---
title: "Schedule staff for the week"
description: "Build the weekly staff schedule by assigning people to rooms and time slots, and catch anyone booked into two rooms at once."
type: guide
updated: 2026-08-10
canonical_url: https://help.nestlicare.com/owners/staff/staff-scheduling
roles: ["super_admin", "center_admin"]
platforms: [web]
---
The **Schedule** (under **Staff & Time → Schedule**) is where you build the weekly staff schedule: who works which room, and when.

## Build the week

1. Go to **Staff & Time → Schedule**.
2. Pick the week with the date arrows, and the center with the center picker.
3. The grid shows **rooms as rows** and **times as columns**. A **Staff** panel on the right lists who's available.
4. **Drag** a staff member from the panel onto a room and time slot to schedule them, or click **Add Schedule** to add a shift manually.
5. Staff can see the schedule as you build it. When the week looks right, click **Notify staff** to push everyone a reminder that it is ready.

## Double-bookings are flagged, not blocked

If you schedule someone into two rooms whose times overlap, the shift is still created, but it is marked. The chip on the board carries a warning, and hovering it says the person cannot be in both places. You also get a warning at the moment you create it.

This matters because a genuine split shift and a double-booking draw identically on the board: one person in two rooms, one after the other, looks the same as one person in two rooms at the same time. Only the second one inflates their hours and credits them to two rooms in your ratios, which is a licensing problem.

The flag appears on existing shifts too, not just new ones, so a double-booking already sitting in next week's schedule surfaces the first time you look.

<Callout kind="info" title="Why we warn instead of refusing">
Sometimes an overlap is deliberate: a fifteen-minute handover, or one person covering two rooms through a quiet hour. You know your building. What you cannot do is spot it by eye, so we point at it and leave the decision to you.
</Callout>

## Leave shows up on the board

Anyone with approved leave shows as on leave on the roster for those days, so you can see the gap before you try to fill the shift. You can also log leave directly from the schedule while you are looking at the week it affects.

## Home room vs scheduled shifts

A staff member's **home room** (set on their profile) is the room they belong to by default and see children in. The Schedule is about **shifts**: which room they're covering at a given time. The two work together, so a teacher can have a home room and still be scheduled to cover another room for an afternoon.

## Troubleshooting

**Staff don't see their schedule.** Check they're active staff at the right center, and that they're looking at the right week. There is no draft state to release — a shift is visible to the person working it as soon as you add it. **Notify staff** sends a push telling them to look; it does not control what they can see.

**Someone isn't in the available panel.** Check that they're active staff at the selected center.

**Someone's week shows far more hours than they work.** Look for an overlap warning on their shifts. Two overlapping shifts on one day count twice.

**I can't schedule anyone into a center.** Check whether the center is archived. Archived centers accept no new shifts. See [Archive or delete a center](/owners/centers/archive-or-delete-a-center).