⭐ Premium
The Non-Availability Clash Check scans your rota and finds every case where a rostered person has also declared themselves unavailable on that date. It gives you a list of clashes to resolve before the rota goes out — catching problems that would otherwise only come to light when someone realises they can’t serve and contacts you at the last minute.
Go to Church Admin → Schedule → Non-availability clash check.
When to run it
- After building the rota manually — if you filled in the rota before some volunteers had declared their unavailability, run this check to catch any conflicts
- Before sending the rota out — a final check before emailing or SMSing the rota to your volunteers ensures no one receives a notification for a date they’ve already said they can’t do
- When a volunteer’s plans change — if someone marks themselves unavailable after the rota has already been published, run the check to identify the affected slot and find a replacement
What the screen shows
The check runs immediately when you visit the screen — there is no form to submit. It works through every active person in the directory and compares their rota assignments against their declared unavailability dates.
If no clashes are found, the screen confirms this and you can proceed with confidence. If clashes are found, each person with a conflict is listed with a table showing:
- Date — the service date where the clash occurs
- Service — which service they are rostered for
- Scheduled task — the job they have been assigned, shown as a clickable link that opens the rota edit form for that date directly
Resolving a clash
Click the job name link in the Scheduled Task column to open the rota edit form for that service date. Replace the unavailable person with someone else from the ministry dropdown and save. Return to the clash check screen and run it again to confirm all clashes have been resolved.
The clash check does not make any changes itself — it only reports what it finds. All changes are made manually through the rota edit form.
Preventing clashes in the first place
The best way to avoid clashes is to encourage volunteers to declare their unavailability before you build the rota each month, rather than after. A short reminder message sent to your serving team at the start of each month — asking them to update their availability for the coming weeks before you build the rota — reduces the number of clashes significantly.
Using auto populate rather than building the rota manually also helps — auto populate checks availability automatically and never places an unavailable person in a slot. See Auto populate schedule.