Quickstart: ship your first schedule — Timely Docs

This is the shortest path from "I just heard of Timely" to "my team has the schedule on their phone." Five steps, ~10 minutes.

1. Sign up

Go to trytimely.com/signup and fill in your name, business name, email, and a password. Hit Start 7-day free trial.

You'll land on Stripe Checkout to enter a payment method. No charge happens today — the card is just on file so the trial converts seamlessly. Cancel anytime in one click from your billing settings; we send a reminder three days before the trial ends.

Why we ask for a card up front. Trials with no card collect a lot of low-intent signups who use the product for a week and disappear. Asking for a card filters for people who actually intend to keep using Timely. If that's you — welcome.

2. Add your employees

After Checkout you'll land on the schedule. Click Add Employee in the top-right and enter their name, role, and phone number. The phone number is what enables SMS shift alerts; if you skip it, that employee just won't get them.

Two faster options if you have more than ~5 employees:

CSV import at /dashboard/team → "Upload CSV". One row per employee.
Square sync — if you already use Square POS, connect it under Settings → Integrations and pull the roster automatically.

3. Set up SMS alerts (optional)

If you want employees to get a text reminder before each shift, two things have to be true:

They have a phone number on file.
Their SMS opt-in toggle is on (default: off).

Toggle it per-employee on the Team page, or in bulk during CSV import.

The default reminder fires 30 minutes before each shift. You can edit the wording at Settings → Notifications → "Shift alert" tab. See SMS opt-in for the full detail.

4. Build the week

On /dashboard/schedule, click any cell to open the shift editor — pick start, end, and an optional break. The grid shows hours per day per employee in the right column.

If you want a head start, two shortcuts:

Smart Copy (on Pro+) — duplicates last week's schedule into this one. Time-off periods are excluded automatically.
AI Scheduler — describe your week in plain English ("3 closers Friday and Saturday, no one over 35 hours") and Timely drafts the schedule. Available on all plans during the free trial.

5. Publish

Click Publish in the top-right. Pick which employees to send to (default: everyone with a shift this week). Each employee gets an email with a PDF of their schedule and, if they're SMS-opted-in, a text message.

Check the publish flow:

The text reads as the publish SMS template, not the shift-alert template — they're different. See Publishing.
The Send SMS Alert toggle on the schedule editor controls whether the pre-shift reminder fires for that week. Default: matches the employee's sms_opt_in setting.

What's next

Invite your team — bring on co-managers so the whole burden isn't on you.
Time off (manager view) — set up the Requests inbox and let employees text in PTO.
Set up rules — get warned before you publish a schedule with overtime or rest-period violations.