Settings is where store managers and supervisors tune how Scheduling behaves for your store. This includes things like your schedule week, alerts, approval flow, overtime projections, breaks, labor targets, requests, and jobs.
A quick heads up. Settings is one modal screen with one Save button. If you close it without saving, your changes are lost.
Who can open Settings
You can open Settings if you are any role above Employee, for example:
Store manager
District manager
Regional manager
Company admin
Employees, and anyone assigned to the Employee access level, cannot open Settings.
Settings is available on web and mobile.
Where to find Settings
You can open Settings from either place:
Settings in the left navigation
More, then Settings
When Settings opens, you will see sections in this order:
General
Alerts
Schedule approval
Overtime calculation
Breaks
Labor model
Requests
Jobs
Recommended setup for most stores
If you want a simple starting point, this gets most teams running smoothly:
Set Start day of week to match your payroll week.
Set Work hours to match your typical open and close times.
Turn on Weekly hour limit alerts for your main crew roles.
Turn on Schedule approval if a supervisor reviews schedules.
Enable Overtime rules if you want overtime costs reflected in projections.
Enable Breaks if you want hour by hour costs to reflect unpaid time.
Keep Jobs clean and consistent. Hide anything you do not schedule.
Everything below explains what each section does, plus practical tips.
General
What it controls
General settings shape the basics of your schedule view and shift creation.
You can set:
Start day of week
All seven days are available.
Default shift length
In 30 minute increments.
Work hours
In 1 hour increments.
Guidance and recommendations
Start day of week: Match whatever your team uses for payroll, reporting, and weekly planning. Consistency matters more than the specific day.
Default shift length: Set this to your most common starting shift length, so creating shifts is faster. You can always adjust per shift.
Work hours: Set these to cover the full time you schedule people, not just when the doors are open. If managers or prep start earlier, include that.
Alerts
What alerts do
Alerts help you catch issues like weekly hour limits, availability conflicts, or time off conflicts. Alerts show up directly on shifts.
Alerts are off by default, so it is worth turning on the ones you care about.
How alerts appear on the schedule
Before publish: The shift shows a red outline and a red alert icon.
After publish: The shift background becomes a solid color. The alert icon is still there, but it is white to match the shift style.
If you tap or click a shift with an alert, you will see a banner that explains what the alert is and what needs attention.
Weekly hour limit alerts
These alerts show up while building the schedule, and they stay on the shift both before and after publish until the issue is resolved.
Two common options are:
Weekly hour limit
Alerts when a shift causes the employee to go over the weekly limit.
Warn when approaching weekly limit
This is an early warning.
Example: If the limit is 40 hours and you set the warning to 5 hours, the alert triggers at 35 hours.
Punch based email alerts
There are two alert options that send email based on time punches. These emails go to the store manager.
Timing is the same for every store, regardless of store time zone:
Runs daily at 5:00 a.m. Eastern time.
Built in alerts you will see automatically
Some alerts show up like any other alert on a shift, but they are not configurable in Settings. They are automatically generated.
These include:
Availability conflicts
Time off conflicts
Pending time off conflicts
Schedule approval
What it controls
Schedule approval adds a review flow where a store manager submits a schedule, then a supervisor approves it.
Who can turn it on
Any role above Employee, including store managers, can turn on schedule approval.
Who can approve schedules and turn it off
Only these roles can approve schedules and turn off approval:
District manager
Regional manager
Company admin
Who is the approver
The approver is typically the store supervisor, but the schedule can be approved by anyone above-store with access to the store.
Submit by and approve by reminders
These are reminders, not hard stops. They help keep the process moving.
Email behavior:
One hour before Submit by reminder goes to the store manager.
One hour before Approve by reminder goes to the supervisor.
Missed Submit by reminder goes to the store manager and the supervisor.
Missed Approve by reminder goes to the supervisor.
Today, reminders are email only. Push notifications are planned for later.
Guidance and recommendations
Turn on approval when schedules are reviewed across stores, or when you want accountability around publish timing.
