Questions about care staff scheduling
The questions providers ask before they trial it: setting it up, running a week, what staff can see, what it costs, what it does not do, and who you would be buying from.
Setting it up
How long does it take to set up?
An afternoon. Add your locations and positions, add your staff, then build the first week — or save it as a recurring pattern and let the following weeks fill themselves from it, including every-other-week rotations. You can paste a staff list in from a spreadsheet, but you don't need to import anything to try it.
Can we trial it with our real schedule?
That is the intended way to use the trial. Fourteen days, your real locations, your real staff, the whole product, and no card to start. The useful test is whether next week's schedule comes out right, and you cannot run that test on demo data.
How do staff get their logins?
You invite them. If you have someone's email address, the invite is emailed to them; if you don't, you get the link to hand over by text or in person. Either way the link is single-use and expires after a week, and you are always shown it — so a send that fails never leaves you with a staff member you cannot reach.
What happens at the end of the trial?
Everything becomes read-only and the schedule shows the next three days. Nothing is deleted, nobody is locked out, and the moment you activate it picks up exactly where it was. We don't think a group home should lose sight of tonight's roster over an invoice.
Running the schedule
Can it handle overnight shifts?
Yes. A shift that runs 10pm to 6am is one shift, not two, and it sits on the night it starts. Its hours then count in the payroll week they were worked, so an overnight crossing your week boundary puts part of its hours in each week and both weekly totals come out right.
Can it do every-other-weekend rotations?
Yes. A master schedule can run on a one-week or a two-week cycle, so an every-other-weekend rotation is a pattern you save once rather than something you rebuild every other week. There is a shortcut for exactly that arrangement, because it is the most common one in this sector.
Do we have to build every week by hand?
No. Save a week as a master schedule and future weeks can be generated from it. If you switch it on, the product also tops up the weeks ahead overnight, so there is always a draft waiting rather than an empty grid — you decide how far ahead, and it writes drafts rather than publishing anything on your behalf.
What happens when somebody calls off at 5:40am?
Recording the call-off reopens that shift as a hole that needs covering, and logs the event against that staff member with the date it happened and who entered it. The shift does not quietly stay assigned to someone who is not coming — which is the thing that turns one call-off into an uncovered house.
Does it stop us double-booking somebody?
Yes. Two overlapping shifts for the same person is refused outright, as is scheduling more hours than that person has agreed to work. Approved time off is never scheduled over automatically — a supervisor can override it by hand, and is asked to confirm with the dates named, because that is a conversation somebody needs to have rather than a rule to break quietly. Overtime is a warning rather than a refusal, because agencies run mandatory overtime and the schedule has to be able to show it.
Can it fill the open shifts for me?
Yes — one click on a half-built week. For each opening it ranks the roster on position held, whether they work that home, availability that day and those hours, hours already assigned this week (counted as it goes), how far past their own preferred hours it would push them, whether they're already on that day, whether they've asked for extra hours, and how loaded they are next to everyone else.
Then the same engine that governs a manual assignment decides whether each pick is actually allowed — so double-booking, approved time off and a hard hours cap are refused outright. It only ever fills; it never moves or unassigns anyone. Anything left open comes back with the reason nobody could take it.
There is no language model in that path. Who covers Saturday's overnight is arithmetic with auditable rules, and every refusal names its reason.
Can I type changes instead of clicking the grid?
Yes — you can write something like "move Maria to Tuesday at Westmoor" and it will show you the change before applying it. It only ever proposes; the change is applied by the same code, with the same checks, as a change you make by hand. It sends that sentence and the names needed to read it to an outside service, which the security page spells out.
What if we're audited?
You can print any week for any location or any individual, and every call-off and late arrival is recorded with the date it happened and who entered it. That is a staffing record rather than a compliance product, but it is a real one — it survives the week, which a whiteboard does not.
What staff see and do
Can staff see each other's shifts?
No. A staff member sees their own schedule and how many colleagues are on with them — never who. That's enforced on the server, not just hidden on the screen. Schedulers and administrators see everything, as you'd expect. There is more on why in what staff get.
Is there an app to install?
Not from an app store — it installs straight to a phone's home screen from the browser and then opens full screen like any other app. Three taps on iPhone, one on Android. Nothing to approve on a managed device.
Can staff pick up open shifts or swap between themselves?
