Setup Wizard - PlanFast Wiki

What is the Setup Wizard?

The Setup Wizard is the guided onboarding process that starts automatically after registration. It walks you through everything PlanFast needs to run your schedule automatically — industry, departments, shifts, qualifications, employees, absence rules and AutoPilot.

You can pause anytime

If you close the wizard, PlanFast will ask at your next login: "You have an unfinished setup process. Do you want to continue?" You'll resume right where you stopped.

The steps at a glance

1. Industry

Pick your industry (e.g. hospitality, retail, gas station, services). PlanFast suggests matching departments, shift patterns and qualifications.

2. Company info

Company name and a few essentials about size.

3. Working days

Which weekdays does work happen on? Used to compute weekly capacity for the demand check.

4. Departments

Create your departments (e.g. service, kitchen, bar). Adopt or adjust the industry suggestions.

5. Shifts

Define your standard shifts as templates — e.g. early shift 6 a.m.–2 p.m., late shift 2 p.m.–10 p.m. Same or different per department. Optionally with rotation (AB, ABC, groups).

6. Qualifications

Optional: define qualifications required for certain shifts (e.g. "Barista", "Cashier", "Shift Lead"). More in Departments & Qualifications.

7. Employees

Add your team — name, department, weekly hours and (optionally) qualifications. You can add employees as placeholders without an account. When they later join via access code, PlanFast suggests merging.

8. Absences

Who can approve absences, how much vacation does the team get? Defaults you can adjust anytime.

9. AutoPilot

Set when and how often the AutoPilot adds, publishes and assigns shifts. Minimum rest time between shifts is set here too. Details: AutoPilot.

10. Done

Overview of your settings, confirmation — and the first cycle starts.

Capacity check in the wizard

PlanFast automatically verifies during setup whether your team size matches the shift demand:

Peak demand vs. team size: If your schedule needs e.g. 8 people simultaneously but you only have 6 employees, PlanFast warns: "Too few employees scheduled".
Recommendation: At 5 working days per week more employees are recommended so everyone gets enough days off.
Resolutions: Add employees or reduce shift demand — both possible directly from the warning.

You can still continue

The warning is a hint, not a blocker. If you know that some shifts may stay understaffed, finish the wizard normally — you can adjust employees or demand later anytime.

After the wizard

Once you finish the wizard, everything is set up:

Departments, qualifications and shift templates are in place.
Your team is in the system (real accounts or placeholders).
The first AutoPilot cycle is scheduled — adding, publishing and assignment now happen automatically.

Next steps:

Have employees join

Share access code or QR with the team — see Invite Employees.

Collect availability

Ask the team to set availability — significantly improves algorithm accuracy. See Availability.

Review the first AutoPilot adding

When the first cycle runs, you can quickly review the added shifts and adjust demand before publishing.