Odoo Planning: Shift Scheduling Software for SMBs

What it does

What Odoo Planning does

Odoo Planning is the Enterprise app that schedules shifts and assignments for hourly staff, project work, or any operation where people need to be at specific places at specific times. Each employee has their availability; each shift has its requirements; the manager drags shifts onto the calendar and Odoo handles conflict checking, overtime alerts, shift swapping, and notification to the right person when their schedule changes.

Restaurants and retail running shift schedules, service businesses dispatching technicians, healthcare practices scheduling clinicians, manufacturing shops on multi-shift operations, and any business with hourly or shift-based workforce uses it. You can test Odoo Planning free on the Odoo trial; pricing kicks in only if you install more than one Odoo app.

For Odoo's own product overview, see Odoo's official documentation.

How it works

The day-to-day flow

Setup starts on the working schedule and the roles. Each employee has a working schedule (the days and hours they are available to work) and a role or set of roles they can fill (server, line cook, cashier, dispatcher). Each shift requirement specifies the role, the start time, the end time, the location, and the number of people needed. From there, the manager opens the planning Gantt view and drags shifts onto the calendar, assigning each one to a specific employee or leaving it open for staff to claim.

The Gantt view shows the whole team's week (or month) with employees on the rows and time across the columns. Filled shifts show in colour per role; unfilled shifts show as open slots; conflicts (an employee assigned to two overlapping shifts) flag in red. Drag a shift to move it; resize a shift to change its duration; drop a shift on an employee row to reassign. The manager publishes the schedule and employees get a notification with their week's shifts.

From the employee side, the schedule is visible on their profile and in the mobile app. An employee who cannot work an assigned shift can request a swap with another qualified employee; the swap request lands on the original employee's manager for approval. Employees can claim open shifts that match their role and availability without the manager assigning them, useful for restaurants and retail where shifts are posted and filled by staff bidding.

In this module

What's inside Odoo Planning

Drag-and-Drop Shift Scheduling

Drag shifts onto the Gantt calendar to assign them to employees. Drag to move, resize to change duration, drop on a different row to reassign. The interface is built for visual scheduling, not form-by-form entry.

Role-Based Assignment

Each employee has a role or set of roles they can fill. Shifts have role requirements. Only employees with the right role can be assigned to a shift, and the system flags assignments that violate role compatibility. A multi-role employee (a server who also tends bar) can be scheduled in either role.

Conflict and Overtime Alerts

Assigning an employee to two overlapping shifts flags as a conflict in red. Assignments that push an employee past their working schedule (over their weekly hours, into a day off, into Time Off-approved absences) flag as overtime warnings. The manager sees the conflicts before publishing the schedule.

Shift Templates and Recurring Patterns

Common shift patterns (Monday-Friday 9-to-5, weekend evening shifts, holiday coverage) save as templates. Apply the template to a date range and the shifts populate automatically. Recurring shifts repeat on a weekly or monthly basis without manual recreation.

Open Shifts and Self-Service Claim

Shifts can be posted as open instead of assigned. Qualified employees see open shifts in their app and claim them. The manager sees the claim and confirms. Useful for restaurants and retail where shift coverage is filled by staff bidding rather than top-down assignment.

Shift Swapping Workflow

An employee who cannot work an assigned shift requests a swap with another qualified employee. The swap request lands on the original employee's manager for approval (or auto-approves if configured). Once approved, both employees see the updated schedule and the manager has a record of the change.

Notifications on Schedule Changes

When the manager publishes the schedule, every assigned employee gets a notification with their week's shifts. Mid-week changes (a shift moved, swapped, or added) trigger a notification to the affected employees so they have the current schedule on their phone.

Multi-Site and Multi-Role Operations

Companies with multiple sites (multi-location retailer, multi-restaurant group, multi-clinic practice) can plan each site's schedule independently while sharing the employee roster across sites. An employee can be scheduled at one site this week and a different site next week without leaving the same database.

Time Off and Availability Integration

Approved time off blocks the employee's availability on the planning calendar so the manager cannot accidentally schedule them on a day off. Public holidays and mandatory closures block the whole team's availability. Personal availability constraints (an employee can only work weekday evenings) honour through the same mechanism.

Reports on Coverage and Cost

Pivot and graph reports break planning data down by site, role, shift type, period, and employee. The dashboard shows scheduled hours, projected payroll cost, overtime exposure, and coverage gaps. Managers planning a busy week see the financial implications before publishing.

Built for

Is Odoo Planning right for your team?

Outgrowing the entry-level tools

SMBs whose data lives in QuickBooks, HubSpot Free, or Excel spreadsheets that were set up when the business was smaller. The team now spends hours building reports by hand and reconciling between tools every month-end.

Capacity in Monday, Airtable, or Smartsheet

Operations or services teams tracking who is doing what in a project tool that does not know about timesheet hours, leave, or contract end dates.

Operations across multiple tools

Retail, manufacturing, mechanical, or professional services businesses with 10 to 200 employees running on a patchwork of point tools. The team wants one database for the whole company instead of Zapier holding it together.

Bundle

Apps people often run with Odoo Planning

Odoo Planning works with Odoo Employees as the employee roster, the role assignments, and the working schedule. Odoo Time Off blocks scheduled work on approved leave days. With Odoo Payroll (Enterprise), scheduled hours flow to the payroll calculation alongside actual attendance. With Odoo Attendances, the planned shift is the baseline against which actual punches are compared (a planned 8-hour shift that punches in late and out early flags a partial shift). With Odoo Project, planning a project task with assigned hours rolls up to each assignee's Planning view so a project deadline that lands on a vacation is caught early. With Odoo Field Service, planning a service visit assigns the right technician with the right skills for the customer's site.

