ShiftPulse

Turn shift data into clear staff utilization insight.

ShiftPulse is a workforce utilization app for managers who already track shifts in a scheduling or timekeeping system. It pulls time shift data, calculates utilization, and shows where staff are overbooked, underused, or carrying overtime risk so teams can make faster staffing decisions.

Business Goals

  • Achieve 30% weekly active usage among invited managers within 90 days of launch.
  • Reduce manual utilization reporting time by 70% within 60 days for pilot customers.
  • Convert at least 20% of free trial accounts to paid plans within 90 days.
  • Reach a 95% customer retention rate at 6 months for teams that connect a live time source.
  • Keep support tickets related to data import and utilization calculations under 10% of total tickets after the first 3 months.

User Goals

  • See staff utilization by person, team, and date range in under 30 seconds.
  • Identify underutilized and overutilized employees before schedule issues become costly.
  • Export utilization reports for leadership meetings without building spreadsheets manually.
  • Trust that utilization calculations reflect their actual shift and time data.
  • Receive alerts when utilization or overtime thresholds are exceeded.

Non-Goals

  • This product will not replace a full scheduling or payroll system.
  • This product will not manage recruiting, performance reviews, or HR case management.
  • This product will not support complex labor law compliance engines in v1.
  • This product will not manually edit payroll or approved timesheets.

Operations Manager Nina, 38 - Nina runs staffing for a multi-site services business and needs a fast way to see whether her team is over- or under-utilized. She currently exports shift data into spreadsheets and spends hours creating monthly reports.

Operations Manager Nina, 38

  • As an operations manager, I want to connect my time shift source and see utilization automatically, so that I do not have to build spreadsheet reports every week.
  • As an operations manager, I want to filter utilization by site, role, and date range, so that I can spot staffing imbalances quickly.
  • As an operations manager, I want alerts when employees cross overtime thresholds, so that I can intervene before costs rise.

HR Analyst Daniel, 31 - Daniel supports labor reporting for a growing company and needs reliable metrics that leadership can trust. He cares about consistency, exportability, and audit trails.

HR Analyst Daniel, 31

  • As an HR analyst, I want utilization definitions to be configurable, so that our reports match company policy.
  • As an HR analyst, I want to export CSV and PDF summaries, so that I can share the same data with finance and leadership.
  • As an HR analyst, I want to see data freshness and sync status, so that I know the report is based on current information.

Regional Director Aisha, 45 - Aisha oversees multiple locations and wants a simple executive view of labor efficiency. She needs trends, comparisons, and anomalies without digging into raw timesheets.

Regional Director Aisha, 45

  • As a regional director, I want a dashboard that compares locations, so that I can find teams needing support.
  • As a regional director, I want weekly trend lines for utilization and overtime, so that I can track improvement over time.
  • As a regional director, I want mobile-friendly read-only access, so that I can review metrics on the go.

Data Ingestion and Sync · High priority

  • Import shift and timesheet data from supported systems and keep it updated on a schedule or via webhook where available.
  • Support CSV upload for day-one onboarding and at least one native integration such as UKG, Deputy, or When I Work.
  • Map required fields including employee ID, name, role, site, shift start, shift end, break minutes, and approved hours.
  • Detect duplicates and partial imports, then surface sync errors with row-level detail.
  • Allow incremental syncs every 15 minutes for connected sources and manual refresh on demand.
  • Store source metadata, last sync timestamp, and import status for auditability.

Utilization Calculation Engine · High priority

  • Compute utilization metrics from shift data using configurable rules so the product can match different workforce policies.
  • Calculate utilization as worked hours divided by available scheduled hours, with the formula configurable per workspace.
  • Support target utilization bands by role, team, or location.
  • Account for unpaid breaks, overtime, and excluded time types such as training or leave when configured.
  • Display both current period and historical trend calculations.
  • Recompute metrics automatically when source data changes.

Dashboard and Reporting · High priority

  • Provide a clear visual dashboard for managers to monitor staffing efficiency and explain the numbers quickly.
  • Show overall utilization, by team, by person, and by site on one primary dashboard.
  • Include sortable tables, trend charts, and color-coded thresholds for low, target, and high utilization.
  • Offer date ranges for week, pay period, month, and custom range.
  • Support CSV and PDF exports with company branding on paid plans.
  • Include shareable read-only links or scheduled email reports for leadership.

Alerts and Notifications · Medium priority

  • Notify managers when utilization or overtime thresholds are exceeded so they can act before issues escalate.
  • Send email alerts for threshold breaches and failed syncs.
  • Allow configurable rules by employee, role, site, or team.
  • Support digest mode for daily or weekly summary notifications.
  • Include alert history and acknowledgment status in the app.
  • Avoid duplicate alerts for the same event within a configured suppression window.

