What is Shiftly?
An overview of the Shiftly workforce-management platform — rostering, time and attendance, onboarding, leave and payroll — why it's free, and where it's heading.
Shiftly is the workforce-management platform built for hospitality. It brings rostering, time and attendance, staff onboarding, leave and pay into one place — so you can plan who's working, see what they actually worked, and get that straight through to payroll without the spreadsheet juggling.
It's made for the way venues actually run: cafés, restaurants, bars and pubs with anything from a handful of casuals to a couple of hundred staff across several sites. Owners and managers run the week from a browser; your team carries their roster in their pocket.
Who this is for
Anyone new to Shiftly — owners and managers sizing it up for their venue, and staff who've just been invited and want to know what the platform does.
What you can do with Shiftly
- Build rosters fast — drag and drop shifts by position or by staff member across your locations, copy and repeat weeks, save templates, and publish to your team in a tap. Built-in checks flag double-bookings and clashes before they become a problem.
- Track time and attendance — staff clock on and off from their phone at the venue, and their hours become timesheets you review and approve. No more chasing paper.
- Onboard staff paperlessly — invite people to complete their own details, tax, bank and super, or add them yourself. It flows straight into payroll, so you're not re-typing anything.
- Manage leave — set up leave types and accrual, track balances, and approve or decline requests, with approved leave shown right on the roster.
- Work out pay — Shiftly interprets the relevant award (such as the Hospitality Award) to estimate wages as you roster, factoring in award penalties, late-night and weekend rates, then exports approved timesheets to Xero for payroll.
How it fits together
Everything connects, so you set it up once and it keeps paying off. You plan the week in the roster, your staff work their shifts and clock their time, you review and approve the resulting timesheets, and the approved hours flow out to Xero for pay. Leave, onboarding and your award pay rules all feed into the same picture — no double entry, no copy-pasting between tools.
Why Shiftly is free
The core platform — rostering, time and attendance, onboarding, leave and the award-aware pay estimates — is free to use. Not a trial, not a teaser tier: the day-to-day software venues rely on doesn't cost per user.
We think the software that runs your venue shouldn't be the thing that costs you. Legacy systems charge per head and price small venues out — Shiftly keeps the core free and earns its keep elsewhere, through optional paid add-ons you only pay for if you use them.
Where we're going
Today Shiftly handles everything inside your venue — your roster, your team, your timesheets. The next chapter is on-demand staffing: a marketplace that connects you with vetted short-term staff so you're never caught understaffed for a busy service or a last-minute no-show. Post the shift, review applicants, and fill the gap — without the frantic group-chat.
It's rolling out as part of the same platform you already use, so when you need an extra pair of hands, they're a few taps away.
Where you do it
Owners and managers run all of this from the Shiftly web platform in a browser. Your staff use the separate Shiftly Me app on their phone to see their roster, clock on and off, set their availability, pick up open shifts, swap shifts, and request leave. For a breakdown of which app suits your role, see The Shiftly apps — which one do I need?.
Related
Getting started
New to Shiftly? Tell us who you are and follow a tailored quick start to get up and running.
The Shiftly apps — which one do I need?
Shiftly is a family of apps — the web platform for owners and managers, Shiftly Me for staff, and Shiftly Go and OnDemand coming soon. This explains what each one is and who it's for.