What is shift confirmation?
Requiring confirmation is an option when you publish your shifts. When you publish a shift with confirmation required, the team member assigned to the shift will be sent an email and SMS, and must either accept or decline the shift within a defined time period.
This time period may be customised by Location Managers and System Administrators in Location Settings.

If a team member does not confirm the shift by the defined time period, the shift will automatically become an Open Shift.
If the shift is confirmed, the employee will remain assigned to it, which will appear the same as a normal published shift.
If they decline the shift, you will be notified and the shift will appear as "DECLINED" on the roster.
If a team member has a phone number attached to their Deputy account, they will be sent an SMS message to confirm their shifts, as well as an email. If they do not have a phone number then they will only be sent an email. Read below for information on SMS costs
How do I implement shift confirmation?
1. Schedule your team members as you usually would on the Schedule page and then click on Publish Shifts.

2. Follow the steps to publish either updates or the full roster, then select your areas as usual.
3. On the next step Notifiy Staff, select the top option Notify (SMS) and ask for confirmation and click Publish.

On the schedule, you will now see that any shifts requiring confirmation have a YELLOW triangle on the right top corner of the shift to differentiate them from regular shifts.
If your team member confirms they can work the shift the YELLOW triangle will be removed and the shift will be coloured green.
If they decline the shift, the schedule will change to an EMPTY shift with a warning flag.
If you click on the shift then you can see it has been declined. If you need further information then you can also click on Shift Action > View Shift History to read the team member's comments they added when they declined the shift.

How do team members confirm their shifts?
There are several different ways team members can confirm their shifts when requested:
Confirming your shift via the Deputy mobile app on your phone
If you have push notifications switched on on your phone you will see the Deputy app will let you know you have shifts to confirm:

The instructions below show screenshots from an iOS phone, however, the steps are the same for Android phones.
1. Log in to the Deputy app and tap on Upcoming Shifts on the Home screen.
2. Shifts that your manager requires you to confirm have been marked in red with Confirm Shift. You can tap on Confirm all to confirm all shifts listed or scroll down the list to inspect and confirm them individually by tapping on a shift.

3. When the shift is open you can see Confirmation is Required. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap on Confirm Shift or Decline Shift as desired. If Decline is selected then you will need to provide a reason in the text box.

Confirming Your Shift Via Web Browser
1. Log into Deputy on your web browser.
2. On the Me tab, click on Upcoming Shifts. You can see in the example below that the Upcoming Shifts button has a red 1 to indicate that one shift needs confirmation.

3. You may need to scroll down to see them all if they are in the future. Next to shifts requiring confirmation, you will see a tick and a cross next to the shift.
4. Click the tick to confirm, or the cross to decline.
Note: if you decline the shift you cannot confirm it afterwards.

Confirming Your Shift Via Email
1. From your Inbox, open the email containing the shifts. If the notification of your scheduled shifts contains any shifts that your manager has asked you to confirm then you will need to click on the button that says Click here to confirm or Decline your shifts.
2. When you click on the link in the email, a web browser will open to display another page where you can confirm or decline the shifts.
3. Click the tick icon to confirm the shift or the cross icon to decline it. If Decline is selected then the you to provide a reason in the text box.
Note: If you decline the shift you cannot later confirm it.

Confirming Your Shift Via SMS
If your phone number is entered into Deputy, you may also be notified of shifts to confirm via SMS.
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Simply reply to the shift confirmation SMS with the unique confirmation code to confirm or decline the shifts displayed.

Are there additional costs with shift confirmation?
If a team member has a phone number attached to their Deputy account, they will be sent an SMS message to confirm their shifts, as well as an email. If they do not have a phone number then they will only be sent an email.
There are charges associated with any SMS message sent from your Deputy account. Charges are based on a per SMS message basis so some longer messages may be broken up into several messages since SMS messages have a character limit. System Administrators can also review their organisations SMS charges.
The charges incurred for each SMS sent from your account are:
- AUD$0.05 for both domestic and international
- 5p per SMS for both UK domestic and international
- USD$0.01 per SMS for domestic US customers or .7c for international customers paying in USD.
The ability to send SMS Notifications is turned ON by default.
The team member may also incur their own costs with their phone carrier in sending a shift confirmation SMS back to you but there is no cost from Deputy for receiving SMS replies in response to shift confirmations.
Please read SMS notifications for more information including how to block all SMS notifications if wish to avoid these additional charges.
If you do decide to block SMS messages asking team members to confirm shifts being sent from your account in this way, there there is no charge for sending the email or push notification asking your team members to confirm their shifts via email or the Deputy mobile apps.