Admin, Security, and Access Control · High priority

  • Protect sensitive employee data and give administrators control over access, configuration, and audit trails.
  • Support role-based access for admin, manager, analyst, and read-only viewer.
  • Require SSO via Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra ID on business plans.
  • Log all configuration changes and data access events.
  • Provide workspace-level settings for timezone, week start, and utilization rules.
  • Allow users to delete connected data sources and request data export or deletion.

Fast Onboarding for First Utilization Report

  • Sign up with email or Google Workspace and create a workspace in under 2 minutes.
  • Choose a data source: upload CSV, connect a supported time system, or use a sample dataset.
  • Map required fields with guided validation and examples.
  • Select utilization rules, target bands, and date range defaults.
  • See the first dashboard within 10 minutes of connecting data.
  • Confirm the system is current through sync status and a sample employee drill-down.

1. Connect Data Source

  • The user imports shift data from CSV or connects a timekeeping system to begin analysis.
  • Validate required fields before import completes.
  • Show source-specific errors and sample rows when mapping fails.
  • Support retry for partial failures without restarting the whole import.

2. Define Utilization Rules

  • The user sets how utilization should be calculated for their organization.
  • Let admins choose the denominator: scheduled hours, available hours, or billable hours where applicable.
  • Allow target bands by role or team.
  • Warn when rules produce extreme or impossible values, such as over 200%.

3. Review Dashboard

  • The app presents utilization at a glance with trends and breakdowns.
  • Surface a summary card, trend line, and top over/underutilized staff list.
  • Allow filtering by site, team, role, and period.
  • Handle empty states with clear prompts to connect or import data.

4. Investigate and Export

  • The user drills into details, validates anomalies, and shares results.
  • Open employee detail views with shift history and calculation breakdown.
  • Export CSV or PDF with the selected filters applied.
  • Flag stale data if the last successful sync is older than the configured threshold.

5. Monitor and Alert

  • Managers receive ongoing notifications so problems are addressed earlier.
  • Configure thresholds and notification cadence.
  • Send alert only once per event within a suppression window.
  • Show alert status and resolution notes in the activity feed.

Power Features and Edge Cases

  • Custom calculation templates for different departments or countries.
  • Scheduled email delivery of reports to executives.
  • Comparative views across sites, weeks, and pay periods.
  • Support for multiple time sources per workspace with source precedence rules.
  • Handling of contractors, unpaid leave, and excluded training time.
  • Anomaly detection for sudden spikes, missing shifts, or suspicious zero-hour employees.

Dashboard Clarity and Trust

  • Use a dense but readable layout with strong hierarchy for summary metrics, charts, and tables.
  • Color should support accessibility, with non-color cues for thresholds and status.
  • All key screens should be usable on laptop and tablet resolution.
  • Performance should feel instant: dashboard interactions under 200 ms after data load.
  • Provide explicit freshness timestamps, sync state, and calculation notes near every metric.

Nina used to spend Monday mornings exporting shift data from her scheduling system and stitching together spreadsheets to figure out who was overworked and who had idle capacity. By the time her report was ready, the numbers were already out of date, and she still could not explain where the biggest staffing risks were.

With ShiftPulse, Nina connects her time shift data once and sees utilization by site, role, and employee in a single dashboard. When one location starts drifting above overtime thresholds, she gets an alert, adjusts staffing early, and spends less time building reports and more time improving coverage and labor cost control.

User-Centric Metrics

  • Median time to first dashboard under 10 minutes after signup.
  • At least 80% of connected workspaces view a utilization report weekly.
  • Reduce manual reporting time by 70% for pilot customers.
  • 90% of users can find a specific employee’s utilization details in under 45 seconds.
  • Keep dashboard satisfaction at 4.3/5 or higher in in-app feedback.

Business Metrics

  • 20% trial-to-paid conversion within 90 days.
  • Monthly churn under 4% after product-market fit is established.
  • 35% of new paid accounts connect a second location or team within 60 days.
  • 15% of paid accounts purchase scheduled reports or alert add-ons within 6 months.

Technical Metrics

  • 99.9% uptime for the web app and API.
  • Dashboard initial load under 2 seconds for workspaces with up to 50,000 shift records.
  • Data sync completion success rate above 98% for supported integrations.
  • Zero critical security incidents and quarterly access review completion.

Tracking Plan

  • track_workspace_created
  • track_data_source_connected
  • track_csv_import_completed
  • track_sync_failed
  • track_dashboard_viewed
  • track_utilization_filter_applied
  • track_export_generated
  • track_alert_created
  • track_alert_acknowledged

Technical Needs

  • Frontend built in React with TypeScript for a responsive analytics UI.
  • Backend API in Node.js or Python with a clean service layer for imports and calculations.
  • PostgreSQL for relational storage of workspaces, users, sources, and aggregated metrics.
  • Background jobs using BullMQ, Sidekiq, or Celery for syncs and recalculations.
  • Charting with a proven library such as Recharts or ECharts.
  • Object storage such as S3 for raw CSV uploads and export files.
  • Observability with Sentry, OpenTelemetry, and centralized logs.

