Articles on: Schedules

AI Scheduling: Automatically Schedule Your Team for Peak Labor Efficiency

AI Scheduling: Automatically Schedule Your Team for Peak Labor Efficiency


Save hours of manual planning by using Easyteam’s AI Scheduling to automatically assign the right staff to open shifts based on your business goals, labor laws, and employee preferences.


Managing a retail schedule involves balancing a dozen variables at once: employee availability, labor costs, fair hour distribution, and compliance with rest laws. Easyteam’s AI Scheduling engine does the heavy lifting for you. It analyzes thousands of possible combinations to create a compliant, optimized schedule in seconds.


Automatically turn an empty weekly schedule into an optimized team schedule


Before You Begin: The Prerequisites


To get the most out of the AI engine, ensure the following are set up:



  • Staff Profiles: Verify that all staff have current compensation rates, assigned Job Positions, and accurate Location tags. Edit these in the Staff screen.


  • Time Off: Any pending time-off requests should be approved or rejected so the AI can determine who is unavailable.





Step 1: Accessing the AI Scheduling Panel


The AI engine lives directly within your existing scheduling workflow.


Ensure you are viewing a week with existing Open Shifts, found in the top row of the schedules screen.


Make sure your Open Shifts represent the roles, times, and number of staff you need each day.


For example, the screenshot below shows a schedule requiring one manager and several staff members each day.


Schedules screen with Open shifts and the AI Scheduler button on the top-right


➡️ Click the AI Scheduler button located in the top-right header, next to the Publish button.


💡 AI Scheduling works with you: Run it on weeks with existing shifts, and the AI will intelligently fill the gaps while respecting your current schedule.



Step 2: Configuring the AI Scheduler


➡️ First, choose the locations you want to schedule with AI. You may schedule multiple locations at the same jurisdiction at once.


Under Required rules section, define the constraints the AI will never break. These ensure compliance with legal standards and operational mandates, protecting you from costly scheduling failures.


➡️ Toggle on and adjust your Required rules:


  • Minimum Rest Gaps: Set the number of hours required between shifts, e.g., 11 hours to prevent "clopening".


  • Maximum Weekly Hours: Ensure no one is scheduled for more than a global limit e.g., 40 hours.


  • Maximum Daily Hour: Ensure no one is scheduled for more than a global daily limit, e.g., 8 hours.


  • Maximum Work Days: Set the maximum number of days a staff member can work in a week.


Rules the AI Scheduler must follow



Step 3: Selecting Your Preset Goal


Every week is different. Sometimes you need to keep costs as low as possible; other times, you need your top sellers on the floor during a holiday rush.

The AI uses Optimization Presets to prioritize these different outcomes.


➡️ Choose the presets that matches your goal for this week:


  • Fair hour distribution: Prioritizes giving everyone a fair share of hours to keep the team happy.


  • Respect open shift preferences: Considers staff requests and preferred shifts when assigning to improve employee satisfaction.


  • Minimize overtime: Prioritizes reducing hours beyond standard work time to keep your labor budget in check.


  • Cost-to-sales ratio: Assigns shifts based on total compensation, including wages and commissions, compared to actual sales performance.


  • Maximize sales:💡Recommended for POS. Prioritizes staff with the highest historical "Sales per Labor Hour" during peak times.


Optimization presets for your schedule


Select up to three of these optimization presets. Choose the most impactful ones for your business.


➡️ When choosing more than one optimization preset, select the relative importance of each one using a simple 'points' system.


For example, you can choose a priority of "Minimize overtime 20%, Cost-to-sales ratio 40%, Maximize sales 40%." with a ratio of 5, 10, 10 respectively




Step 4: Run the AI Scheduler and Review the "Draft" Mode


➡️ Click Create Schedule to start the AI Scheduler.


Let the Scheduler run and find the optimal schedule for that week.


Once an optimal schedule is found, the AI presents a Draft schedule. The shifts will appear on the calendar as draft shifts that are not visible to your team.

Read more about draft shifts in How to create a schedule


AI Scheduling might take some time, up to a few minutes.


➡️ If you aren't happy with the result, either click Undo on the popup message, or click Actions - Revert to published to return the week to its last published version.



Make any necessary manual modifications to the AI Scheduler draft.


➡️ Once you're ready, click Publish Schedule to finalize the schedule and notify your team!



Troubleshooting & Common Questions


Can I protect shifts I've already assigned?

Yes. Any shift you manually assigned before opening the AI panel is considered "Locked" by default. The AI will build the rest of the week around those assignments.


Does the AI know who is best at sales?

If you are using Easyteam for Shopify POS, yes! The AI pulls Sales data directly from your Shopify orders and staff attribution data from Easyteam. When you choose the 'Maximize Sales' preset, it automatically places your top-performing staff during your busiest historical hours.


Why did the AI Scheduler fail?

This usually happens because of "Required Rules" that cannot be followed. For example, if you have a shift on Sunday morning but all qualified staff have already reached their 40-hour weekly cap or have requested that day off, the AI will show you an error message with the issues to be fixed.





If you have questions about how the AI engine calculates your specific roster, don't hesitate to reach out. You can find the chat bubble in the bottom right corner ❤️

Updated on: 15/03/2026