Weeksort or the wall chart
Paper has one real advantage: everybody in the building can read it without an account and without a phone. It also has one real problem, which is that it cannot be changed after it has been printed.
What paper costs
The sheet is a drawing of a decision, not the decision itself, so every change has to be made twice: once in pen on the wall and once to each person who is not in the building. Last month's rota is in a drawer, if it was kept at all.
You can only read it at work, which is the one place you are not when you need to know whether you are in tomorrow. A day that was written over in pen while you were off is a day you find out about by turning up, or by not turning up.
The same week, both ways
| What happens in a week | On the wall | In Weeksort |
|---|---|---|
| The rota changes on a Tuesday | On the wallSomebody writes over it in pen, and the two people who are off that day never see the change. | In WeeksortThe week is edited and republished, and the people whose shifts moved are told what moved. |
| A person is not in the building | On the wallThey ring up and ask whoever answers to read it out to them. | In WeeksortThey open their own shifts wherever they are, on the phone they already have. |
| You need what happened last month | On the wallIt is in a drawer, or it is gone. | In WeeksortAny date range, per person, with the totals, downloadable as a spreadsheet. |
| Somebody wants a day off | On the wallThey write on the sheet, or they tell you in the corridor on the way past. | In WeeksortThey file the dates with a reason if they want to give one, and it waits in a queue for your answer. |
| Two people want the same Friday off | On the wallWhoever asked in the way you happened to remember gets it. | In WeeksortBoth requests sit in one queue with their dates, and you decide between them having seen both. |
What Weeksort does not do about it
It does not know who actually turned up. It is not a time clock, it does not calculate pay, and it is not your statutory record of hours worked — it records what was scheduled. Nor does it decide anything: it warns, and the week is still yours to publish.
Print it anyway
The week prints as a wall chart, so the sheet by the till can stay exactly where it is. The join poster prints too, with the workplace's code and a square to scan on it. Paper is a good way to show a week and a poor way to keep one.