How to choose a rota app
A search for the best rota app usually wants a winner. This page does not name one. It is a list of questions to put to any product, including Shiftbrook, before you move a week of shifts into it.
Can you draft, then publish?
A week that staff can see while you are still moving people is how Saturday gets planned twice. Ask whether a shift can stay private until you publish it, and whether an unfilled shift can sit on the grid as an open shift. In Shiftbrook a draft is hidden. Staff see published shifts and published open shifts. There is no automatic fill. You place the names, or you copy a week you already built.
What does clock-in actually check?
Ask what is compared at the moment of the punch. A photo, a face, a shared tablet and a phone at a site pin are different products. Shiftbrook reads the phone against the pin on the location. The default radius is 100 metres. It does not take a photo and it does not scan a face. The phone is not followed between clock-in and clock-out. A manager can add a flagged time, with a note.
Does it know the wage?
A rota of hours is not a pay run. Ask whether the product calculates pay, tax, or a rate after a certain hour. Shiftbrook does not. Approved hours download as a CSV. Sending approved hours to Xero Payroll UK is not available until that connection works end to end. If a page promises that the hours land in payroll, ask to see that connection work on your own week before you rely on it.
What is the price, in words you can check?
Shiftbrook is free for up to 5 staff and one location on the first organisation. The paid plan is £3 per active person per month, with a £15 minimum. You can use the paid plan for 14 days before the first payment, and that period does not ask for a card. Client approvers on an agency are free and are not counted. There is no separate agencies price.
Other products publish their own prices. The compare pages quote Deputy, RotaCloud, Planday and Timetastic from their sites, checked 21 October 2026, and they link the source. Those figures move. Read them there, not as a ranking on this page. We have not scored anyone, and there are no reviews here.
What will you still do yourself?
Rest, the 48-hour average and night work are still your reading of the week. A warning that does not block a save, which is how Shiftbrook behaves, is a warning. It is not a lawyer. Holiday is 5.6 weeks or, for irregular hours, 12.07% of hours. The product records the allowance you set. It does not pay the holiday.
Start with the week you actually run. If the answers above match that week, the rota is the place to try it. If they do not, the checklist still works on the next product you open.