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HELP CENTRE

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Find practical answers for setting up your team, creating staff rotas, managing availability and leave, sharing schedules, using reports and solving common account problems.

POPULAR GUIDES

Start with the tasks people use most.

These guides cover the most common setup and weekly scheduling workflows.

Create your first rota

A simple path from an empty workspace to a published staff rota.

Add an employee

Create an employee record without requiring the person to have an account first.

Draft and publish a rota

Control when employees can see the schedule you are building.

Submit availability

Tell managers when an employee is available, unavailable or has a work preference.

Request leave

Submit annual leave, sickness, unpaid leave or another leave type for manager review.

How shift swaps work

Offer a shift to eligible colleagues and complete the swap with the organisation's approval rules.

Create a secure rota share link

Share a published rota without exposing employee contact information.

What is included in the Free plan?

Use the core rota workflow free for a small team.

ALL HELP TOPICS

Guides for every part of Rota Generator.

Browse by topic or use search when you know what you need to do.

Getting started

Set up your account, organisation and first rota.

What is Rota Generator? A practical overview of the staff rota planner and who it is designed for.

How to create an account Sign up with email, verify your address and reach the organisation setup flow.

Set up your organisation Create the workspace that owns your employees, locations, teams and rotas.

Create your first rota A simple path from an empty workspace to a published staff rota.

Switch between organisations Use one login for more than one organisation without mixing their data.

Time zones and overnight shifts Understand how rota times are handled when shifts cross midnight.

Employees, teams and locations

Build the people and workspace structure your rota uses.

Upload or change your organisation logo Add your organisation logo once and use it as the main workspace identity, as well as on shared rotas and printable rota views.

Add an employee Create an employee record without requiring the person to have an account first.

Invite an employee to Rota Generator Send a secure invitation so an employee can access their own rota and participation tools.

Import employees from CSV Add multiple employees at once with a preview and validation step.

How teams and locations work Organise employees by the groups and places managers actually schedule.

Contracted, minimum and maximum hours Store scheduling limits that help managers compare planned hours with expectations.

Archive or restore an employee Remove someone from active scheduling without losing useful historical records.

Rota builder

Create, copy, repeat, edit and publish shifts.

Create, edit or delete a shift Use the rota grid to manage individual scheduled shifts.

Create and use shift templates Save common shift patterns so managers can schedule repetitive work faster.

Create recurring shifts Repeat a pattern daily, weekly or on a custom cycle without rebuilding each shift manually.

Copy, paste and duplicate rota patterns Reuse existing schedule work instead of rebuilding a normal week from scratch.

Move shifts with drag and drop Reassign a shift to another employee or day directly from the rota grid.

Bulk edit several shifts Select multiple shifts and make one controlled change across the selection.

Undo rota changes and review recent actions Recover from common accidental scheduling changes.

Draft and publish a rota Control when employees can see the schedule you are building.

Understand rota conflict warnings See potential scheduling problems before or while assigning a shift.

Availability and leave

Collect staff preferences, unavailability and leave requests.

Submit availability Tell managers when an employee is available, unavailable or has a work preference.

Set recurring availability Record a repeating weekly availability pattern instead of entering the same information every week.

Request leave Submit annual leave, sickness, unpaid leave or another leave type for manager review.

Approve or decline leave Review employee leave requests and make the decision visible to the employee.

Assign a shift despite an availability warning Understand when a manager can continue after a scheduling warning.

Swaps, open shifts and cover

Let employees help keep the rota covered.

How shift swaps work Offer a shift to eligible colleagues and complete the swap with the organisation's approval rules.

Create and claim open shifts Publish unassigned work so suitable employees can volunteer for it.

Find cover for a shift Rank possible replacement employees using the scheduling information available in Rota Generator.

Respond to a cover invitation Accept or decline a manager's request to cover a specific shift.

Use My Team See permitted colleague information for the people you are working with.

Notifications and communication

Keep managers and employees informed without unnecessary noise.

Use the notification centre Review important rota, leave, swap, cover and announcement updates in one place.

Change notification preferences Control which supported notification categories also send email.

Create and read announcements Send team or location updates that sit alongside rota communication.

Reports, audit and access

Understand staffing patterns and control who can do what.

Use reports and filters Review hours, shifts and staffing patterns across a chosen date range.

Use estimated labour costs Add optional hourly rates to estimate scheduled labour cost.

Review rota fairness Compare patterns such as weekend and night allocations without automatically changing the rota.

Use the audit log See who made important organisation and rota changes and when they happened.

Roles and access control Understand Owner, Admin, Manager, Team Leader, Employee and Viewer access.

Plans and billing

Understand the Free plan, limits and paid plan behaviour.

What is included in the Free plan? Use the core rota workflow free for a small team.

How employee plan limits work Understand which employees count toward a plan capacity.

Paid plans and flat pricing Understand how paid plans increase capacity without charging per person.

Change or cancel a paid plan Upgrade, schedule a smaller plan, manage payment details or cancel without losing rota data.

What happens if a subscription payment fails? Understand payment retries, billing warnings and how to update a payment method.

Security and privacy

Learn how Rota Generator protects organisation and employee data.

How organisation data is separated Understand the multi-tenant security model behind Rota Generator.

Password and session security Learn how account passwords and authenticated sessions are handled.

Privacy on public rota share links Control what people can see when a rota is shared without login.

Employee data and privacy responsibilities Use Rota Generator with data minimisation and appropriate organisational privacy practices.

Troubleshooting

Fix common account, email, rota and browser problems.

I cannot log in Check the most common causes of an email and password login problem.

The verification email has not arrived Check delivery and resend the verification message safely.

An employee invitation link is not working Resolve an expired or already-used employee invitation.

An employee cannot see a shift Check publication, account linking and organisation context.

I cannot add another employee Check whether the organisation has reached its active employee plan limit.

My calendar is not updating Understand the difference between a one-time ICS file and a subscription feed.

A page looks old, unstyled or broken Clear stale browser assets before assuming rota data is damaged.

STILL NEED HELP?

Tell us what you were trying to do.

Include the page you were on, what you clicked and any error message you saw. That makes troubleshooting much faster.

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