Pace Scheduler builds the rotation, fills the open shift and sends the hours to payroll.
Pace Scheduler is the scheduling program in the Pace Municipal Suite, and our team writes and supports it in Naperville, Illinois. Police departments, sheriff’s offices, fire departments, dispatch centers and corrections agencies across the US and Canada run their schedules on it.
- Built for
- Police, sheriff, fire, dispatch, corrections and campus safety
- Reach
- Across the US and Canada
- On a phone
- iOS and Android
- Payroll exports
- Munis, Springbrook, Paychex, ADP, BS&A, NOVAtime, Paylocity
- Part of
- The Pace Municipal Suite
- Sign in
- pacescheduler.com
Rotations
Set the rotation once, and Pace Scheduler builds the year.
Your agency gives each squad or each person an on-and-off pattern, such as a Pitman 2-2-3, and our system repeats it through the whole year and adds the time off and the assignments in the same step, so nobody has to build next month’s schedule by hand.
Once it’s built, every officer carries the schedule on a phone in the Pace Scheduler app for iOS and Android.
“We manage over 100 people with complicated scheduling rules where we need to build a fresh schedule every month. I’m now able to auto-generate a schedule that manages seniority, max shifts, and minimum staffing that saves me personally over 15 hours a month.”
| on | on | off | off | on | on | on | off | off | on | on | off | off | off | |
| off | off | on | on | off | off | off | on | on | off | off | on | on | on | |
| on | on | off | off | on | on | on | off | off | open after a sick call, filled with overtime from D squad | on | off | off | off | |
| off | off | on | on | off | off | off | on | on | off | off | on | on | on | |
| Minimum met | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights |
| on | on | off | off | on | on | on | off | off | on | on | off | off | off | |
| off | off | on | on | off | off | off | on | on | off | off | on | on | on | |
| on | on | off | off | on | on | on | off | off | on | on | off | off | off | |
| off | off | on | on | off | off | off | on | on | off | off | on | on | on | |
| Minimum met | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by A squad on days and C squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights | minimum met by B squad on days and D squad on nights |
Pace SchedulerPace Scheduler lays a rotation out for every person, for the whole year, in one step, with their time off and assignments.
Minimum staffing
Supervisors are warned before an approval leaves a shift short.
Your agency sets the minimum for each shift, and our system counts against it every time the schedule changes or a request is approved, so the supervisor can always see who makes up each count.
It warns when a shift is short, and it also warns on the request itself before anyone approves it. It’s built this way so that a shift doesn’t come up short after the time off has already been approved. If you need more people on a holiday, a town event or a game night, you can set a higher minimum for that day than for an ordinary one.
Overtime
Open shifts get filled without a round of phone calls.
When a shift opens, the supervisor posts it from the schedule, and it goes out by text and email to the whole department, to one squad or only to the people the supervisor picks.
The requests come back grouped together in seniority order, and beside each name are that person’s overtime hours so far, the last date they worked overtime and any conflict with their schedule, so the supervisor can decide without looking anything up. The supervisor then approves one and rejects the rest, and every message sent is kept in a log with who sent it and who received it.
“Recently we had issues with filling short notice shifts. By using the ‘blast’ feature, we significantly improved responses and helped with time management at our sergeant level. No longer did a sergeant have to call 25 officers to fill a shift. They just sent a blast and checked back at a pre-determined deadline to approve the overtime request.”
Time off and bids
Requests go from the officer’s phone to the right supervisor.
Officers ask for time off, trade shifts and claim overtime in the app or on a computer, and each request goes to whichever supervisor your agency’s rules name, with both of them notified and every step recorded.
As soon as time off is approved, the time bank it draws on changes, so the balance an officer sees is always current. Accruals add hours on the dates your agency sets, i.e. each week, each month, each year or on an anniversary.
Shift bids and vacation bids run in the order your agency sets, and our system tells each person when it’s their turn, so nobody has to chase people down the list. The administrator reviews the result before it is final.
“We love the bidding feature so much. Our bidding process used to take a month and a half, and now takes 4 days. The amount of time (and headaches) it’s saved us is MASSIVE. We also love Pace’s Support - they are so responsive to what we need.”
“Officers can log on at home, see how much time in each bank they have, and request time off with a few simple entries. The system then notifies their supervisor for timely approval. As patrol lieutenant in charge of payroll, scheduling, and training, the convenience of Pace Scheduler has been great and reduced over a dozen Excel spreadsheets to this one program.”
Roll call
Beats, cars, rifles and AEDs are assigned in one program.
The assignments page lists who is working today, and at roll call the supervisor gives each person a beat, zone or sector along with a car or any other equipment the agency tracks.
