100% QuebecAn employee offers a colleague to trade one of their shifts for one of theirs. The colleague accepts and, depending on your setting, the swap either executes right away or waits for your decision.
It differs from a shift release, even though both live in the same place: a release offers a shift to everyone and looks for a taker; a swap is named and symmetric. Both shifts change holder together, or neither moves.
- Who proposes
- An employee, to ONE named colleague
- Who accepts first
- The colleague, never management
- Default setting
- Supervisor approval, 24 h notice
Before you start
- Swaps enabled in the organization settings: they are, by default.
- Two existing shifts, each still in its holder's name.
- 1
Find the swaps in progress
Swaps have no page of their own: they live under “Open shifts and schedules”, third tab, “Swaps”.
Grouping them is deliberate. An open shift, a replacement and a swap all ask the same question (who ends up working that shift) and read better in one place than scattered across three screens.
Live swaps sit at the top, closed ones in a “Closed” section below.
- 2
Read a swap card
The card shows both sides: “Request” with the proposer's name and their shift, “Colleague” with the recipient's name and theirs. Each shift carries its date, its hours and its project.
The status says exactly where things stand: Proposed (the colleague has not answered yet), Accepted by the colleague (your turn), Declined, Executed, Rejected, Cancelled.
Under “Waiting for…”, the card names who is holding things up: the colleague, or approval. The proposer's note, if they wrote one, sits just above the buttons.
“Schedule not found: the swap will be cancelled”
This appears when one of the two shifts has been deleted since the proposal. The swap can no longer happen: it closes itself, and nobody ends up holding a phantom shift.
- 3
Understand the cycle before you rule
The order never changes: the proposer offers, the colleague accepts or declines, then comes the assignment decision. You only arrive third, and that is on purpose: approving a swap the colleague will then refuse means nothing.
Throughout the wait, both shifts STAY with their holders and carry a swap-in-progress marker. The schedule the crew reads is therefore always the one that counts: nobody shows up on the strength of a swap that never completed.
The proposer can cancel while nothing has executed. So can you.
- 4
Approve the swap
“Approve” executes both transfers at once. The shifts keep their identifiers and only the holder's name changes: forecast timesheets follow, and the history stays attached to the right shift.
Before writing, the app replays the same checks it ran at the proposal: is the notice still met, do both shifts still exist, do they still belong to their holders, does the swap create an overlap or push someone over a weekly threshold? A calendar moves between the Tuesday the swap was accepted and the Thursday you see it.
Both employees are notified, and the card moves to “Executed”.
- 5
Reject, with a reason
The reason is optional and shown to BOTH employees, not just the proposer: they built the arrangement together, they deserve the same answer.
“The qualification required on that project” is the most common rejection, and it is exactly the kind of constraint the two colleagues could not have known about.
- 6
Decide whether you get a say
Settings, General tab, “Shift release” section. It governs replacements AND swaps: for the employer it is the same question. Do my employees arrange their shifts among themselves, and under what control?
“Allow shift swaps between colleagues” turns them on or off, independently of replacements. Assignment is set next: “Supervisor approval” (the default) leaves the call to you, “Automatic assignment” executes as soon as the colleague has accepted.
The minimum notice is in hours, 24 by default: below that, ahead of the shift start, the proposal is refused. “Notify management” adds a badge, a notification and an email.
These four settings live on the organization, but each employee profile can override them field by field: a crew lead may swap without approval where the rest of the team goes through you.
The default is approval, and that is no accident
Handing off a shift commits two people's pay: hours, shift premiums, overtime thresholds. Automatic assignment exists for crews that want the plain arrangement, but it gets switched on knowingly.
What to remember
A swap is not a replacement
If an employee simply wants to shed a shift without picking up another, a release is what they use: the shift goes out as a posting and any eligible colleague claims it. A swap requires two shifts and two named people.
Everything reaches the audit trail
Proposal, acceptance, decision and execution each carry a name, a time and the previous value. A shift that changed holder three weeks ago traces back to the person who proposed it.
Go further
Publishing an open shift
A shift with nobody on it, offered to eligible employees: who can see it, who gets it, and what happens between publication and the schedule created.
LireApproving a time-off request
An employee requests vacation from their phone: what the decision card shows you, what approving writes to the schedule, and the rules that frame how requests are filed.
LireBuilding an employee's schedule
Placing a shift on a site: who, where, when, with which breaks, and reading the total paid hours before saving, not after.
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