Plainwork / Catalogue / Turnkeep
A fair on-call rota for small teams, with a memory
Plan who is on call with weekend and holiday points, leave and part-timers, record swaps so favours are never forgotten, and share the rota as a calendar link. Free for up to 4 people; flat $6/month for the team.
- A planner that gives each shift to the available person with the lowest weighted load, counting weekends and holidays as heavier days
- Leave blocks whole shifts, part-timers take a smaller share, and gaps nobody can cover are listed instead of hidden
- Swaps recorded with date and note; points move to whoever actually covered, so later plans even things out
- A fairness table over the last 28 to 365 days with a warning above 25% of days on call
- Free plan: 4 people, 1 rota, 8 weeks ahead, 28 days of history, calendar file and CSV downloads
- Paid plan: 25 people on each of 5 rotas, 57 weeks ahead, 400 days of history, a live calendar link, a link per person and a who-is-on-now link, JSON export
- No email and no password: a private workspace link. It does not page anyone
Real output of the planner on a sample team of five (Dana takes half the load; Ben is on leave 2 to 6 November; 25 and 26 December are holidays), weekly shifts from 12 Oct to 28 Dec, Monday handover at 09:00 Europe/London. Ben's leave week went to Eli, and the weeks containing the holidays are worth more points.
| Week | On call | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Oct to 18 Oct | Ana | 9 |
| 19 Oct to 25 Oct | Ben | 9 |
| 26 Oct to 1 Nov | Chen | 9 |
| 2 Nov to 8 Nov | Eli | 9 |
| 9 Nov to 15 Nov | Dana | 9 |
| 16 Nov to 22 Nov | Ana | 9 |
| 23 Nov to 29 Nov | Ben | 9 |
| 30 Nov to 6 Dec | Chen | 9 |
| 7 Dec to 13 Dec | Ben | 9 |
| 14 Dec to 20 Dec | Ana | 9 |
| 21 Dec to 27 Dec | Eli | 12 (includes 2 holiday days) |
| Person | Shifts | Points | Fair share | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ana | 3 | 27 | 22.7 | +4.3 |
| Ben | 3 | 27 | 22.7 | +4.3 |
| Chen | 2 | 18 | 22.7 | -4.7 |
| Dana (50% share) | 1 | 9 | 11.3 | -2.3 |
| Eli | 2 | 21 | 22.7 | -1.7 |
Fair share is each person's slice of the 102 points handed out, scaled by their share of the load. The gap between the most and least loaded person after that scaling is 9 points. This is a sample run, not a customer's rota.
Made for
Who it's for
Fair over months, not just this plan
Each new plan counts what people have really worked, swaps included, so the person who covered Christmas is not drawn for the next bad week.
Honest about its limits
Small teams are on call often. Turnkeep shows each person's share of days and says so when it passes the 25% rule of thumb from Google's SRE book.
Plain flat pricing
$6 a month for the whole team, not per seat. The free plan is a complete planner for 4 people, and the one-off generator needs no workspace at all.
Your calendar, your alerting
Subscribe from Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, or read who is on now as JSON for a bot. Keep the pager you already use.
What's inside
Everything you get
How it works
From checkout to done
Buy
Open the app and create a free workspace; save the private link.
Open
Add your people, leave and holidays, then preview and apply a plan.
Use
Share the rota, record swaps as they happen, and re-plan when the weeks run low.
Questions
Good to know
Does Turnkeep page or alert anyone?
No. It plans, records and publishes the rota. Keep your existing alerting tool for notifications, and use the calendar or who-is-on-now link to point it at the right person.
What happens to my rota if I stop paying?
Nothing is deleted. Your shifts, swaps and leave stay stored and readable, and you can keep using the workspace within the free limits (4 people, 1 rota). Live calendar links stop working and you need to bring extra people or rotas within the free limits before saving changes. Only a workspace that has never been on the paid plan drops shifts and leave older than 28 days when it saves; once a workspace has been paid, nothing is removed automatically. If the payment check is down, saving is paused rather than saved at the wrong limits.
Who can see my team's data?
Anyone who has your private workspace link can read and change your rotas, anyone who has your paid key can do the same (the key opens the workspace it was first used with), and anyone who has a calendar link can see who is on call. Treat all three like a shared password. We store names, dates and notes you type, not email addresses. IP addresses are used only for a daily workspace-creation limit, as a keyed hash deleted the same day. You can delete a workspace and all its data yourself: Settings, Delete workspace.
How is the plan chosen?
Slot by slot, the shift goes to the available person whose weighted total would be lowest after taking it, with a small penalty for back-to-back shifts and a second pass that swaps pairs of shifts when that evens the totals. The same input always gives the same plan. The free generator page and the open-source engine use the same code.
Does it handle time zones and daylight saving?
Handover times are set in the team's time zone and calendar events are converted for each shift, so a week that spans a clock change is still handed over at the local time you chose. The rule is covered by automated tests, but check the first calendar entries after a clock change.
Is this legal or employment advice?
No. On-call pay, rest and working-time rules vary by country and employer. Turnkeep helps distribute the load; it does not tell you what you owe people.
What if it doesn't work for me?
If it doesn't work as described or you can't access it, email us within 14 days and we'll fix it or refund you. See the refund policy for details.
Turnkeep
Fair on-call and duty rota planner with swaps and a fairness table. Free for 4 people, $6/month flat for a team.
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