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
Schedule templates I can save from filtered views and reapply across up to ten weeks, plus a Smart Planner that proposes schedules from named constraints (daily amplitude, weekly rest days, overtime defaults set from the collective agreement) and priority rules down to lowest hourly rate for equal skills. The staffing forecasts sit in the top tier with no named data source behind them, and we found no public information on labour cost shown against budget while planning or on sharing staff across locations. 2 5 6