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Planday Zapier integrationAutomate Planday with Zapier.

The Planday Zapier integration gives you 4 actions, 0 triggers and 0 searches. Planday only receives data: another app starts the Zap, and Planday gets new employees, daily revenue or data-set values. It works on the free plan.

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Overview

What the Planday Zapier integration does for you

Planday is a staff scheduling tool that weighs holidays, availability and wage costs when you build a rota. With Zapier, other tools can push data into it: a new hire, the revenue of the day, or a figure for a data set. Planday never starts a Zap itself, it only receives.

Three results justify the setup. A new hire that exists in Planday without retyping: Create Employee takes the person from your recruitment or HR tool, with first and last name, user name, salary identifier, departments and gender. Daily revenue that lands where shifts are planned: Update Daily Revenue writes a value for a revenue unit and a date, with a note, so the schedule sits next to what the day brought in. Data sets kept current: Update Data Sets - Daily and Update Data Sets - Hourly send a value with its timestamp into a data set.

The limits are just as clear. Planday has no trigger on Zapier, so nothing that happens in Planday (a shift, a swap, an absence) can start a Zap. It has no search either, so a Zap cannot look up an employee before acting. And no action edits or removes an employee once created.

The Zap therefore always starts in another app. To see how other tools handle the same job, the n8n vs Zapier page is the place to compare.

Vocabulary

Zapier words, in plain English

Seven words are enough to follow the rest of this page.

Zap
The automation you build on Zapier: one trigger, then one or more actions that run every time the trigger event happens.
Trigger
The event in an app that starts the Zap. With Planday, it always comes from another app, such as a new row in a sheet.
Action
What the Zap does once started: the step that writes something for you, like creating an employee in Planday.
Task
The unit Zapier bills: one action your Zap completes successfully. The number on your plan counts only those.
Polling vs instant
A polling trigger is checked by Zapier on a timer. An instant trigger is reported by its app the moment the event happens.
Filter
A step that lets the Zap go on only when what arrived meets your condition, and stops it there otherwise.
Connection
Your Planday account linked to Zapier once, then reused by every step of every Zap that writes into Planday.
Cost

What it really costs in tasks

Planday is not reserved to paid plans on Zapier: it runs from the free plan. You pay in tasks, and only the Planday actions that succeed count.

  • Free plan100 tasks a month, unlimited Zaps
  • Steps on the free planOne trigger and one action
  • Failed actionNot counted
  • Paid-only appNo, Planday works on the free plan

The trigger in the other app never costs a task, and Zapier checking it costs nothing either. Each Planday action that goes through counts once; one that fails does not. The free plan gives 100 tasks a month, unlimited Zaps, and two steps per Zap: one trigger, one Planday action. A filter or a second action makes the Zap multi-step, which needs a paid plan. Since Planday has no trigger, the speed of your Zap comes from the trigger of the other app; if it polls, the grid below applies.

Connect

Connect your Planday account in three steps

  1. 01

    Open the Apps page

    In your Zapier account, open Apps and click + Add connection. You need a Planday account first, with access to the departments, data sets and revenue units the Zap will write into.

  2. 02

    Pick Planday

    Type Planday in the dialog, select it in the results and click Add connection. A new browser tab then opens so you can sign in on the Planday side of the link.

  3. 03

    Sign in and grant access

    Sign in to your Planday portal in that tab, then allow Zapier to reach the account. From then on, every Zap that writes into Planday reuses this connection, without asking you to sign in again.

First Zap

Your first Zap: daily revenue from a sheet

GoalEach revenue line added to a sheet lands in Planday, next to the schedule, without retyping it.

  1. 01

    Build the trigger

    Start a new Zap and pick the sheet app as the trigger, with the event that reports a new row. Planday has no trigger, so the Zap always starts outside it.

  2. 02

    Test the trigger

    Run the test: Zapier brings back the three most recent rows of the connected sheet. Pick a real one, the next steps are mapped on it.

  3. 03

    Add a filter

    From the plus icon, add Filter so only rows with a revenue value go on. This step makes the Zap multi-step, so it needs a paid plan.

  4. 04

    Add Update Daily Revenue

    Pick Planday and Update Daily Revenue, then map the revenue unit, the value, the date and the notes. All four are required.

  5. 05

    Test, then publish

    Test the action once and check the revenue in Planday for that date. When it looks right, publish the Zap to switch it on.

Actions

Planday actions

Planday gives you 4 actions. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.

1

Create Employee

Action

In Zapier“Create an Employee in your Planday portal”

Adds a new person to your Planday portal from another tool. The step asks for first name, last name, salary identifier, user name, departments and gender, all of them required.

