Roster building & demand planning
How this is scored
How a plan gets built across locations, roles and qualifications — templates, staffing requirements, forecasting from sales or occupancy, and whether the product proposes a roster or only draws one.
0 — A shared calendar of shifts; no templates, no roles or qualifications, and no notion of how many people a shift needs.
3 — Shift templates and a weekly grid per location, with roles attached, but staffing needs and qualifications are the planner's memory rather than the system's.
5 — Templates, roles and qualifications, staffing requirements per shift, open shifts, multiple locations and departments, and coverage gaps shown before publication.
8 — Demand-based planning from a named data source (POS revenue, footfall, occupancy or bookings), automatic roster proposals the planner can accept or adjust, labour cost shown against budget while planning, and cross-location staff sharing.
10 — Planning closes the loop: forecast, proposed roster and actual hours compared in one place, the proposal explains which rule or demand figure drove each assignment, and the vendor documents the forecasting method rather than calling it AI.
The Shift Manager
Templates, recurrences and copy/paste, multi-department and multi-location schedules with per-location management rights, and self-serve open shifts gated by the requirements I set — filled by seniority or first-come — cover most of Thursday night, and the smart scheduler even proposes assignments accounting for availability, leaves and position while steering toward staff not yet in overtime. But we found no public information on staffing requirements per shift, coverage gaps flagged before publication, forecasting from sales or footfall, or labour cost against budget, so headcount still rests on my instincts rather than demand. 1 2 3