Changing your rota in My Shift Planner without losing the old one

Why editing the current pattern is the wrong move

Change the pattern you are running and the app re-draws from its start date, which rewrites months you have already worked. Anyone who has bid a new shift in December and found last summer rearranged has done this once.

The feature that handles it

My Shift Planner's multiple patterns feature, which sits in the Pro Pack, lets you add a further rota starting on a future date while the existing shifts, notes, leave and overtime stay where they are. Their own material also uses it for a temporary rota — a Christmas period, for instance — inside the same calendar.

1. Open the pattern setup and add a pattern rather than editing the live one.
2. Set its start date to the first shift of the new rota, not to the day the bid was announced.
3. Leave the old pattern in place. It stops where the new one begins.

The moment worth pausing at

A rota change is the point at which most people re-examine the app as well as the schedule. If you are setting it all up again anyway, the switching cost is as low as it will ever be.

BlueShifts starts in the same place — a repeating rotation drawn on a month — and then covers the part of the job a general shift calendar was never asked to hold: the paid duty jobs, by employer, with the hours, the pay, the kilometres and whether the money has actually arrived.

From My Shift Planner's own pattern setup guidance and FAQ, read 6 September 2026.