[New] Introducing Square Shifts

[Ryan_M]

Square is now offering a stand-alone labor management subscription called Square Shifts, which allows you to easily manage your team with POS-integrated time tracking, tip-management solutions, scheduling, and payroll prep. Shifts features were previously available only through Square Team Management. Breaking out Shifts features provides more optionality, so you can subscribe only to the products you need. Square Shifts offers two subscriptions, depending on your team size. Shifts Free, available for teams of five employees or less, offers basic scheduling, time tracking, and payroll prep, while Shifts Plus offers advanced features such as tip pooling, cash tip tracking, team member-initiated shift swapping, and more. Shifts Plus features are included in the Team Plus, Square for Restaurants Plus, Square for Retail Plus, and Square Appointments Premium subscriptions. 

Note: If you are already actively using the free labor-management features through Square Team Management, you will need to select a new Shifts plan. You have until January 31, 2023, to do so. Until then, you will continue to have access to these features in the current Square Team Management product. Learn more about the new Shifts plan and make your selection in Square Dashboard.

Features included in Square Shifts:

Time tracking

• POS-integrated time tracking so you can accurately track your team’s time and view and edit their timecards in Square Dashboard. 

Scheduling

• Track your team’s availability, assign upcoming shifts, and ensure everyone on the team knows when and where they are working via email and notifications in the Square Team App. 

Labor alerts

• Prevent early and unscheduled clock-ins and track breaks and overtime to effectively manage your labor costs.

Tips and commissions

• Track the tips your team accrues during their shifts, including tip pooling and cash tip tracking. You can also incentivize employees with unique commission rates to reward them for their sales.

Payroll Prep

• Easily track your team’s wage data and export timecards that can be imported to Square Payroll or another payroll provider.

Analytics and reporting

• Get access to reports like sales versus labor so you can make better staffing decisions. 

Check out all the features included in Shifts

Pricing: 

Shifts Free	Shifts Plus
Free for up to five team members	1–10 team members: $4/month per team member 11–20  team members: $3.50/month per team member 21–50  team members: $3.00/month per team member 51+ team members: $2.50/month per team member

How to get started:

Visit the Shifts Dashboard to learn more and pick the best plan for your team.

Get Started →

[Saloonsean]

Same hear. We just met with Toast due to this. Square up gets $20,000 plus in fee's from me annually, so I'm almost gone. Just mad I just bought my 3rd pos system.

[PIVO_Brewery]

We will stay subscribed the Team Plus / Shifts Plus in February 2023 ONLY IF employees are able to request time off by the hour. If they can't it's not functional for our business and our employees. We will need to go with Homebase or 7Shifts for much better functionality.

[JasonSQPM]

Hi there - thanks for the feedback on this!  We are exploring adding this functionality over the coming months, but do not yet have a confirmed timeline.  We understand this is a pain point for some of our sellers and want to close this gap as efficiently as we can.

[KatieFitch]

We've used these features for over a year now. Here are the features that would take Shifts to the next level for us, eliminating some of our issues...

1. A widget of today's scheduled staff on the home page of the dashboard

2. Announcements: (1) staff clocking in must tap through announcements (ex: "20% off Christmas trees now through christmas" "make sure you wish Tommy a happy birthday!" "We're all out of straw bales until Monday the 7th"); (2) the option to blast an announcement to everyone's phone through the team app.... <-- these features would change the game for us.

Thanks for reading!

[KatieFitch]

Oh and 3. An ability to print out a clear schedule we can post somewhere. The current print options for shifts are distorted, take up way too much space on a page, and are a hassle to format. I just want a nice clean representation of who will be in when, at a glance.

[JasonSQPM]

Hi Katie - thanks for the feedback on this!  Stay tuned for more details on announcements, specifically, in the coming months.

[Anthem]

These are great suggestions!

[Stacelyn24]

I agree these features would be amazingly useful to Shifts.  My bf's business would definitely be managed a little easier with these features 🙂

[Joules]

We just started using Team Management and I was excited to use Square Shifts as part of that (and stop using When I Work), however Shifts does not appear to work for us because Person A cannot pick up a shift from Person B without trading out one of Person A's shifts. 

For my coffee shop, I post a schedule about two months in advance. If Person A isn't feeling well one day and Person B agrees to take their shift, I'd like for them to just make that change and I get notified about it. 

It appears that as Shifts is currently configured, Person A and B would have to fully trade two shifts (instead of just picking up the one shift), or they would have to text me about the change and I would have to log into my laptop and make the change myself. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for us.

[JasonSQPM]

Hi there - thanks for the feedback!  What you described is what we refer to as shift covers vs. shift trades.  We are working on this in 2023 as an enhancement to our scheduling functionality.  Stay tuned over the coming months for more info as we get closer to building and releasing.

[Anthem]

I'll chime in as well. This is a key feature that will be very helpful! As management, we spend far too much time in the tool changing schedules. We also switched from WIW and found that system to be far more user-friendly. However, our loyalty to Square won out and will continue, at least for a little while longer, before my managers get so frustrated they make me switch back. 

Looking forward to seeing this feature. Thanks for sharing part of the roadmap @JasonSQPM 

[outerrim]

Why does Shift limit scheduling to 10 days?

[JasonSQPM]

Hi there - our Shifts Plus offering allows to you schedule out beyond ten days.  If you haven't already, you can try it free for 30 days.

[LasVegasSouth]

I currently transferred over to Square Teams and added Square Shifts to my organization.

One of the features on this and on the article pages states there is an option for teams to request a “cover shift”. However, the cover shifts is not available on my Square Teams App - the only feature available is the “trade shifts” - is this a glitch or do I have to add the cover shifts feature to via dashboard? 

[JasonSQPM]

Hi @LasVegasSouth - we are starting the rollout of shift covers as we speak.  The feature should be available on your account over the next week or two.