Lifeguard scheduling that fills itself

Describe your week once as shift templates. Aqua Mage generates it, fills each open shift it can with a guard who is certified, available and under the hours cap, and sends it out — then handles the swaps by text.

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3 FT At a glance

Replaces the dry-erase board rewritten every Sunday night

Shift scheduling

Build the week from recurring templates, then let the scheduler assign it. Open shifts go out as text messages your staff reply to, and approved time off removes people from consideration rather than just marking them unavailable.

The Aqua Mage upcoming shifts list across two sites, each row carrying the date, site, pool, position, assigned employee, time and status, with next week ready to generate and publish
Assignment
Stable matching — every guard gets the best shift still available to them, and no pair of guards would rather trade with each other.
Eligibility
A certification must be valid on the shift's own date, not today. Which certifications a shift requires comes from its position.
Limits
Weekly availability windows, approved time off, and a 40-hour cap. A guard can drop a held shift for a better one only if the hours still fit.
Order
Fairness first — whoever has the fewest hours so far gets first choice — then seniority by hire date.
Swaps
The system texts the covering coworker, who replies YES or NO from the lock screen. Unanswered requests expire on their own.
Cadence
Optional nightly generation, opted into per site: daily, weekly or bi-weekly, one to four weeks ahead, with auto-fill immediately after.
6 FT How it works

From setup to the day itself

  1. Describe the week once

    Shift settings hold your recurring shifts: which site, which position, what hours. Each generated week is built from them, and generating the same week twice never duplicates a shift.

  2. Generate it, by hand or overnight

    Press Generate for a week, or opt a site into nightly generation — daily, weekly or every two weeks, one to four weeks ahead.

  3. Fill the open shifts

    Fill uses stable matching: each guard gets the best shift still open to them, and no two guards would rather trade. Whoever has the fewest hours so far chooses first, then seniority.

  4. Publish and send

    Publishing emails each guard their week. Press Publish yourself, publish on a set day and hour, or publish as soon as a week is generated.

  5. Swaps and time off

    A guard asks a coworker to cover; a coworker who has opted in to texts is asked by text and replies YES or NO. Time off is requested in the app and keeps that guard out of the next fill.

9 FT What it catches

What it catches without being asked

A certification that lapses mid-week

Eligibility is checked against the shift's own date, not today. A guard whose certification expires on Wednesday is not put on Thursday's shift.

A card nobody has checked

Guards can upload their own certification cards, but a card counts toward a shift only after a manager approves it — and an approved card keeps counting while its renewal waits for review.

A half-staffed week on autopilot

When a week publishes on its own, a week that still has an open shift is held back and the site manager is alerted (both on by default), instead of reaching staff as if it were final.

A week that changed after it went out

Once a week is published, anyone whose shifts change is told by default — including someone dropped from every shift, who would otherwise turn up. The notices wait until morning at each site, 8 a.m. by default.

12 FT What the inspector asks for

What New York asks for

§6-1.31

Supervision staff qualifications

Supervision staff hold current certification in aquatic injury prevention and emergency response, issued by the American Red Cross or another certifying agency accepted by the State Commissioner of Health. A certification that has quietly lapsed is a supervision gap.

In Aqua Mage: Fill places a guard on a shift whose position requires a certification only when an approved, unexpired card covers that shift's date.

Read the section →

Plain-language summary of published regulations, not legal advice. Requirements vary by facility class and are enforced by your county health department — confirm current obligations with your permit-issuing official. What New York actually requires →

15 FT Works with

Related features

Who runs it this way

01 Does auto-fill publish the schedule by itself?
Only if you choose that. Filling assigns shifts; publishing is a separate step. You can publish by hand, on a set day and hour, or as soon as a week is generated — and by default an automatic publish holds back a week that still has an open shift.
02 How does it decide who gets which shift?
Stable matching. Guards who have the fewest hours scheduled so far choose first, ties go to seniority by hire date, and a shift at a guard's own site ranks above one elsewhere. Fill never assigns anyone past 40 hours in a week, counting shifts they already hold.
03 Can guards cover for each other without a manager?
A coworker who has opted in to texts is asked by text and replies YES or NO. Whether a YES also approves the swap, or leaves it for a supervisor, is your setting — and a supervisor can approve or deny a pending swap directly. Requests nobody answers expire on their own.
04 Does pending time off count?
Yes. A request keeps that guard out of the fill from the moment it is filed, not only once it is approved, so Fill never books someone who has asked for the day. A denied request does not.

Get your facility in order

Thirty days, the full platform, no credit card. Setup takes about three minutes — start with your email and we'll take it from there.

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