A hospitality roster is not a spreadsheet problem. It is a phone problem. The sick call at 06:31. The swap negotiated across a WhatsApp group. The employee asking why they did not get a shift. Every one of those moments is a call or a chat the planner has to answer — and none of them should need one.
The sick call. Someone cannot work. In Rosterly the shift reopens, the planner taps Fill this shift, and the system invites the right people in fairness order. The first to accept gets it. Nobody is phoned.
The swap call. Two people want to trade. The system finds perfect matches by itself — "I take yours, you take mine" — both accept, the planner approves once, both swaps execute. The negotiation that used to take a day takes one tap.
The "why not me" call. An employee sees an open shift they cannot take. Instead of texting the planner, the screen shows the reason in plain words: hours limit, availability, rest rule. Trust goes up, calls go down.
Most scheduling tools ask employees to declare availability in a way that does not match how horeca actually works: eighteen shift types, but people think in three buckets — morning, evening, all day. Rosterly's engine maps the three simple answers onto the eighteen real shift shapes. Staff fill in something a human can answer in ten seconds; the software reconciles it with the reality of the roster.
Related: 18 shift types, 3 availability buckets · The Dutch working-hours rules