Integration Points

  • Google Workspace SSO and Microsoft Entra ID for business authentication.
  • CSV file import via drag-and-drop for universal onboarding.
  • UKG, Deputy, or When I Work as first-wave time data integrations.
  • Slack and email for alerts and scheduled summaries.
  • Stripe for billing and plan management.

Data Storage & Privacy

  • Store only the minimum employee data needed for utilization analysis.
  • Encrypt data in transit with TLS 1.2+ and at rest using managed encryption.
  • Provide GDPR/CCPA export and deletion workflows for workspace admins.
  • Keep a detailed audit trail of imports, rule changes, and access events.
  • Set retention controls for raw uploads and allow automatic purge after a configurable period.

Scalability & Performance

  • Pre-aggregate utilization metrics nightly and incrementally on sync for fast dashboard reads.
  • Use pagination and server-side filtering for tables with large employee counts.
  • Cache common dashboard queries by workspace and date range.
  • Design background jobs to process large imports in chunks and recover from partial failures.

Potential Challenges

  • Shift data may arrive in inconsistent formats from different systems; mitigate with a strict mapping wizard, sample previews, and validation rules.
  • Utilization definitions vary by business; mitigate with configurable formulas and clear metric labels on every dashboard.
  • Large imports could slow the app; mitigate with background processing, chunked ingestion, and status polling.
  • Sensitive workforce data increases compliance risk; mitigate with role-based access, encryption, and audit logging.
  • Integration APIs can be unreliable or rate limited; mitigate with retries, backoff, and CSV fallback onboarding.

Team & resourcing - Small team - 2 engineers, 1 designer, part-time PM, and shared QA support

Phase 1: MVP Foundation · Weeks 1–4

  • Authentication and workspace setup
  • CSV upload and field mapping
  • Core utilization calculation engine
  • Primary dashboard with employee, team, and site views
  • Basic export to CSV

Phase 2: Live Sync and Alerts · Weeks 5–8

  • One native time system integration
  • Incremental sync jobs and sync status UI
  • Configurable utilization thresholds
  • Email alerts and alert history
  • Role-based access control

Phase 3: Reporting and Admin Controls · Weeks 9–12

  • PDF exports and scheduled email reports
  • Configurable utilization rules by role or site
  • Audit logs and data retention settings
  • Improved drill-down views and trend comparisons
  • Admin settings for timezone and week start

Phase 4: Scale and Polish · Weeks 13–16

  • Second and third integration connectors
  • Performance optimization for larger datasets
  • Anomaly detection for missing or unusual shifts
  • Accessibility improvements and responsive refinement
  • Billing via Stripe and trial conversion flow

Paste this into Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, or v0 to start building.

Build a web app called ShiftPulse for tracking staff utilization from shift/time data.

Product summary:
Users are operations managers, HR analysts, and regional directors who upload CSVs or connect a timekeeping source to see staff utilization by person, team, site, and date range. The app calculates utilization from shift data, surfaces over/underutilization, supports alerts, and exports reports.

Core screens:
1. Auth and workspace onboarding
2. Data source connect/import wizard with CSV upload and field mapping
3. Utilization rules/settings page
4. Main analytics dashboard with cards, trend charts, filters, and sortable tables
5. Employee detail drawer/page with shift history and calculation breakdown
6. Alerts page with rules, history, and acknowledgments
7. Admin/settings page for users, roles, timezone, retention, and integrations

Key behaviors:
Support role-based access for admin/manager/analyst/viewer. Import CSV with validation for employee ID, name, role, site, shift start/end, break minutes, and approved hours. Calculate utilization as configurable formula with target bands. Show data freshness and sync status. Allow date filters, site/team/role filters, CSV/PDF export, email alerts, and scheduled reports.

Data model:
Workspaces, Users, Roles, Employees, Sites, Teams, TimeSources, ShiftRecords, UtilizationRules, UtilizationSnapshots, Alerts, ReportExports, AuditEvents, and IntegrationSyncJobs.
Include timestamps, source metadata, and calculation versioning.

Suggested stack:
Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Recharts
Backend: Next.js API routes or Node.js service with TypeScript
DB: PostgreSQL with Prisma
Jobs: BullMQ with Redis
Auth: Clerk or Auth0 with Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra ID SSO
Storage: S3-compatible object storage
Analytics: PostHog
Errors: Sentry
Billing: Stripe
Deploy on Vercel or Render with a managed Postgres database.

Build an MVP first with CSV import, one native integration stub, utilization dashboard, employee drill-down, exports, alerts, and admin controls. Use a clean, professional analytics UI optimized for desktop with accessible color contrast, fast loading, and clear empty/error states.

Business Idea

An app that tracks staff utilization using my time shift data

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    PRD: An app that tracks staff utilization using my time shift...