Equipment can be checked out and back in each shift, or it can stay with one officer the way a take-home car does. Anything entered once shows on every other page, so nobody has to type it twice.
“Bonus feature is the asset management system which our officers and fleet maintenance use to assign vehicles and take vehicles in/out of service for maintenance.”
Payroll
Your payroll system gets the hours straight from the schedule.
Every item on the schedule is counted, so the hour totals are exact to the minute, and each employee sees a timesheet that shows how their hours were figured (and nobody else’s).
At the end of the pay period, payroll exports the whole department in one file to the system your finance office runs. We’ve already written exports for Munis, Springbrook, Paychex and ADP, and for BS&A, NOVAtime, Paylocity and others, and if your agency runs a different system, we’ll write one with your payroll system’s expert.
Reports open in Excel, and some in PDF as well. The shift history records every change to the schedule, including what it was, who made it and when, so if someone asks later why a shift changed, the answer is in the history.
- Munis
- Springbrook
- Paychex
- ADP
- BS&A
- NOVAtime
- Paylocity
- Any other, written to order
“Using the Pace Scheduler program has saved me at least 10-12 hours per month, plus all the reporting features make it invaluable. What before took me many tedious hours can now be done in minutes.”
Switching over
Your people start on a schedule that looks like theirs.
We take your agency’s current schedule and roster and build your site with that real data, and we make it look as close as we can to the schedule your people know, so that the change is easier on them. Your administrators then check it with us before any training starts.
Training runs in order, with administrators first, then supervisors, then everyone else, and there’s a check at each step so that nobody moves on before they’re ready.
“The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office (MI) has been using PACE Scheduler for approximately one year. PACE Scheduler customer support has been responsive with any issues as we were on-boarding. PACE Scheduler has been easy to use from the administration level all the way down to deputies, corrections officers and support staff.”
- 01
Your schedule and roster
- 02
Your site, built by Pace with your data
- 03
Checked with your administrators
- 04
Administrators trained
- 05
Supervisors trained
- 06
Everyone trained
Support
Support comes from the people who write the program.
Our support staff can also share a screen with you, and the knowledge base is open at any hour for anyone who would rather look something up, with searchable articles, narrated training videos, practice tutorials and a one-page cheat sheet for each of the larger features.
Most new features in the program come from what agencies ask us to add, so if your agency needs something the program doesn’t do yet, it’s worth telling us.
“The company has been very responsive and excellent to work with, especially when they worked diligently to make the software work with our current payroll software from a different company.”
Pace Systems
The company behind Pace Scheduler has sold IT since 1983.
Pace Scheduler is one of the five programs we write for the Pace Municipal Suite, which has more than 650 municipal clients and a 98% renewal rate. We also sell the laptops, cameras and networks an agency runs on and install them around Chicago, so a department that needs those as well can buy them from the same company that supports its schedule.
The Pace Municipal SuitePace Systems for cities and villages
Questions agencies ask
Questions agencies ask about Pace Scheduler
What does Pace Scheduler do?
It builds a police, fire, dispatch or corrections schedule for the whole year from each squad’s rotation and keeps every shift at the minimum your agency sets. It also posts open shifts as overtime and returns the requests in seniority order, handles time off, trades, bids and time banks, assigns beats, cars and equipment at roll call and exports the hours to payroll.
Does it handle a Pitman 2-2-3 or another 12-hour rotation?
Yes, and the way this works is that your agency enters each squad’s on-and-off pattern once (a Pitman 2-2-3 or any other) and our system fills in the whole year for every person on the squad, with their time off and assignments.
How does it fill an open shift?
The supervisor posts the shift from the schedule, and it goes out by text and email to the department, a squad or the people the supervisor picks. The requests come back in seniority order with each person’s overtime hours so far, so the supervisor can approve one without calling around.
Is there a mobile app?
Yes, the app runs on iPhone and Android, and officers use it to see the schedule, ask for time off, trade shifts and claim overtime. If someone would rather not use a phone, the same work can be done on a computer or a tablet.
Which payroll systems does it export to?
Munis, Springbrook, Paychex, ADP, BS&A, NOVAtime and Paylocity already have exports, and for any other payroll system we write one with your agency’s payroll expert.
Who sets it up, and how does the switch work?
Our team sets it up for you by taking your current schedule and roster, building your site with them and checking it with your administrators, and then we train administrators, supervisors and everyone else, in that order.
Where do officers sign in?
Officers sign in at www.pacescheduler.com/accounts/login/, or in the Pace Scheduler app for iPhone and Android.
See it first
Ask for a demo, and decide by what you see.
Send us your agency’s name, its size and when you’re hoping to switch, and someone from the Pace Scheduler team will call you to set up a time. The demo is online, so the people who build your schedule today can join it from wherever they are. Pace Scheduler is sold as a subscription.