Shifts.

Name the ones you actually use and setting a day becomes one click instead of typing times. Add a shift takes a name, a start, an end, a colour, and whether it is your default.

3. Put people in their rooms

Each person's profile holds the rooms they work in, and one of those is their main room. The schedule uses it: put someone on a week and Bloomily drops them into their main room automatically. Somebody assigned to several rooms with no main room set sits in a separate row at the bottom of the grid until you pick one.

Tick every room a person might realistically work in. You can only move someone into a room already ticked here, and the schedule gives you no hint that this is why a room is missing from the list.

→ Change a Team Member's Role or Room Access

4. Set leave allowances

Allowances are what time-off requests count against. Set them before the first request arrives rather than after.

→ Set Yearly Leave Allowances

Every week

5. Build the week

A week starts empty unless you fill it. From the week menu, Copy last week writes last week's days onto this one, and Repeat this week ahead carries it forward for as long as it holds. Neither reaches staff on its own.

Use Put someone on the week to add anyone not on it yet, then click a cell to set their day. To set one person's whole week in a single action, use Set their whole week from their actions menu.

→ Schedule Overview

6. Publish it

Publish schedule in the week menu shows you a preview of exactly who will be told before you commit. Read it, then press Publish & notify.

The one to get right: publishing freezes what staff see. Every edit you make afterwards stays on your screen only. The status beside the week changes to Unpublished updates and a Publish updates button appears — but it may not do so until you reload the page, so do not rely on it to prompt you. Nothing looks broken. Staff are simply still reading the version you handed them. Publish again after every change, every time.

→ Publish the Staff Schedule

What the status beside the week means

It is a small pill and it is the only thing that tells you. Make reading it a habit before you close the week.

When someone calls in

Four routes, and they all end the same way.

• Move someone to another room for the week — on the Schedule, from that person's actions menu. Use this when the cover holds for the whole week.

• Move someone for a day, or part of one — on the Day Board, by clicking their work block and setting From and To. An hour for a lunch break, or their whole shift for a day's cover.

• Post an open shift — from the week menu. Any eligible staff member can claim it from their app.

• Approve a swap — swaps start with the staff member, not with you. Your part is approving it.

Two things about room moves that nothing on screen tells you. They have to be assigned to that room first, so if the room is missing from the list that is why. And set their week before you try to move them — the option only appears once they have days on that week, so a blank row looks as though the feature is missing. Afterwards, the room stays ticked on their profile until you untick it; nothing clears it when the cover ends.

Whichever route you take, publish again. Some Day Board cover actions notify staff immediately, so read each form before confirming.

→ Assign Staff to Different Rooms

→ Understand Staff Blocks and Coverage Markings

→ Mark the Organization Closed

Every morning

7. Read the Day Board

Click a date heading on the week to open that day's room plan. Blocks show who is planned where; the strip underneath reads children · planned staff / required staff.

Check each interval, not the room summary. A red room summary can combine periods staffed differently — a room that reads as uncovered may have someone in it for part of the window.

→ Day Board Overview

→ Understand Room Coverage and Ratios

→ Print the Daily Staffing Record

At the end of the pay period

The schedule is a plan. Team → Attendance is what people actually did, and that is what payroll uses.

→ Choosing Between Scheduled Hours and Actual Attendance

Four things worth knowing now

• A scheduled shift is not proof anyone worked. Schedule, attendance and timesheets are three separate records, and they are not supposed to match.

• An empty room on the Day Board usually means missing shifts, not missing staff.

• Marking a holiday and closing a day are different tools. Marking a holiday clears the shifts for that day; it does not count toward anyone's leave.

• The Schedule and the Day Board do different jobs. The Schedule is the week — who works, which room, for how long. The Day Board is one day in detail, hour by hour, and it is where a single day's cover gets arranged. A change made on one is not the same size as a change made on the other.

A month in

Open next week's schedule on a Friday and look at the status.

If weeks are going out unpublished, nothing else here has landed — and rereading this page will not fix it. Sit with whoever builds the rota and publish one together.

If you get stuck

Every screen has a ? guide button that explains the page you're on. For anything else, email support@bloomily.app.