Up and running in an afternoon
Seven steps from an empty workspace to your first closed payroll month. Nothing here needs an IT department — one ops person can do all of it.
- 1
Create your workspace
Register with your company name, your name and an email address. That's the whole form — your workspace starts on a 30-day free trial with up to 5 team members and no credit card. If you picked a paid plan on the pricing page first, secure checkout runs right after this step; otherwise you can choose a plan any time from inside the app.
- The person who registers becomes the workspace owner with full access.
- Yearly billing gets you 2 months free; checkout is handled securely by Paddle.
- 2
Add your company identity
On the Company page, set your company name and upload your logo. They appear on everything Shiftena sends and generates for you — HR emails to your team, and employment contract PDFs.
- No logo yet? A neutral default is used until you add one.
- 3
Create designations and roles
Designations are job titles (Designer, Accountant, Support). Roles decide what people can actually do, with granular permissions — and each role belongs to a designation. Create a designation first, then a role under it, ticking exactly the permissions that job needs.
- In a hurry? The Add User form offers inline shortcuts to create your first designation and role without leaving the page.
- Your own Super Admin role is system-managed and always has full access.
- 4
Invite your team
Add each person with their email, role and designation. You can set their weekend days (Sunday by default), timezone, birthday and documents. Everyone gets self-service access: they check in and out, request leave, see the work calendar and manage their own tasks.
- Seat limits follow your plan — the trial includes 5 members.
- 5
Run the daily flow
Employees check in when they start and check out when they finish, optionally answering the daily task questions you configure per person. Leave requests flow to HR for approval as paid or unpaid. Task boards keep project work moving, and at checkout employees can tick off the board tasks they completed that day.
- Managers verify completed tasks from the Task Management page, so a tick is a claim until it's accepted.
- 6
Close your first month
Give each employee a salary profile (base salary, currency, overtime rate). The Salary Overview page then computes each calendar month from real attendance and leave: worked hours, overtime, deductions and the amount due. Recalculate any time to refresh the numbers; Finalize when the month is done to lock it for payroll.
- Payslips export as branded PDFs, and every figure reconciles with the daily rate shown.
- 7
Switch on the extras when ready
Customize employment contracts (your own clauses and authorized signature) and generate signed-ready PDFs. On Growth and up, the desktop time tracker adds tracked work sessions with periodic screenshots and AI summaries. Storage Management shows exactly what's using space and can clean up automatically.
- Billing & Usage shows your plan, limits and usage meters at any time.
Ready to try it?
The free trial is the full product for 30 days — no credit card, and your data is kept even if you pause afterwards.