Comparison

Odoo Planning vs the alternatives

List-price comparison against the resource planning tools Calibre most commonly migrates customers off. The deciding factor is usually integration, not the line-item price. Odoo Planning sits on the same database as every other Odoo app you install, so the data flows between modules without separate bridges.

Tool	Per month (annual plan)	What you get
Odoo Planning	CA$35.20/user/mo	All Odoo apps included, free 15-day trial
Smartsheet Business	US$32/user/mo	Resource Planning only
Airtable Team	US$24/user/mo	Resource Planning only
Monday.com Pro	US$19/user/mo	Resource Planning only
ClickUp Business	US$12/user/mo	Resource Planning only

Annual-commitment rate where published; monthly list rate otherwise. Sourced from vendor pricing pages, 2026-05. Plans and regions vary. Full cost calculator on the Odoo overview page.

Pricing

What Odoo Planning costs

One App Free

CA$0

forever

One app, unlimited users
Multi-company allowed
Odoo Online hosting
Dependent apps included free

If Odoo Planning is the only Odoo app you install

Most teams pick this

Standard

CA$35.20

/user/month, billed yearly

Every Odoo app included
Odoo Online hosting
Free 15-day trial
iOS + Android mobile app

Start free trial →

Charged monthly: CA$44/user. Yearly billing saves 20%.

Custom

CA$55

/user/month, billed yearly

Everything in Standard
Studio (no-code customizer)
Multi-company management
Hosting: Online, Odoo.sh, or on-premise
External API access

Choose this when you need custom layouts or multi-company management.

Calibre Implementation

Quote

phase-by-phase, in writing

Scoping, configuration, training
Data migration from your current tool
Named engineer through go-live and support

Book the call →

Free 45-minute scoping call. Quote in writing before any code ships.

Pricing source: Odoo's published Standard and Custom plans as of 2026-05. Calibre quotes in CAD; conversion from Odoo's local pricing in your region may vary.

Questions

Common questions about Odoo Planning

Is Odoo Planning free?

Odoo Planning is part of the paid Odoo Enterprise tier (around CA$35.20 per user per month billed annually for the full Odoo suite). You can test it free on the Odoo 15-day trial alongside every other app. Odoo's one-app-free rule applies: if Planning is the only Odoo app you install on Odoo Online, you pay nothing for the software, forever. Because Planning works best with Employees and Time Off alongside, most deployments install multiple apps and land on the paid Standard plan.

What's the difference between Odoo Planning in Community and Enterprise?

Odoo Planning is part of the Enterprise tier. There is no Community version. The Gantt-style drag-and-drop scheduling, role-based assignment, open shifts with self-service claim, shift swapping, conflict and overtime alerts, and the multi-site planning all live in Enterprise. Community users who want scheduling can use Calendar's basic event creation, but the operational shift-planning workflow is Enterprise-only.

Can we migrate our existing shift schedule and templates into Odoo?

Yes. Odoo Planning accepts CSV and Excel imports for the employee roster with roles and working schedules, historical shift records (date, employee, role, hours, location), shift templates, open-shift configurations, and your prior tool's recurring patterns. The work is rarely the upload itself, it is mapping your existing role codes and shift types to Odoo's structure cleanly. Calibre handles the mapping during the rollout.

Does Odoo Planning connect with Time Off, Attendance, and Payroll?

Yes to all three. Time Off is automatic: approved leaves block the employee's availability on the planning calendar so they cannot be accidentally scheduled. Attendance is the actual-versus-planned comparison: a planned shift that punches in late and out early shows the gap. Payroll uses planned hours plus actual hours for the payslip calculation; salaried employees on a fixed schedule pay the planned hours, hourly employees pay the actual hours, and overtime applies per the rules on the working schedule.

Can employees see their schedule and request shift swaps from their phone?

Yes. The Odoo mobile app (iOS and Android) shows the employee's current schedule, open shifts they can claim, and a swap-request flow for shifts they cannot work. Push notifications fire when the manager publishes a new schedule or when an open shift in their role posts. The polished native mobile app is part of the Enterprise tier (Planning itself is Enterprise, so this is implicit).

Can we post open shifts and let staff claim them?

Yes. Mark a shift as open instead of assigned and qualified employees in the right role see it in their app. They claim the shift; the manager confirms; both sides see the updated schedule. Useful for restaurants and retail where the manager posts coverage requirements and staff bid for the shifts they want to work. Open-shift claims auto-respect employee availability so an employee can only claim a shift they can actually work.

Can we plan multi-site operations from one Odoo?

Yes. Multi-site planning runs each location's schedule independently while sharing the employee roster across sites. An employee available at multiple sites can be scheduled at site A this week and site B next week without leaving the same database. Each site's manager sees their own location's schedule; the regional manager sees the multi-site view rolled up. Roles can be site-specific or shared across sites depending on how the operation runs.

Working with Calibre

How long does a Calibre implementation typically take?

Single-module rollouts on an existing Odoo setup run 2-6 weeks depending on data migration scope. Greenfield Odoo with a multi-module rollout runs 4-16 weeks. Calibre commits to a written, phase-by-phase timeline after the free scoping call before any code is written.

How much does a Calibre implementation cost?

Cost depends on module scope, user count, custom work, and migration complexity. Calibre's posture is a written fixed-phase quote after the scoping call rather than an hourly engagement, so the cost is committed in writing before the first commit.

What happens to our data if we ever want to leave Odoo?

Everything exports. CSV, XML, or a full PostgreSQL database dump, yours on day one. Migrating off Odoo has been done before and it's not a one-way door.

Odoo Planning: shift scheduling software for SMBs