A published shift with nobody on it is a promise to customers that nobody has made to a member of staff. Paddl raises an alert for them before they become the morning nobody arrives.
What raises it
Once a day, Paddl looks for published shifts at each site that start within the next 48 hours and have nobody assigned. If it finds any, it raises one Unfilled shift alert for the site, with the count, and notifies whoever has Open shifts turned on under Settings > Notifications > Rota & shifts. Draft shifts are not counted, because nobody has been promised them yet.
What it says
Without a sales forecast, the message is the plain count: "The Anchor has 2 published shifts with nobody on within the next 48 hours."
With a forecast, each empty shift is weighted by what the hours it covers are expected to take, and the message leads with the one that matters: "2 unfilled shifts · Fri 19:00–23:00 (Bar) open, busiest hours of the week." The empty Tuesday afternoon is still in the alert, further down, marked as a quiet hour. Takings figures never appear in the alert itself, so a manager who cannot see sales still gets the order. The point is that a manager with one phone call to make knows which call.
How it clears
Somebody is assigned, or a colleague claims the shift through a swap.
The shift is cancelled.
The shift start passes. A shift that went unfilled still shows on the rota and in the change report; the alert just stops.
The alert refreshes in place each day rather than raising a new one, so acknowledging it does not make it come back tomorrow with the same shifts. Its severity moves too: an empty shift inside a day reads as critical, and so do the heaviest third of a site's open shifts inside two days.
What it skips
Days inside a closure period. A three-week refurbishment does not send anyone the same alert every morning. See The rota and closed sites.
The other rota alert: Rota vs forecast
Where a site has a forecast, a second morning sweep looks at the next seven days and flags any day where the rostered wages look out of step with what the site is expected to take, against your labour target. It is raised as Rota vs forecast and says whether the day looks under- or over-rostered. It becomes critical when the day is within two days or the gap is wide. Days with no shifts at all are left to the unfilled-shift alert. Owners also get a Monday note with the week ahead.
Not getting these? Check Notification settings and Understanding Alerts. The sweep runs daily, so a shift left empty at four in the afternoon is picked up the next morning.