Advanced Rostering (Templates, Bidding & Swapping)

Overview

Beyond basic shift creation, Tempus offers powerful tools to help you build rosters faster and manage shift-filling collaboratively with your team.

Using Roster Templates

If your roster is similar each week or fortnight, you can save it as a template.

To Create a Template:

• Build your ideal "draft" roster.

• Go to Roster actions > Roster templates.

• Click Add.

  

• Give your template a name (e.g., "Standard Week"). The system will save the current draft roster as that template.

To Apply a Template:

• Navigate to a future, empty week on the roster.

• Go to Roster actions > Roster templates.

• Find the template you want to use and click the checkbox next to it.

• Click Apply.

• Select the date you want to apply it from and click Apply again. The template shifts will be added to the roster in "Draft" mode, ready for you to review and publish.

Filling Shifts with Shift Bidding

Shift Bidding lets you offer an "unassigned" shift to a pre-defined group of employees. The first to accept it gets the shift.

Step 1: Create a Bidding Group (One-time setup)

• Go to Roster actions > Bidding groups.

• Click Add.

• Give the group a name (e.g., "Casual Bar Staff") and add all eligible employees to it.

• Click Save.

Step 2: Create a Bidding Shift

• Click an empty cell on the roster (e.g., on the "Unassigned shift" row).

• In the shift panel, enter the time, location, etc.

• Tick the Shift Bidding checkbox.

• In the "Bidding Employees" field, select the Bidding Group you created (e.g., "Casual Bar Staff").

• Click Save.

All employees in that group will be notified and can "bid" (accept) the shift. Once one person accepts it, it is assigned to them and removed as an option for the others.

Managing Shift Swapping

This feature (if enabled in settings) allows an employee to offer their assigned shift to another eligible colleague.

The Workflow:

• My Employee One receives a shift (e.g. Wednesday 17th December) they cannot work. They open the shift in their web login and select "Swap."

• Then choose an eligible employee (My Employee Two) from a list and send the swap request.

• My Employee Two receives a notification and "Accepts" the swap for (Wednesday 17th December).

• Manager (You) receives a notification to approve the swap.

To Approve or Reject a Swap:

• Go to Roster actions > Shift swaps.

• You will see a list of pending swaps. You can see the cost difference (if any).

• Click Approve or Reject.

• Only after you approve it, the shift (Wednesday 17th December) is reassigned from My Employee One to My Employee Two.

All Other Roster Actions

The Roster actions menu contains all the advanced features. The main ones not covered above are:

• Employees: View the list of all employees and access their Availability/Details panel.

• Print: Opens the print-friendly roster options.

• Export: Exports the current roster view to a .csv file.