When to use it
once a candidate signs in your recruitment tool, have them ready in Planday before their first shift.
Watch out
no action edits or removes the employee afterwards, so check every mapped field during the test.
2

Update Data Sets - Daily

Action

In Zapier“Upload daily data to a data set in Planday”

Sends one value per day into a Planday data set, with its timestamp. Any daily figure your team tracks elsewhere can sit next to the schedule this way.

When to use it
push the number of covers or orders of the day from your booking or ordering tool.
Watch out
Data Set, Value and Timestamp are all required, and the data set must be visible to the connected account.
3

Update Data Sets - Hourly

Action

In Zapier“Upload hourly data to a data set in Planday”

The hourly twin of the previous action: it writes a value into a data set for a given hour, again with a timestamp, so peaks inside the day show up.

When to use it
feed hour-by-hour footfall or sales so shifts can follow the busy hours.
Watch out
each value is one task, so hourly data costs more tasks than a daily total from the same source.
4

Update Daily Revenue

Action

In Zapier“Update daily revenue data in Planday”

Records the revenue of a day against a revenue unit in Planday. It needs the unit, the value, the date and a note, and the note is required too.

When to use it
send each closing total from your till or your accounting sheet so managers plan staff against real takings.
Watch out
an empty Notes column in your source leaves a required field blank, so give it a default text.
When it breaks

When it breaks

Zapier links no help article to Planday, so these are the general limits that matter most for an app that only receives data.

With no Planday trigger, most surprises come from the app that starts the Zap. Four cases to check first, and the Zapier troubleshooting page helps when a run still fails.

  • Past rows never reach Planday

    A Zap only reacts to what happens after you switch it on. Revenue or hires recorded before are ignored, and moving that history is a separate job.

  • A bulk import gets held back

    If the source app suddenly returns a huge batch, after an import or a migration, Zapier's flood protection can hold it back instead of sending everything.

  • The same row is not sent twice

    On a polling trigger, Zapier remembers what it has already seen, so the same row does not start the Zap twice.

  • A failed action is not billed

    When a Planday action does not go through, for instance because a required field arrived empty, no task is counted, but nothing is written either.
Need help

Need help automating Planday with Zapier?

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FAQ

Planday Zapier integration: questions

01Is the Planday Zapier integration free?
Yes, Planday is not reserved to paid plans, so it works on the free Zapier plan, which gives 100 tasks a month and unlimited Zaps. The limit is the shape of the Zap: on the free plan, a Zap holds one trigger and one action. Since Planday has no trigger, that means a trigger from another app followed by one Planday action. Add a filter or a second action and the Zap becomes multi-step, which needs a paid plan.
02How many tasks does a Planday Zap use?
One task for each Planday action that succeeds. The trigger in the other app never costs a task, and Zapier checking it for new items costs nothing either. A Zap that creates one employee per new hire uses one task per hire. An action that fails is not counted. Watch the hourly data-set action: a value per hour means many more tasks than a single daily total sent through Update Data Sets - Daily.
03Does the Planday integration run in real time?
It depends on the other app, because Planday has no trigger of its own. If the app that starts the Zap has an instant trigger, it reports the event at once and Planday gets the data right away. If it is a polling trigger, Zapier checks it on a timer set by your plan: every 15 minutes on Free, 2 on Professional, 1 on Team and Enterprise. On paid plans, a check can also be run by hand from the editor.
04What do you need to connect a Planday account to Zapier?
A Planday account, plus read or write access on anything you do not own yourself and want the Zap to touch. In Zapier, open the Apps page, click + Add connection, pick Planday, sign in to it in the tab that opens and grant access. The connection is made once and every Zap reuses it. Make sure the account can see the departments, data sets and revenue units your actions require.
05How can a Zap start if Planday has no trigger?
With a trigger from another app. Every Zap begins with a trigger, and Planday offers none on Zapier, so the first step is always the tool where the data appears first: a sheet, a form, a recruitment tool, a till. Planday comes second, through one of its four actions. Nothing that happens inside Planday, like a shift change, can start a Zap, so automations in that direction are out of reach here.
06What if the Planday operation you want is not there?
Then Zapier cannot do it for Planday, and no hidden menu offers it. The list is short: Create Employee, Update Daily Revenue, and the daily and hourly data-set updates. There is no trigger, no search, and no action to edit or remove an employee or to touch shifts. Those steps stay manual in Planday, or go through another automation tool that covers them. Check the list before planning a scenario around a step that is missing.
07Zapier, Make or n8n for Planday?
Decide on criteria rather than on a ranking. On Zapier, Planday brings 4 actions, no trigger and no search, and it works on the free plan as long as the Zap stays at one trigger and one action. So list what your scenario needs: only writing into Planday, or also reacting to what happens in it. Count the steps and the tasks per month, then compare with what the other tools offer for Planday.
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