Tags are custom labels you stick on employees to group them. Examples: Barista, Opener, Closer, Manager on Duty, Cert: Food Handler. Each tag has a color so you can spot it on the schedule grid.
Tags do four things:
- Visual grouping on the schedule and team pages.
- Filter — find all employees with the
Closertag in one click. - Schedule rules — "must have at least 2 employees with the
Openertag every weekday morning" (Pro+). - AI scheduler hints — describe your week using tags ("3 closers Friday").
Creating tags
Settings → Tags → "Add tag". Name it, pick a color. That's it.
You can use a tag's name in casual prose anywhere in the schedule editor (the AI scheduler treats tags as first-class concepts), but only employees who have the tag assigned to them will count for rules.
Assigning tags
Two ways:
- One employee at a time — Team → click an employee → toggle tags in the side panel.
- Bulk — Team → select multiple employees with the checkbox column → "Apply tag…" in the bulk action bar.
Renaming and merging tags
Tag names are user-facing labels — you can rename them anytime without breaking anything. Internally they're keyed by UUID, not by name.
If you accidentally created Bar and Bartender as separate tags and want to combine them, use Merge on the Tags page. It reassigns every employee + every rule reference from Bar to Bartender, then deletes Bar. Atomic, no data loss.
Deleting tags
Settings → Tags → click the tag → Delete. If the tag is in use (assigned to employees, referenced by a rule, mapped from an integration), Timely refuses the delete and offers to merge it into a different tag instead — or you can confirm "delete anyway" and it'll detach.
Integration-managed tags
Tags synced from external systems (e.g., Square role names) are marked with their source. You can rename the user-facing label safely; the integration matches by internal key, so renaming Cashier to Front of House doesn't break Square sync.