Shift Calendar: Work Rota

Shift is a calendar for people who work a rota. Nurses, factory and warehouse

shifts, emergency services, security, offshore - anybody whose weeks are not

all the same shape.

Tell it your pattern once and the date the cycle starts. Every date fills in

from there: last March, next March, the Saturday in eight weeks your sister is

getting married on.

WHY A ROTA NEEDS AN APP AT ALL

Four on four off is eight days long. A week is seven. So the pattern never

lands on the same weekday twice running, and "am I on next Saturday" is

arithmetic nobody wants to do in their head at eleven at night. On a calendar

it makes a diagonal stripe - which is what the app's icon is.

NOTHING IS GENERATED, SO NOTHING RUNS OUT

Which shift you are on is worked out from your pattern and its start date,

every time it is asked. That means:

• Any date works, forward or back. There is no year the app stops knowing.

• No generated days that can quietly disagree with the pattern they came from.

AND CHANGING YOUR ROTA DOES NOT REWRITE THE PAST

This is the part most rota apps get wrong. Move to nights in June and last

March should still say what you actually worked. Here, a rota carries the range

of dates it applied to: changing it from a date closes the old arrangement and

opens a new one, and every date before it is untouched. Your rota history is a

list you can read.

A SHIFT IS TWO POINTS IN TIME

Nights are 22:00 to 06:00. That is stored, and the length is worked out from

it - which sounds like a technicality and is the difference between an app that

is right and one that is confidently wrong twice a year:

• A shift that crosses midnight is eight hours, not minus sixteen.

• The night the clocks go FORWARD, 22:00 to 06:00 is SEVEN hours.

• The night they go BACK it is NINE.

Apps that store "eight hours" report eight on both of those nights. This one

says nine, and says why, on the day.

THE SWAPS

Real life happens. Swapped a shift, took a day off, covered for somebody, picked

up overtime: change that one date and your pattern is left alone. The day still

shows what the rota said, so a swap reads as a swap.

HOURS AND A PAY ESTIMATE

Every period shows the shifts, the hours in both forms - 11h 30m to read, 11.50

to check against a payslip - and, if you enter your rate, roughly what it is

worth. Night and weekend premiums are extra per hour rather than multipliers,

because an amount is something you can check.

It is an estimate, from figures you typed. It is not what your employer will

pay: it knows nothing about tax, pension, or whatever your contract calls

enhancements. The app says so on the screen rather than in the small print.

SEND SOMEBODY YOUR SHIFTS

Copy or share the month or the week as plain text, straight into a message.

This is what a rota is actually for half the time - somebody asking what you

are working next week.

COMMON ROTAS BUILT IN

Four on four off. Two days, two nights, four off. Three on three off. The

Panama (2-2-3). Continental. Permanent nights. Or build your own cycle of any

length, with your own shift names, times and colours.

ALSO

• Month and week views, today marked

• An optional reminder before a shift, off by default

• Light and dark, and Material You if you want it

• Week starting Monday, Sunday or Saturday

• Save a copy of everything to a file, which is how you move to a new phone

WHAT IT WILL NOT DO

It is not a timesheet. It does not clock you in and out, and it does not know

what you actually worked unless you tell it. If you are paid by the hour and

want to record every shift as it happens, that is a different job.

No account, no team code, no employer, no server. Nothing is shared with a

manager. Your rota is on your phone and nowhere else, and uninstalling the app

deletes it - save a copy first.

No location, ever. Three permissions, and they are for the ads that keep it

free, plus notifications if you switch the reminder on.