Shift Conflicts and Double Bookings – Find and Fix

A conflict is a shift that does not add up: the person is already booked, off, or not permitted under the rules. Vendion recalculates on every change and points out what does not fit.

Warnings block nothing – and why

Read this before you trust the schedule as a safety net: you can always publish, however many red warnings remain. The button simply changes to Publish anyway, and the dialog lists everything outstanding.

We chose this deliberately. You know things the system does not. A system that refused to publish would make you work around it — and then people stop reading the warnings at all.

The consequence is that you have to read the list. Vendion points; you decide and carry the responsibility.

Where you see a conflict

On the shift. A triangle in the top right corner — red for serious, orange for something to look at. Click the triangle and every rule the shift breaks is listed, with figures: "Daily rest: longest continuous rest 9.5 h within the 24 hours from the start of the shift — minimum 11 h."

In the toolbar. A button saying how many warnings the period has. Click for the full list, sorted per person, with the red ones called out.

In the grid. A day with approved absence has a grey marking with the absence type written in the cell. A day the person marked as off has a small red dot in the corner, an available day a green one.

In the publish dialog. The same list again, right before you press.

The most common conflicts and how to fix them

Overlapping shifts or an identical duplicate (red). The person is on two shifts at once. Usually happens when copy or apply was clicked twice. Fix: open one of the shifts and remove it.

Absence clash (red). The shift falls in the middle of approved holiday or sick leave. The person will not come. Fix: change person or move the shift.

Insufficient daily rest (red). The person does not get eleven continuous hours of rest within the day from the start of the shift. Fix: shorten one of the shifts, move the later shift forward, or change person on one of them.

Availability clash (orange). The person marked the day as off or gave a different time window. It is a preference, not a decision — you may place the shift, but talk to them first.

Short gap (orange). Under six hours between two shifts on the same day. A split shift so tight the person cannot get home. A working environment issue, not a legal breach.

Minor on a late shift (red). Under 18s may not work after 20:00 or 23:00 depending on age. Fix: shorten the shift or change person.

There is no way to acknowledge a warning away. Either you fix the shift so it disappears, or you publish with the warning outstanding — and it is then saved in the archive of what remained at publication.

Preview before shifts are written

The three routes that add many shifts at once — Copy week, Load template and Apply AI suggestion — check for clashes before anything is written.

The box shows only what that action would introduce, not every existing warning in the period. The check covers approved absence, availability, daily and weekly rest and the rules for minors, and it lists a count per type with one example.

It has no action buttons and blocks nothing. It exists so you can back out before creating thirty shifts you then have to fix.

Double booking within the chain

If you run several restaurants in the same chain, Vendion detects the same person being booked at two of them at once — the only genuine double booking the product knows about.

The warning is red and sits on your own shift, because that is the one you can change. It says which time and which restaurant. If you are not a chain member, "another restaurant in the chain" is shown instead of the name.

The system also warns when daily rest, weekly rest or weekly hours are only breached once the shifts at the sister restaurants are counted. This requires the person to use the same login at both restaurants and to have an active staff record with you. See the article on schedule warnings for the full picture.

What the system does not warn about

Be honest with yourself about what you can rely on:

• Two people on the same station at once is not flagged. Two chefs in the kitchen is often exactly right
• Missing skills gives no warning in the grid. You do get a note in the shift panel when you pick someone not marked for that station
• Shifts beyond the employment rate gives no per-shift warning. The surplus against the calculation period's budget appears instead in the stats panel under Overtime warning (period)
• Shifts just outside the period you loaded are not counted in the rest checks. Checking one week at a time, a warning can be missed right at the period boundary. Use a 2-week view when you want certainty about rest around the join

Reducing the number of conflicts

• Approve absence requests before you build the schedule. Then they are caught by the preview rather than afterwards
• Ask staff to fill in their availability in the portal. They can plan eight weeks ahead
• Use base shifts. Fixed, considered times cause fewer random rest clashes than hand-typed hours
• Let the AI suggestion do the heavy lifting. It already accounts for absence, availability, skills and unsocial hours
• Publish in good time. Late changes are the most expensive, both in money and in trust
• Look at the red ones first. Orange is advisory; red is a legal breach or a shift that physically cannot be worked