Square Shifts FAQ
There are two tiers of Square Shifts: Shifts Free and Shifts Plus. Shifts Free comes with basic labor management features at no cost for up to five team members. Note that this team member cap does not apply to Square Payroll subscribers. For teams of six employees or more, you can subscribe to Shifts Plus, which starts at $4 per team member and comes with additional advanced labor management features.
However, if you subscribe to either Square Appointments Plus or Premium, Square for Retail Plus or Premium, Square for Restaurants Plus or Premium, your account will have access to all Shifts Plus features at no additional cost. Unpaid versions of these subscription services will not have access to Shifts Plus features.
: Learn more about Square Shifts pricing and features and getting started with Square Shifts in our Support Center.
The Workday section is designed to simplify your day-to-day shift monitoring. For total hours, total labor cost, and the shifts that make up those totals, visit the Timecards section of your online Square Dashboard.
To view a team member’s timecard activity for a period of time, adjust the date and location filters in the Timecards tab and select a team member’s row. This will show you a breakdown of all shifts in that period and you can click the blue Total Labor Cost button to view hours paid.
Once you’ve set up your team’s schedule, you can view forecasted labor cost totals, including estimated overtime earnings, for scheduled team members over the entire week from the Schedule > Shifts section of your online Square Dashboard. You can also view estimated labor cost calculations for each team member from the Workday tab. However, these labor cost estimates will not appear in printed shift reports and are only available through our online Square Dashboard.
All .CSV exports are available from the Timecards tab of your
online Square Dashboard. You’ll be given an option to export a labor cost report of total hours worked and paid, or a report of all shift activity.
Yes. By downloading the Square Team App, your team members will have the ability to clock in/out, view their hours worked and timecards, view their estimated pay for the week, and view their team profile — all from their own iPhones or Android devices, at no additional charge.
Yes, but first you’ll need to make sure you’re subscribed to Shifts Plus and that you have the Timecard edits setting turned on.
From your online Square Dashboard, go to Staff > Shifts > Settings > Clock in/out. Then toggle the Timecard edits setting on. This gives your team members the ability to edit a timecard for any past shifts.
Once a request is made, the account owner or any team member with the appropriate permissions will receive a notification prompting them to approve or decline the request. You can approve or decline these requests from the Shifts section of your online Square Dashboard.
Note: Edit requests expire after 30 days.
Overtime for team members with multiple wages is based on the team member’s blended rate. A blended rate is the weighted average of the total normal earnings divided by total hours worked. For compensation, the team member is paid .5x this rate for their overtime premium.
Here’s an example: Alex has 2 wages ($20/hr as a Bartender, and $10/hr as a Server). Alex works 50 hours in a week, 30 as a Bartender and 20 as a Server. The premium for Alex’s 10 overtime hours will be 0.5x the blended rate calculated by the two wages worked. Given 30 of their regular hours were worked at $20, and 20 were worked at $10, the weighted average for the blended rate is: ($20 x 30) + ($10 x 20)/(50) = $16. Given that blended rate, the overtime premium for Alex would be $8 per hour (0.5 x $16).
A job title is the name assigned to each wage for a given team member. Once a job title is created, it can be applied to other team members. A permission set is a grouping of Team Permissions. That said, while team members can now have multiple wages (with job titles), team members can only have one permission set.
Yes, Shifts Plus subscribers have access to two customizable permission sets: the team permission set and an additional permission set. This additional custom permission set can be assigned to multiple employees and used to give your team access to complete certain tasks, like approving timecards or managing schedules.
Note: This second customizable permission set is not available to users of the free version of Square Shifts. Learn more about creating and assigning permission sets.
You can view all shifts for a team member by selecting a date range and clicking into their individual row in Workday section of your Shifts dashboard. This will bring up the team member’s timecard with all shifts for that time period. If you want to view all shifts for all team members at the same time, you will want to use the Export Labor Cost option in the Timecards tab.
Timecard reporting is all based on your set workday, which can be adjusted from Shifts > Settings. If your business is open past midnight, you will want to set custom workday hours in your Shift settings. In general, only businesses that have team members working past midnight should change their workday hours. If you have team members working past midnight, it is best to set it ~1hr past the time the last team member leaves.
For example, if your business closes at 2 a.m., but team members stay for an hour to clean up, set the workday hours to 4 a.m.. This will update the Workday timeline, and day filters (e.g. Today, Yesterday) to 4 a.m.- 4 a.m.
By default, the Timecards tab is sorted by team member, but there is currently no team member-specific filter.
Yes — with Shifts Plus, team members have the ability to add notes to their shift when clocking in or out to provide more context into what happened during their shift (e.g. someone arriving late or leaving early).
To add a note to a shift from the Checkout screen of the Square app, tap Clock In/Out and enter your four digit personal passcode. Tap Clock In or End Shift, tTap Add Notes and enter any applicable notes, and click Save.