With Homebase, empower your team to effortlessly swap shifts and find coverage, all while giving you the control to approve and monitor shift history, ensuring compliance and full coverage for every shift. This article is your ultimate guide to understanding and maximizing the benefits of shift trades and coverage functionalities in Homebase.

Click here to learn more about how employees request trades and covers.

How to approve shift trades and covers

1. After an employee requests for coverage or trades, managers will receive a notification.

    

   

    

2. Open the notification to view. 
3. Select Approve to confirm the shift trade or cover. 

Where to see Shift trade history

After you have followed the steps above to approve a shift trade or cover...

1. Select Schedule in the left menu.

    

   

    

2. View the week that the shift trade was approved for and find the shift.

    

   

    

3. Under the shift you will see Approvals, select the shift to view the trade history.

    

   

    

Shift Trades vs. Covers

• Trading: Shift Trades, or swapping, occur when two employees trade scheduled shifts with each other.
• Covers: Shift covering is when one employee voluntarily covers a shift that was originally scheduled for a coworker.

Shift Covers

When requesting a cover, Homebase refers to the published schedule to see who is available to cover the requested shift.

How to know if a team member is available to cover

Not all employees will appear as an option to cover team members' shifts. When selecting a shift to request a cover, the request can only be sent to other team members who are unscheduled & available to work during that shift duration.

1. Unscheduled: do not have a scheduled shift during the requested shift duration
   • Employees who are scheduled before or after the requested shift will appear as a cover option.
   • Example: Joe is scheduled 6 am-3 pm, and Paul requests his 4 pm - 10 pm shift to be covered. Joe will appear as an option to cover since he is not scheduled at the time of Paul's shift.
2. Available: The team member is eligible to cover a shift if they are available according to Their approved availability. (The employee's availability must be approved, NOT Pending.)
   • If someone is "Unavailable" from 4-10 p.m. and the shift cover duration is 4-10 p.m., the employee will not be available to cover.
   • If someone is "Unavailable" from 4-10 p.m. and the shift cover duration is 6 a.m. - 12 p.m., the employee will be available to cover.
3. Time Off Requests (Both Pending & Approved):
   • If someone has requested time off for that specific day or period being requested, the employee will not be available to cover.

What does NOT impact an employee's availability to cover a shift

1. Hours Scheduled
   • Even if an employee is scheduled at 40 hours or more, a shift cover can be sent to anyone as long as they are unscheduled and available at the time of the shift being requested.
2. Departments & Roles
   • Regardless of roles or departments assigned, a shift cover can be sent to anyone as long as they are unscheduled and available at the time of the shift being requested.
3. "Employees can only view their schedule"
   • When employees request a cover, Homebase only shows people who are available to cover the shift and does not display any other schedule information.
4. "Allow managers to build and publish schedules for their assigned departments only"
   • Managers can approve all trades and covers, regardless of department gating.