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Looking for a Shift Work Calendar alternative?
Shift Work Calendar & Notes is a long-running general shift calendar built for speed. Here is where the two of them part company.
What Shift Work Calendar & Notes is
Shift Work Calendar & Notes, from Ebisu Soft, is one of the older and more widely used general shift calendars. Its listing is aimed at retail and hospital shift workers, and its pitch is speed: register your shifts by tapping buttons in order, a month in about twenty seconds.
It covers your own shift types with names, colors and hours, notes on any day with emoji icons, saving the month as an image you can send or use as wallpaper, a widget, alarms based on shift times, and calendar sync with the premium plan.
What it does well
- Setting up a month is genuinely fast.
- Saving the month as an image and sending it to family — simple and effective.
- A home screen widget and shift alarms.
- Officers on a 4 on 4 off rotation say in the reviews that they set it years ahead and forget it.
Where BlueShifts is different
This one is a calendar and nothing more, which is exactly why some people like it.
- Off-duty jobs by employer, with pay, miles, and paid or unpaid on every job.
- A PDF report of any date range with the year totalled.
- Court, jail and hospital addresses, gate codes and tow companies for the road.
- No ads. Shift Work Calendar shows ads unless you take the premium plan.
Everything below is on your phone in a couple of minutes: the rotation, the off-duty work, and what it earned you.
Side by side
| BlueShifts | vs | Shift Work Calendar |
|---|---|---|
| The rotation and calendar | ||
| Yes | Repeating rotation patterns | Yes |
| TwoDay and night — every rotation is built from those | Build your own shift types | Yes |
| Not statedNotes on any day | Notes on any day, with emoji icons | Yes |
| Not stated | Save the month as an image or wallpaper | Yes |
| Yes | Email your shifts to someone | Yes |
| Not stated | Home screen widget | Yes |
| In development | Sync into your phone calendar | YesPremium |
| Yes | Fills the calendar backward over months already worked | Not stated |
| Yes | Custom holidays you add yourself | Not stated |
| Yes | Build your own custom rotation | Not stated |
| Hours and money | ||
| Yes | Off-duty jobs logged against the employer | Not stated |
| Yes | Pay recorded per job | Not stated |
| Yes | Paid and unpaid tracked separately | Not stated |
| Yes | Mileage recorded per job | Not stated |
| Yes | Year totals for shifts, hours, miles and pay | Not stated |
| Yes | PDF report you can hand to someone | Not stated |
| On the road | ||
| Yes | Court, jail and hospital addresses | Not stated |
| Yes | Gate codes, tow companies, vehicle maintenance | Not stated |
| In development | Reference documents (Miranda, SFST, HAZMAT, VIN, CVE) | Not stated |
| Yes | Address autocomplete, or drop a pin | Not stated |
| Yes | Navigate to the job from your calendar | Not stated |
| YesA Court category; the subpoena details go in the notes | Court dates and subpoena details | Not stated |
| YesA Training category, with alerts before the day | Training dates, set well ahead | Not stated |
| Off-duty work and money | ||
| Yes | Hourly rate or flat pay per job | Not stated |
| Yes | Travel time or travel pay, kept separate | Not stated |
| Yes | Mileage reimbursement when a patrol car is used | Not stated |
| YesCancelled, pending, awaiting payment, paid | Four payment states, not just paid or unpaid | Not stated |
| Yes | Live earnings while you work the job | Not stated |
| What the year tells you | ||
| Yes | Which scheduler you get the most work through | Not stated |
| Yes | One employer against the average of the rest | Not stated |
| Yes | Your employers ranked by what they brought in | Not stated |
| Yes | The days you normally work for each employer | Not stated |
| The app itself | ||
| Yes | Works with no internet connection | Not stated |
| Yes | Backup and restore | Not stated |
| YesThirteen intervals from 5 minutes to a week, or your own | Reminders and alerts | YesAlarms from shift times |
| Yes | Import and export your schedule | Not stated |
| Yes | Ready-made rotation templates | Yes |
| YesFour skins, dark mode in one tap | Skins and a full dark mode | YesThemes |
| Yes | No account needed | Not stated |
| Sharing with someone else | ||
| Yes | Link two phones by scanning a QR code | Not stated |
| Yes | Shifts and events shared, pay never shared | Not stated |
| Yes | Send someone your rotation template | Not stated |
| About the app | ||
| None | Advertising | Ads, removed with Premium |
| Police officers | Built for | Retail, hospital and shift workers generally |
From each app's own App Store listing, checked 1 August 2026 — the Shift Work Calendar listing.
How this comparison was put together
Everything in the table comes from each app's own App Store listing, checked on 1 August 2026. Where a listing does not mention a feature, the table says not stated rather than no — an app may do something its listing never mentions. Nothing here is a test of the apps themselves. Anything marked in development is a BlueShifts feature being built now, not one you can use today.
Listings change. If something below is out of date or wrong, tell us and it gets fixed.
Coming from Shift Work Calendar?
Shift Work Calendar is a general calendar with alarms and widgets. BlueShifts starts from police work: the rotation, the details, court, training and the addresses you need on the road.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
