Roster Champion User Manual
Everything you need to use every feature, organised by roster type. If you get stuck inside the app, you can also just ask RC — the built-in assistant knows everything in this manual and can walk you through it in plain English.
Getting Started
Roster Champion works the same way across web, iPhone/iPad, Android, Windows, and Mac — sign in once and your rosters stay in sync on every device.
Create your account
- Open the app and choose Sign In.
- Sign in with Google, Apple, or an email address and password.
- New accounts start on the free plan — no card required.
Create your first roster
- From the roster switcher, choose the roster type you need: Work, Sports, Household, or Academic/Vocational.
- Follow the setup wizard for that roster type — each one asks a few short questions (team size, sport, household members, or subjects) and builds a starting layout for you.
- You can create more than one roster and switch between them at any time using the roster switcher in the top toolbar.
Work Roster
The Work Roster is built for shift-based teams: rotating patterns, leave, swaps, attendance, timesheets, and payslips.
The roster grid
- Staff are listed as rows, dates as columns. Each cell shows a shift code (e.g. D = Day, N = Night, AL = Annual Leave, TRN = Training).
- Tap a cell to change that day's shift, add an activity, or view details.
- Swipe left/right (or use the arrows) to move between weeks.
- Long-press a shift to drag and copy it to other days.
- Tap the Roster tab a second time (or use the focus icon) to enter Focus mode, which hides the toolbar for a clean, distraction-free view — useful for presenting the roster or working on a small screen. Tap again to exit.
Pattern Editor
The Pattern Editor sets the repeating weekly cycle that the whole roster is built from.
- Open it from the Roster workspace toolbar.
- Add or remove weeks, edit each day's shift code, align the pattern to today, and save named patterns you can reuse later.
- Use Apply to Date Range to apply the pattern only to a chosen period, and Analyze Pattern to review fairness and coverage.
- Tap Auto-Generate in the Pattern Editor toolbar to jump straight into the auto-generate roster wizard (Quick Start, Template Builder, Voice Create, or Expert Mode) if you'd rather have the app build a pattern for you instead of building one cell-by-cell.
Staff Management
Staff Management is the hub for people, attendance, hours, and pay. It has several tabs:
- Staff — records, contact details, employment type, and leave balance for each person.
- Tick Sheet — daily attendance and book-on status. Turn on Auto book-on in the advanced settings to confirm eligible shifts automatically.
- Timesheet — weekly hours per staff member, calculated from shift times.
- Payslip — pay calculation per staff member.
- AL Summary — annual leave balances and requests.
Timesheet — editing hours
The weekly timesheet is generated automatically from the roster, but you have two ways to correct it if the auto-generated hours need adjusting:
- Edit Times (whole week): tap the pencil "Edit Times" quick action to open every day in the current week at once and adjust start/end times.
- Tap a single day: tap directly on a day's Start or End time in the timesheet to open a quick single-day editor — faster when you only need to fix one day.
- Use the Settings & export options (tune icon) for weekly signoff, logo, and PDF/CSV/print export.
Payslip — editing pay and currency
- Edit pay profile: open Payslip Settings (tune icon) → Edit pay profile for the full set of pay fields (base pay, overtime, deductions, tax, National Insurance, pension, and more).
- Quick edit: tap the Quick edit button on the Payslip tab for a fast dialog covering just the base pay rate plus tax/NI/pension percentages — handy when you only need to tweak a number or two.
- Currency: tap the currency button (e.g. "GBP") on the Payslip tab for a quick currency switcher, or use the currency toggle inside Payslip Settings. Whichever currency you choose is remembered as your default from then on — it will not reset to Auto or USD the next time you open the tab.
- Custom deductions, tax auto-suggestion by country, and a company logo for exported payslips are also available from Payslip Settings.
Leave, swaps, and planning
- Leave covers annual leave, sick leave, TOIL, and unpaid leave. AL Summary is the leave hub.
- Shift swaps route through the Ops area: propose a swap, get it approved, and the roster updates automatically.
- Planning (inside Ops) manages tasks and activities across three tabs — Active (today's tasks), Ghost (unassigned placeholder tasks, which auto-expire after 7 days if never assigned), and Completed (finished tasks, auto-removed after 30 days). Create a task from Planning → Active → New Activity, or by tapping a shift cell on the roster grid → Add Activity.
Sports Roster
The Sports Roster manages fixtures, squads, and match-day roles for team and individual sports.
