Building a fair schedule drops from three hours to 15 minutes. Your team sees it Friday instead of Sunday night, cutting last-minute callouts and letting you actually manage.
Roster reads your team availability, checks every labor law, and hands you a ready-to-publish schedule in under 60 seconds. Built for restaurants, retail, salons, and any operation running hourly shifts.
The average shift manager spends 4.6 hours per week building the schedule and still fields nine texts before it goes live. Roster closes that gap entirely.
Trusted by operations teams at
The Scheduling Tax
Collecting availability from 15 part-timers over text, spreadsheets, and sticky notes takes two hours before you write a single shift. And someone always updates theirs after you submit the draft.
Predictive scheduling laws, overtime thresholds, mandatory rest periods. Every state and city has different rules, and a single violation costs more than a month of your labor budget.
Someone texts out two hours before their shift. You spend 45 minutes calling backups, playing phone tag, and hoping someone picks up while your floor stays short-staffed.
How Roster Works
Roster connects to your existing roster, pulls availability in real time, and generates a legally compliant schedule optimized for your labor budget. Publish it with one click and your team is notified automatically.
Invite employees by text or email. Each person sets their availability once in under two minutes. No app download required. It all runs from a mobile-friendly link they already have in their messages.
Tell Roster your target labor cost percentage, minimum coverage by role and time block, and any state-specific compliance requirements. It learns your preferences and improves each week automatically.
Review the AI draft, adjust any shift, and publish. Your team is notified the instant it goes live. Roster flags every compliance conflict before you hit send, not after the audit.
Features
Describe your week: peak hours, minimum coverage by role, budget target. Get a full schedule back in 30 seconds. Every shift is editable, every change rechecked for conflicts before you publish.
When someone cannot make it, Roster texts eligible teammates automatically. The first person to accept locks the shift. You get a confirmation message, not a problem to solve at 6 AM.
Built-in rule sets cover predictive scheduling laws, minimum rest periods, overtime thresholds, and minor work permits for every major US jurisdiction. Violations are flagged before publish, not after the audit.
See projected weekly labor cost as you build the schedule. Roster shows you where you are against your target percentage and highlights which shifts are driving overages so you can trim strategically.
Employees manage availability, request time off, and confirm shifts from a mobile-optimized web link sent via SMS. No app store. No account creation. Near-100% adoption rates on every team we have seen.
Connects to Square, Toast, Clover, Gusto, ADP Run, and QuickBooks Payroll. Actual hours flow directly to payroll each period. No manual data entry, no month-end reconciliation, no corrected checks.
What Operators Say
"I used to dread Sundays. Building the schedule for our 22-person team took three hours and I still missed things. Now I review the AI draft, change two or three shifts, and I am done in 15 minutes. That time went back to my family."
"The compliance piece alone paid for itself. I had no idea Oregon required 14-day advance notice for schedule changes. Roster caught three violations in our first week before we published. We would have been fined immediately."
"The shift-swap feature eliminated 90% of my stress texts. Someone calls out, Roster finds a replacement and sends me confirmation. I have not scrambled for a cover in six weeks. My phone is quiet again."
Pricing
For single-location businesses getting their first taste of automated scheduling and ready to reclaim their weekends.
The full Roster stack for serious operators who need compliance coverage, automatic shift swaps, and real-time labor cost control.
Multi-location operators and franchise groups who need centralized control, custom rule sets, and API access across every property.
Integrations
Roster connects to the most common POS, payroll, and HR systems used by independent operators and multi-location groups. Actual hours sync automatically at the end of each pay period.
FAQ
No. Employees interact with Roster entirely through SMS and a mobile-friendly web link. Nothing to install, no account creation required. This keeps adoption near 100% even for teams with older workers or high turnover rates.
All 50 states for federal FLSA rules. Predictive scheduling laws for California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Illinois, and specific city-level ordinances in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City are built in. New jurisdictions are added as laws take effect.
Completely. The AI draft is a starting point, not a locked output. Drag and drop to swap shifts, override any assignment, or pin specific employees to specific slots. Roster respects every manual override and learns your preferences across weeks.
When an employee marks themselves unavailable for an upcoming shift, Roster looks at your qualified, available backups and sends an automated text. The first person to confirm gets the shift. You receive a push notification confirming the gap is filled. No calls required.
The Manager plan supports up to three locations with independent settings. The Operator plan handles unlimited locations with centralized reporting and per-location compliance profiles. Each location can have its own labor cost targets, coverage rules, and integrations.
Yes. 14 days, no credit card required. You get full access to the Manager plan so you can see the state compliance engine, shift-swap automation, and labor forecasting in action before choosing the plan that fits your operation.
No credit card. No sales call. Connect your team, describe your week, and see what Roster builds for you. Free for 14 days, and your first schedule takes less time than reading this page.
Setup takes under 5 minutes. Cancel anytime. No hidden fees.
The Wishdeal Factory scores every idea against 10 Adoptability axes, separate from raw quality. Here are the numbers we surface for this one.
shippable in 4 to 6 weeks. Year-1 ARR mid-case around $114K (estimate). Investment to production around $34K. probability of meaningful success around 12%, by Fermi heuristics.
Everything on this page. The brand, the score, the Fermi math, the audio pitch.
ICP, MVP scope, first 7 build tasks, 30/60/90 launch plan, GTM, email drip, LinkedIn message, objections, risk memo.
Unlock dossierDossier plus the working code starter, brand assets, copy library, and outreach pack.
See adopt scopeHire the team that built this to install, customize, and run launch with you.
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