How to Set Up Employee Schedules on Mac

Kwilio Scheduling pairs a full-featured desktop app for managers with a focused mobile app for staff, kept in sync through a secure cloud. This guide walks you through setting up your organization, adding employees, and publishing your first schedule from the Mac desktop app.

Step 1: Create Your Organization

When you first launch Kwilio Scheduling on Mac, you'll create an organization. This is the top-level container for everything — your employees, locations, and schedules.

Enter your business name to get started. Your data is stored in Kwilio's secure, encrypted cloud and synced to every device on your team — nothing is kept only on a single machine.

Step 2: Add Locations

Before adding employees, set up your Locations — the physical places where shifts take place. Each location can have GPS coordinates, which power geofenced clock-in on the mobile app.

Open the sidebar and navigate to Settings → Locations to add them. You can create as many as you need.

Step 3: Invite Your Employees

Each employee gets their own profile with a name, role, and pay rate. To add someone:

1. Open Staff in the sidebar.
2. Click Add.
3. Fill in the employee's name, role, and hourly rate.
4. Send them an invite. They'll receive an email invitation and sign in on the Kwilio mobile app to join your organization.

Once they accept, their device syncs with your schedule automatically.

Step 4: Build a Schedule

To create shifts:

1. Open the Schedule view and pick the week.
2. Use New Shift to set start/end times, location, and the assigned employee — or drag staff onto open slots.

For roles that repeat — a barista every Saturday morning, a manager every weekday opening — use recurring shift patterns to define the shift once and let it populate weeks ahead automatically.

Tip: On Mac, you can also paste rough shift notes and let Kwilio's on-device AI turn them into structured shifts for you. That parsing runs locally on your machine.

Step 5: Publish and Notify

When your schedule is ready, publish it. Employees receive a push notification showing their upcoming shifts. Changes you make later sync in real time across every device in the organization.

Why Managers Use the Desktop App, Staff Use Mobile

Kwilio Scheduling gives each role the right tool:

• The desktop app (macOS today, with more platforms on the way) provides the full admin view — build schedules, manage payroll settings, review time entries, run reports, and configure policies.
• The mobile app (iOS and Android) gives staff a streamlined interface for viewing their schedule, clocking in and out, and requesting open shifts.

Both share the same secure cloud backend, so changes made on any device appear everywhere within moments.

Tips for a Smooth Launch

• Set pay rates when adding employees — Kwilio tracks hours against rates for payroll reports, so accurate rates from day one save you manual corrections later.
• Configure overtime thresholds in your payroll settings before the first pay period.
• Enable photo verification if your business requires proof-of-presence at clock-in. Staff take a selfie when clocking in, which is stored with the time entry.
• Test the invite flow with yourself first — install Kwilio on your phone, accept an invite as a test employee, and verify the schedule appears correctly before onboarding your whole team.

With your organization set up and your first schedule published, your team's hours, clock-ins, and payroll data all flow through one secure system you control.