Pick Submit by and Approve by times that fit how your week runs. For many teams, submitting a day or two before the schedule week starts gives enough time to review and adjust.
Overtime calculation
What it controls
Overtime settings let Expressway Schedule project overtime costs when building a schedule.
Supported options:
Weekly threshold
Example: 40 hours, multiplier 1.5
Daily threshold
Example: 8 hours, multiplier 1.5
You can enable both.
💡 Important limitation: Overtime settings affect schedule cost projections only. They do not change payroll.
Guidance and recommendations
If your payroll rules include weekly overtime, turn on the weekly threshold.
If your location also follows daily overtime, turn on the daily threshold too.
Use this to avoid surprises. It helps you see cost impact before you publish.
Breaks
What it controls
Break settings let you add breaks to shifts and reflect them in labor projections.
When enabled, breaks support:
Paid or unpaid selection
Duration in 5 minute increments
Start time in 15 minute increments
There is no default. The user chooses paid or unpaid, the duration, and then the start time.
💡 The break start time is not communicated to the employee. It is used only so Scheduling can apply the cost, or lack of cost, to the right hour in hour by hour projections.
Impact on labor projections
Breaks impact both:
The hour by hour cost breakdown
Labor hours shown in Scheduling
Guidance and recommendations
Turn on breaks if you rely on hour by hour projections and want them to reflect unpaid time more accurately.
Keep the break process simple for managers. Only add complexity if you truly need it.
Labor model
What it controls
Labor model settings control how Scheduling targets and labor math work for your store.
Stores can choose between:
Labor percent target
Sales per labor hour target
Non-service hours, what it means
A non-service hour is time scheduled for work that is not directly related to serving customers. For example, deep cleaning the floors, organizing storage areas, unloading deliveries, or other back of house tasks.
When non-service hours are used, they do not count toward the sales per labor hour calculation.
Example: If you have 4 labor hours scheduled in an hour, and 1 of those is tagged as non-service, then only 3 hours count toward sales per labor hour and target hours.
Labor chart
The labor chart is a company-level setting. It is not part of the store-level customer Settings experience. Labor charts can be enabled upon request.
Requests
Where employees can submit requests
Employees can submit requests on:
Web
Mobile
Shift trades and covers
If Restrict to same job is enabled, the system checks the employee’s assigned jobs in Scheduling. This includes jobs created in Scheduling, not only jobs from the POS.
Time off limits and rules
A few key behaviors to know:
Limit maximum requests per day is effectively a limit on approved requests per day. The limit is per store.
Limit maximum days in advance: If any day in a multi day request is outside the allowed window, the whole request is blocked.
Require advance notice: You can require notice by number of days, or by a specific day of the week. The day of week option applies only to the next scheduled week.
Guidance and recommendations
Use the per day limit to prevent too many people being out at once. Start simple, then adjust based on staffing.
Set days in advance to match how far out you publish schedules. If you publish two weeks out, requiring requests at least two weeks ahead keeps things predictable.
Use restrict to same job if you want trades and covers to stay within trained roles.
Jobs
Two types of jobs
You will see:
Jobs imported from the POS
Jobs created inside Scheduling
What you can and cannot do
POS imported jobs cannot be renamed or deleted.
POS imported jobs can be hidden.
Jobs created in Scheduling can be renamed, deleted, or hidden.
When a POS imported job is hidden, it disappears everywhere, including shift job selection and requests.
Shift colors
Shift colors are selected from a fixed palette of eight colors.
Guidance and recommendations
Hide anything you do not schedule. This keeps the schedule cleaner and reduces mistakes.
Keep job names consistent with how your team talks about stations and roles.
If you create jobs in Scheduling, keep the list short and purposeful. Too many options slows managers down.
Tips to avoid common mistakes
Make your changes, then tap Save before closing the modal.
Set your General settings first, because they affect how you build schedules every day.
Turn on only the alerts you will act on. Too many alerts can get ignored.
Remember that break start times are for cost calculations, not employee communication.
Overtime settings are for projections, not payroll rules or compliance.