Staff Rota & Scheduling Software

Build it fast, see the gaps as they emerge, and know you are covered and what it costs.

Build the week's rota in minutes, not an afternoon.

Clone last week, apply everyone's regular pattern in one action, then fill the gaps that are left. Alpaka flags understaffed shifts before you publish and totals the wage cost as you build - so you catch the gap and the cost before your team does.

Scheduling is part of the Core plan: £3 per person per month, alongside leave, absence and HR records.

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What your rota actually needs to do

Most weeks look like last week

Clone the previous rota, apply everyone's usual pattern, fill in whatever's actually changed. Most managers have it done in under twenty minutes once the initial setup is in, because they're not retyping the 90% that stayed the same.

Staffing gaps

Tell Alpaka what a day needs - by department, by shift, by time of day. If Thursday's kitchen is short, the rota shows red before you publish it, not at 7am when someone doesn't turn up.

The one that catches people out is the other direction. Overstaffed days don't set off any alarms. Nobody rings you about a shift that didn't need to be there. It just costs you a bit more, every week, quietly, until you go looking for it - which most people don't, until we show them the number.

Wage cost

Hours total live under the grid as you build it, split by shift type and department. Attach pay grades and you're watching the number change while you're still deciding who works when - instead of finding out at the end of the month what the last four weeks actually cost.

Draft shifts alongside a confirmed, published rota

Draft and confirmed

A rota that isn't published yet looks unpublished - hatched, greyed, obviously not final. Hit confirm and the whole thing locks in one go, with the team told from inside the rota rather than a phone forwarded round the group chat. There's one copy. Everyone's looking at the same one.

Clash warning for a shift booked on another rota

Clashes

Someone already booked on another rota, or off on approved leave - it's visible in your grid before you save, not after they've turned up to the wrong place. You can override it. You have to do it on purpose, though.

Two managers editing the same rota at the same time

Two people, one rota, at the same time

Managers can both have the rota open together and watch each other's edits land without refreshing. Editing, publishing, and who sees pay data are separate permissions - so covering someone's day off doesn't mean handing over everything.

What a better rota is worth

Everyone sees the same rota

The rota, wallplanner view, activity feed, and automated schedule emails all update the moment something changes - no refreshing, no forwarding screenshots. Staff can message the team directly from the Alpaka app if anything needs sorting.

Admin Time

Managers save an average of 5 hours per week - recovering 260 hours annually previously lost to copying, pasting, and chasing employee availability.

5 hours per week

Staff budget

Rota visibility means the provision matches the budget, preventing an 6% overspend before it happens.

6% wage bill reduction

Cost

Paper timesheets might take an hour and several pairs of hands to compile - for £3 per person per month, Alpaka costs less than the paper process and less than any comparable platform on the market.

£3 / month

"But Excel is free."

Excel is free the way a puppy is free. Here's what the spreadsheet doesn't do - and what each gap actually costs you.

The gap	What it costs you
Can't see leave or other rotas while you schedule	Double-bookings, and staff who stop trusting the rota
No staffing targets	Understaffed days discovered at 7am; overstaffed days never discovered at all
No live hours or cost totals	The wage bill is a surprise, four weeks after you could have changed it
No draft/published distinction	Staff plan their lives around rotas you hadn't finished
No notifications	You are the notification system - every change means a round of calls
One editor at a time, no audit trail	Scheduling stops when one person is away, and nobody knows who changed what

Questions managers actually ask us

We've run everything in Excel for years. How painful is switching?

Less painful than you'd think, because you don't do it alone. Every Alpaka trial comes with free setup with a real person - we take your existing rota, set up your shift types, sites, departments and team, and build the first rota with you. After that, next week is a clone of this week. Most teams are fully off the spreadsheet within their first rota cycle. And if you decide it's not for you, your data is deleted - no hard sell, no exit fees.

What actually happens when someone rings in sick an hour before their shift?

You open the rota on whatever device is nearest. You can see who's available today - including anyone free on other rotas - because everyone's real commitments are in the grid. Record the absence, move the shift, and message the replacement directly from the rota screen with the shift details filled in. The rota updates for everyone instantly. Total time: about a minute. No phone tree, no "does anyone know if Sam's working?"

We run nights, splits and shifts that cross midnight. Can it cope?

Yes - this is exactly the kind of team Alpaka is built for. Shifts can start and end at any time, overnight shifts that wrap past midnight are handled without the spreadsheet time-arithmetic, and multi-day spans display correctly on the grid. Teams of all shapes and sizes run on Alpaka every day - including the ones with the worst-case scheduling patterns.

We have two sites and staff who work across both. Does that break it?

The opposite - shared staff is where Alpaka beats everything else. Each rota belongs to a site and department, but a person's shifts follow them everywhere: schedule Sam at site A and site B's rota shows that commitment automatically. If two rotas genuinely collide, you get the clash itemised before saving, with links to each conflicting rota. Cross-site double-booking stops being something you have to remember to check for.

Who can see and edit the rota? I don't want everyone changing things.

Viewing, editing, publishing and cost visibility are all separate permissions, so a deputy can edit without seeing pay data, and a team member can view without touching anything. Every change is recorded with who made it and when - on the rota, on each shift, on each note. If something moved, you'll know exactly who moved it. That audit trail alone has ended more than a few arguments.

Do my staff need to install an app?

Staff see their shifts in Alpaka on any phone, with in-app messaging and email - so even the team member who checks nothing but their inbox still gets told about their shifts. Managers run the rota from any browser. There's no terminal, no kiosk and no hardware to buy anywhere in Alpaka - that's true of clocking-in too.

What does it cost, and what's the catch?

Scheduling is part of the Core plan: £3 per person per month, which also includes annual leave, absence tracking, HR records, qualifications and the contacts address book. No setup fee, no contract lock-in, no per-module pricing. Comparable platforms charge £16–28 per person once you've added the modules back in. There's no catch - we're a small UK company with no investors to feed, and the price is the price.

Three ways to get started

Try it yourself

A 5-minute guided walkthrough of Alpaka, no setup required, no data. Best if you'd rather get hands-on before talking to anyone.

Start

Book a live demo

Talk it through with a solution specialist - not a salesperson. Ideal if you've got specific questions or want to see how Alpaka fits your setup.

Demo

Sign up free

Start right away - no credit card, no setup fees. The quickest route if you already know what you're after.

From £2 per person. No setup fees.