Both, if you turn them on — they are off until you do. Staff can ask for open shifts they're qualified and available for, and can hand a shift to a colleague. You choose whether a supervisor approves each hand-over or a qualified colleague can simply take it, and offers close a set time before the shift starts so an unclaimed one is still the original person's responsibility.
Can staff request time off in the app?
Yes, if you switch it on — and it's off until you do. A supervisor can always record time off directly, and once it's in, the system refuses to schedule across it.
Turn on staff requests and your people can ask from their phones. Those arrive pending and a supervisor approves or denies them; staff can withdraw one while it's still pending. It stays off by default because plenty of agencies run leave through an HR system that is the record.
Will staff be logged out while they're looking at it?
No. Office logins — schedulers, administrators and owners — time out after 60 minutes of inactivity, because those sit on shared computers showing an entire agency's roster. A staff member's phone shows one person's own shifts and is not timed out.
Cost and billing
What does it cost?
$20 a month plus $1 per staff member per month. A 46-person agency pays $66. No tiers, no minimum and no annual contract. The worked examples at three agency sizes, and exactly which staff are counted, are on the pricing page.
Do we pay for administrators and schedulers?
Only if they are on the staff roster. The $1 is per enrolled staff member — an office administrator or a director who has a login but no staff record costs nothing, and logins are unlimited and free.
What is the founding agency offer?
Founding agencies get the Messages add-on free on their first 50 staff members, for as long as they stay subscribed. It is a limited number of places and the exact count is in the full terms. The $20 base rate and the $1 per enrolled staff member rate are unchanged, and reliability scoring is not included. Starting a trial holds a spot; it is confirmed when your first invoice is paid. Full terms are on the terms page.
What happens if we grow past 50 staff?
Messages is billed at the standard $1 per staff member for everyone above 50. At 70 staff you would pay $20 for Messages, not $70. It uses the same monthly count as the rest of your bill, so if you come back under 50 later, the charge stops on its own.
Is there a contract?
Month to month, cancel by not paying for next month, and no minimum headcount. There's no annual option today. If paying annually would suit how your agency budgets, say so and we'll talk about it.
What it doesn't do
Does it do payroll or a timeclock?
No. It schedules who should be where, and records when a supervisor marks someone late, called off, or absent. It does not clock people in and it does not pay anyone.
What it will do is hand you the file. Export scheduled hours for any date range as a spreadsheet — one row per person, or one row per shift — with overnights split at your pay period boundary, hours broken out by site, and each person’s id in your payroll system alongside, so finance can match it up without matching on names. These are scheduled hours, not clocked hours, and the file says so at the top.
Do you store anything about the people we support?
No. No residents, no patients, no diagnoses, support plans, care plans, service notes or medication records. There is nowhere in the product to enter that information. The full inventory of what is stored is on the security page.
Does it do EVV, billing or claims?
No, none of the three. Certification expiry is tracked: you can record a certification name and an expiry date against a person, and publishing a week names anyone whose certificate has lapsed before a shift in it, for you to confirm. It never refuses a shift. It is on to begin with and can be switched off. We do not verify a certificate, hold a copy of one, or know what your state requires — that part stays yours.
Do you have SOC 2, single sign-on or two-factor authentication?
Not yet — none of the three. Everything we do have is written out in full on the security page.
Can you text staff when a shift opens up?
Messages does this. A scheduler picks exactly who hears it — one home, one position, or whoever has said they want extra hours — and sees who that is, by name, before it sends.
It lands in each person's inbox in the app and buzzes any phone that has allowed notifications, and they can reply. The inbox is the record, so somebody who never turned notifications on still finds it waiting. It is an add-on at $1 per staff member per month.
Who you'd be buying from
Who is behind it?
A registered nurse who has worked this field from the floor to the top of it — direct care first, then all the way to Director of Nursing. So every problem it fixes is first-hand: the 5:40am call-off, the nurse who cannot go one minute over her contracted hours, the overnight that payroll counted on the wrong day.
That is also why the scope is narrow. Someone who has had to build a schedule at 6am knows what a scheduler needs and what it should stay out of. So it does one job: the schedule, and the handful of things a scheduler needs beside it.
What happens to our data if you disappear?
Ask and we'll send you an export. A nightly file already exists for each agency, so there is nothing to build when you ask for it. Everything in the product is your locations, your staff and your shifts, and it comes out in a form you can read.
Something not answered here? hello@delegynshift.com
Try it on this week.
Fourteen days, your real schedule, no card. Long enough to build a full week and print it for the wall.
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