Timely docs
Everything you need to run Timely — onboarding, day-to-day scheduling, integrations, billing, and the answers to the questions that come up after week one.
Getting started
Sign up, build your first schedule, and invite your team.
Welcome to Timely
What Timely is, who it's for, and how to read these docs.
Quickstart: ship your first schedule
Sign up → add employees → build a week → publish, in under 10 minutes.
Signup & free trial
How the 7-day Pro trial works, what gets locked when it ends, and how billing kicks in.
Inviting your team
Add managers and other admins. Roles, scopes, and what each one can do.
Core concepts
The vocabulary Timely uses. Useful when you're trying to figure out why something behaves the way it does.
Organization & locations
How your account is structured. One org, one or more locations underneath it.
Employees vs. profiles
Why the person who signs in and the person who gets scheduled are two different records.
Roles & permissions
Owner, manager, employee. What each role can see and do.
Tags
Color-coded labels for segmenting employees — used in scheduling, filtering, and rules.
Schedule weeks & shifts
How a published week of shifts is stored and why dates are date-only (not timestamps).
Data model — the four axes
Designation, Tags, Subjects, and Punch fields — orthogonal-but-relatable concepts. Pick the right one for your need.
Time off
How time-off requests flow through pending → approved/denied, and what they affect.
Break policies
Whether breaks are paid or unpaid, and how the choice flows into payroll.
Plans & trial
What's on each tier, what gates lift when you upgrade, and what happens if you downgrade.
Building schedules
Day-to-day work in the schedule grid.
Build a schedule
Add shifts, edit times, drag to copy. Keyboard shortcuts and bulk edits.
Smart Copy
Duplicate last week into next week in one click. What gets copied, what doesn't.
AI Scheduler
Describe your week in plain English and let Timely draft the schedule.
Schedule rules
Enforce policies (max hours, rest periods, required tags) with WARN or BLOCK actions.
Publishing (email + SMS)
What employees see when you hit Publish, and how to customize the templates.
Exports (CSV, PDF, calendar feed)
Take the schedule out of Timely — for printing, payroll, or syncing to Google/Apple Calendar.
Team management
Roster, contact info, time off, and SMS commands employees can text.
Adding employees
Manually, via CSV, or by sync from Square/Gusto.
Bulk import (CSV)
The CSV format we accept and how dedupe works.
SMS opt-in
How shift alerts and publish SMS respect employee opt-in.
Time off (manager view)
Approving / denying / editing time-off requests, and how they flow into the schedule.
Text-to-Timely (employee SMS commands)
Employees can text the Timely number to request time off in plain English. How it works and what's parseable.
Time tracking
Clock-in/out (SMS-link or kiosk), the timesheets review queue, and the job-coding layer above it for verticals that need more than 'when'.
Clock-in & out
Two ways your team can punch — SMS link with GPS verification, or shared kiosk with a 4-digit PIN.
Timesheets
Review, edit, approve, and export the time entries your team submits. Audit trail on every edit.
Job coding & subjects
Track what your team is working on, not just when. Custom punch fields + the universal Customer/Project/Member axis.
Integrations
Connect the systems you already use.
Integrations overview
What we sync, where the connection lives, and how to revoke.
Square
Pull employees and timecards from Square POS.
Gusto
Push hours, OT, and PTO to Gusto for payroll.
QuickBooks
Send labor cost data to QuickBooks Online.
Calendar feeds
Subscribe to your schedule from Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook.
Reports & analytics
What's been scheduled vs. what actually happened.
Billing
Subscription, invoices, and what changes between plans.
FAQ
The most common questions, answered.