Key features

• Shop setup: opening days, any number of shifts with start and end time, shift type (morning or night) and how many people of each role every shift needs.
• Employees: days per week, hours per day, allowed shifts, roles (e.g. waiter, barista), a colour for each person and weekly restrictions such as “not available on Tuesday evenings”.
• Automatic scheduling: one click fills every position of the week while respecting contract days, days off, one shift per day, roles, restrictions and no morning shift right after a night shift, even across weeks.
• Days off & shortages: days off can be set before generating, and any position that cannot be covered is listed clearly with how many people are needed and how many were found.
• Manual edits: move or swap employees between shifts with drag & drop, checked against the rules before each change, and add an employee to a shift as an “extra” person when they still have contract days left.
• Saved weeks: a calendar week picker, schedules saved per week, a day-by-day breakdown and automatic saving of all changes to the server.

How the algorithm works

Every open position of the week is a “spot” to fill. The PHP algorithm uses backtracking: at each step it picks the spot with the fewest eligible employees first and tries the people who still have the most days left to work, which keeps the workload balanced. To stay fast it skips equivalent choices (spots of the same day, shift and role are interchangeable) and cuts every branch that can no longer beat the best schedule found so far, based on how many days each employee can still realistically work. If a spot cannot be covered at all, it is left empty instead of blocking the rest of the week, and within a short time limit the app returns the best possible schedule and reports exactly which positions are still uncovered.