By J.R. Bookwalter Unless you’re on a regular nine-to-five work schedule, juggling ever-changing work shifts can be a pain. There is, of course, an app solution for taming this time-consuming beast, though, which makes your schedule easy to follow.Shifts is specifically designed for people who need to manage non-standard schedules, such as medical professionals or factory workers who don’t punch the clock on a traditional Monday through Friday routine. After creating one or more shifts — each with a unique name, icon, and color — adding them to a monthly calendar can be done in just a few taps.For hourly workers, Shifts can also use this data to offer a glimpse at your monthly earnings, which is a great addition, though it won’t help if you’re paid by the job. In that case, features such as a Today widget in Notification Center and reminders before the start of a shift are still very handy.The biggest drawback is that Shifts is currently an island unto itself — scheduled shifts are confined to the app and can’t be synced with other calendars, so they won’t show up on your Mac or PC, for example. Shifts offers a way to overlay data from calendars already on your device (which appear as a small dot underneath the date), but only from one at a time.The bottom line. Shifts has the potential to be a real convenience for workers who don’t punch the nine-to-five clock and want an easy way to track and check on their schedule, but the inability to sync with other calendar apps is a big limitation.Review Synopsis
Product:

Shifts — Shift Worker Calendar

Company:

Snowman Inc.

Contact:

builtbysnowman.com

Price:

$4.99

Requirements:

iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 8 or later

Positives:

Convenient and easy to use. Really does help with work scheduling. Handy Today widget.

Negatives:

Can’t be synched with other calendar apps.

Source: Maclife