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Choosing Your Approvers: Time Off, Availability, and Shift Swaps

Your team sends three kinds of requests from the app: time off, availability changes, and shift swaps or drops.

Each one goes to the managers you choose. Set approvers before your team starts using the app, and always pick a backup so requests don't sit when someone's off.

Request Where you choose the approver
Time off Each manager's user record → Access tab
Availability changes Each manager's user record → Access tab
Shift swaps and drops On each schedule, when you create it

Time-off requests

  1. Go to Admin → Users and open the record of the manager who should approve time off.
  2. Click the Access tab, then Configure.
  3. Check Receive RTO Requests (RTO means "request time off").
  4. Click Save. 

Repeat for anyone who backs that manager up.

How approval works: when a request comes in, ShiftForce checks it against any blocked dates and daily limits you've set, using each person's primary position. Approvers get a notification and can approve or deny it from the web or the app.  The employee is notified either way.

Availability changes

When employees set or change their availability in the app, a manager approves it before it's used for scheduling. [confirm: whether approval is required]

  1. Go to Admin → Users and open the manager's record.
  2. Click Access → Configure.
  3. Check Receive Availability Requests. [confirm setting name]
  4. Click Save.

Shift swaps and drops

These are set on each schedule, not on the user record. When you create a schedule, choose the managers who can edit it and approve shift swaps and drops. [Creating your first schedule →]

This is separate from time-off approval, so the same manager may need to be set in both places.

Tips

  • Always have a backup. If your only approver is on vacation, requests wait until they're back.
  • Keep the list short. One scheduling manager plus one backup is enough for most locations. Too many approvers can mean everyone assumes someone else handled it.
  • Set approvers before you publish your first schedule. That's when your team starts sending requests.