- Fixtures — add upcoming fixtures with date, venue, and opponent. Past fixtures store results for later reference.
- Lineup/Squad — select your starting lineup and bench (or entries/runners for individual sports) for a fixture.
- Availability — mark players as available, unavailable, or injured; RC AI and the readiness view use this to flag risk before a fixture.
- Gameplan — save formation, objectives, and set-play notes for a fixture.
- Live Game — a live scoreboard for match day. You can end the match or keep it running live in the background until full time, and stoppage/injury time can be any custom length.
- Pitch/field view — a visual, drag-and-drop layout of your selected lineup on the pitch, field, court, ring, or mat, matching your sport.
- The app adapts its terminology to the sport you pick (e.g. "lineup" and "bench" for football, "entries" and "runners" for racing) so the wording always matches what you're used to.
Household Rota
The Household Rota is built for families, flat-shares, and shared homes — a fair way to split chores and stay on top of the home.
- Tasks — a shared cleaning/duty list with daily, weekly, and monthly frequencies. Tick a task off when it's done.
- 5-Minute Dash — a room-by-room, time-blocked task coach for quickly clearing small chores.
- Points, stars, and rewards — a leaderboard keeps the split fair; check the Fairness view to see who's carrying the heaviest load and rebalance with one tap.
- Bin collections — set your collection day(s) and cadence (including alternating Week A/Week B) so bin-day reminders are always correct.
- Home Alerts — post a quick alert (front door left open, window open, parcel arrived, and more) so every housemate sees it; mark it resolved once sorted.
- House Notes — pin shared notes for the household to see.
- Landlord toolkit (for landlord-managed households) — maintenance checklists, repair tracking, a warranty binder, budgeting, and tenant/rent tracking.
- Housemates who join with a shared access code can tick tasks, add notes and alerts, and update their own details without needing a full account.
Academic / Vocational Roster
This roster type covers school, college, university, apprenticeships, and vocational training — timetables, deadlines, and shared rotas.
- Subjects/modules — add each subject, module, course, or training area you're tracking, with a weekly-hours target.
- Timetable — add lessons, lectures, labs, seminars, or independent study blocks to a weekly timetable.
- Tasks — assignments, coursework, revision, exam prep, projects, portfolio evidence, and applications, each with a due date and priority.
- Focus blocks — protect time on your timetable to work on a specific task.
- Events — assessments, showcases, site visits, and other one-off academic/vocational events.
- Rotas — presentation order, equipment turns, project leads, and other shared turn-based duties within a study group or class.
- Teacher toolkit (for the Teacher home view) — attendance, gradebook, assignments, trips, and fees.
RC AI Assistant
RC is the built-in assistant available inside every roster type. Ask it questions in plain English, or tell it what to change — it understands the current roster's data and can make the change for you.
- Ask a question: "Who's working Friday?", "How much annual leave does Sam have?", "What's due today?" — RC answers directly from your roster's data.
- Ask for a change: "Put John on days Monday", "Give Sarah annual leave 25th to 28th", "Mark the kitchen clean" — RC makes the change and confirms what it did.
- Ask how to do something: "How do I edit a payslip?", "What's a ghost task?", "How do I add a fixture?" — RC explains the feature and, where possible, opens the right screen for you.
- Voice: tap the microphone icon and say "RC" followed by your request, or type instead if you prefer.
Voice settings
RC AI's voice is female by default. To adjust it, open Settings → RC AI Voice:
- Enable/disable voice and always-listening mode.
- Choose a voice from the available online or on-device voices.
- Adjust speed with the voice speed slider (0.5x–2x).
- Mute voice output if you want RC to keep listening and responding in text only.
Settings & Account
- Shift Configuration — set start/end times and break lengths for each shift code; used by auto book-on and payslip calculations.
- Notifications — alerts, reminders, sound, and vibration for roster changes, approvals, and reminders.
- Public Holidays — choose your country/region; holidays can auto-sync into the roster.
- Appearance — switch between light, dark, and themed colour schemes.
- RC AI Voice — see the RC AI section above.
- Account — manage sign-in details, and delete your account from Settings → Delete Account if you ever need to.
Troubleshooting & Help
- Fastest option: ask RC AI directly — it can explain any feature in this manual and, for many questions, take the action for you.
- Offline or sync issues: the app keeps working offline and syncs automatically once you're back online.
- Still stuck? Visit the Contact page for support, or check the FAQ for common questions.