Shift Offers and How to Approve Them

Purpose

A shift offer lets an employee hand one of their assigned shifts to a coworker at the same work location who has no shift at that time. The hand-over needs your approval. Nothing changes on the schedule until an admin approves. This article explains the employee flow so you can support it, and the approval step you perform.

When to use this: an employee cannot work an assigned shift and has a willing coworker. Together with a swap, an offer is the only way an employee can give up a published shift, because there is no reject action on an assigned shift (see Managing Shifts). Every offer is recorded on the shift's history, which a text-message arrangement is not.

Who approves: users with Full Access to Employee Schedule for both employees involved (typically the Employer Admin, or any role granted that access).

How it works

1. The employee offers the shift in the UZIO Mobile App (there is no offer action on the web schedule): Schedule > My Shifts, open the shift, tap Offer, select one or more coworkers from the same work location, and confirm. The selected coworkers are notified.
2. A coworker accepts or rejects under Schedule > Shift Requests > Offer > Incoming Requests. The requester is notified either way. On acceptance the request moves to you.
3. You accept or reject on the scheduler: click the Need Approval icon at the top of the grid, choose Offer Shift Requests, review the employees and shift involved, and click Accept or Reject.
4. On acceptance, the system reassigns the shift to the coworker and notifies both employees by email and push.

Changing minds before approval:

• The requester can cancel a pending offer under Shift Requests > Offer > Your Requests. The original assignment stays.
• A coworker who accepted can cancel their acceptance under Incoming Requests. The requester is notified.

[Screenshot: Need Approval dropdown open, then the Offer Shift Requests window with Accept and Reject. Use demo data.]

Rules and notes

• Offers work within a work location. Employees cannot offer shifts across locations.
• The receiving employee must have no shift at that time.
• The shift is not reassigned until you approve. For same-day requests, approve promptly. Once the original employee has clocked in to the shift, the offer can no longer be approved.
• If you edit or delete the shift while an offer is pending, the offer is cancelled. The employees need to start again once the shift is republished.
• After approval, the shift's History (click the shift, then the History icon) shows the offer trail: requested, accepted, approved, with who acted and when.
• Notification texts include the shift time, date, original assignee, and new assignee.

Common problems

Why can't an employee offer their shift?

Offers close once the shift is underway. The app refuses with "You cannot swap or offer a shift that has already started." once the start time has passed, and with "You cannot swap or offer this shift because you have clocked in." if they have already punched in. Coverage for an in-progress shift is a manual fix on the grid: edit or reassign the shift yourself.

Why is my approval refused?

Two blocks can fire at the moment you accept, even though the offer looked fine when it was made:

• "This offer cannot be accepted because the employee has already clocked in the shift." The original assignee started working the shift after offering it. There is nothing left to hand over. Reject the request.
• "This offer cannot be accepted because it will cause overlapping shifts for {employee} ({shift times})." The receiving coworker picked up another shift in that window after accepting. Reject it, or clear the conflicting shift first.

Swap approvals run the same two checks on both employees and both shifts.

The offer was accepted, but the schedule hasn't changed

Working as designed. A coworker's acceptance only moves the request to you. Nothing changes until an admin accepts it under Need Approval > Offer Shift Requests. For same-day offers, act quickly or the shift starts while the request waits.

The offer vanished from everyone's Shift Requests

Someone edited or deleted the shift while the offer was pending. Editing or deleting a shift cancels every pending request on it. Once the shift is republished, the employee can offer it again.

I can see the request but can't act on it

Approving an offer requires Full Access to both employees' schedules. If either employee is outside your employee scope, or your Employee Schedule grant for them is View, the Accept and Reject buttons are unavailable. Ask a user who manages roles.

Related articles

• Getting Started with Scheduling
• Managing Shifts: Creating, Publishing, Editing, and Deleting
• Schedule Settings and Notifications: the shift-request notifications are event-driven and not configured there
• Creating and Filling Open Shifts
• Employee: Swapping, Offering, and Claiming Shifts