Rotas that work round the clock.
Klacks plans wards and junior doctor rotations with no gaps — automatically factoring in the shift and rest-period limits of the Junior Doctor Contract. Installed on your premises, so patient data is stored on your own servers — optionally with a locally hosted AI model.
Note on the sample data: All names, places (for example Winterthur), addresses and figures in these recordings are fictitious demo data with a Swiss background, written in Latin script. They only illustrate the product – you do not need to know or be able to read them. In your own installation you enter your own data, and the interface is multilingual.
The 13-hour limit, the rest-period cascade and WTR transparency
13-hour shift limit for junior doctors
The Junior Doctor Contract 2016 (England) provides that shifts must not be scheduled for longer than 13 hours — almost impossible to track by hand across many rotations and wards. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own, differing contracts.
Observing the rest-period cascade
After a maximum of 4 consecutive shifts over 10 hours, 48 hours' rest is due; after a maximum of 4 nights, 46 hours; after a maximum of 7 shifts, 48 hours — plus at least 11 hours' rest between any two shifts.
Making WTR compliance visible
NHS England's e-rostering guidance requires Working Time Regulations rules to be built into the system, with breaches surfaced through reports — a reliable overview is barely achievable without software.
Your finished shift plan in three steps
Install
Klacks is installed on your own infrastructure — via Docker; allow about half an hour for the first start.
Adjust rules
Public holidays and rest periods come preconfigured for your country, surcharges where defined for your country — and you can adjust them anytime.
Plan automatically
Klacks builds shift plans, flags conflicts and optimizes routes — with an AI assistant if you want.
How Klacks takes the load off hospitals in England
From gap-free ward cover to WTR transparency — everything works together.
Gap-free 24/7 cover
Day, late and night shifts across every ward — Klacks shows every gap immediately and fills it automatically on request.
13-hour limit continuously monitored
Klacks warns when planning junior doctor shifts before the 13-hour limit under the Junior Doctor Contract is exceeded — visible before the shift is finalised. On request, Klacks hard-blocks a breach in automatic planning; with manual planning it stays at a warning.
Rest-period cascade kept in view
The 11-hour rest between shifts is factored into the plan automatically; Klacks flags the 48/46/48-hour cascade after several consecutive shifts or nights as a warning.
WTR breaches made visible
Klacks has the Working Time Regulations built into the system and flags breaches before the rota is published — fully traceable for any support-and-challenge meeting.
Installed on your premises: data stored on your servers
Klacks runs on your own infrastructure. Staff and patient data are stored on your servers — and with a locally hosted AI model, no AI request goes to an external AI provider.
Klacksy understands your request
"Fill next week's night shifts for General Medicine" is all it takes — Klacksy starts the planning, Klacks factors in shift limits and rest periods.
What Klacks can do — in real recordings
Short videos from the running app, sorted by topic. Choose a chapter; only the video of the open chapter ever plays.
Note on the sample data: All names, places (for example Winterthur), addresses and figures in these recordings are fictitious demo data with a Swiss background, written in Latin script. They only illustrate the product – you do not need to know or be able to read them. In your own installation you enter your own data, and the interface is multilingual.
- Klacksy helps you get it right in every one of these cases: describe your rule in the chat in your own words, for example “Sundays earn a 50% surcharge.” — Klacksy asks follow-up questions, shows a preview and only saves once you confirm.
- Klacksy also creates scenarios and starts planning inside them — tell it in the chat, for example: “Plan Winterthur from November 2 to 8.”
- Klacksy, the built-in AI assistant, can also do all of this for you on request — for example, tell it in the chat: “Add expenses of 24.50 for Mia on October 6.”
A calendar for every nation
Bank holidays are anything but uniform across the United Kingdom: England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each observe their own set of statutory holidays, and individual councils add local holidays on top — such as Glasgow Fair Monday, the third Monday in July. Klacks handles exactly what simple tools get wrong.
- Three nations, three sets of holidays2 January and St Andrew's Day (30 November) are bank holidays only in Scotland; St Patrick's Day (17 March) and the Battle of the Boyne — known as "the Twelfth" (12 July) — only in Northern Ireland: pre-configured and ready to use.
- Mix calendarsA care, security or logistics business with sites in London, Edinburgh and Belfast runs all three calendars side by side — including bank holiday premiums and the reduced staff availability on days when nurseries and schools close in only one nation.
- Binding or purely informationalFor each calendar, you decide whether a bank holiday affects hours & premiums — or simply appears as a reminder.
It all comes down to the settings
Klacks offers countless ways to calculate rules and hour credits for nights, weekends, public holidays and overtime — exactly the way your contracts and company agreements require.
- Nights and weekends You set the night window and the surcharge rates yourself, and choose up to three weekend days — as a multiplier that is added to the hours worked as a time credit in hours.
- Public holidays and overtime A separate public-holiday rate, and overtime per day or per week in up to three tiers. When several surcharges fall on the same hour, the highest one applies — or all of them add up.
- Your own calculation with a macro If that is not enough, a macro does the maths: a short script using weekday, time of day, public holidays and contract values — with conditions, loops and functions of your own.
- Scheduling rules Rest periods, maximum daily and weekly hours, consecutive working days, free Sundays or hour caps per period — each one as a warning or, in automatic planning, as a block.
Rule violations: Klacks warns you instantly
Klacks flags time collisions, rest periods that are too short, too many consecutive working days and work on holidays right as you plan — as an error or warning in the error list.
Rest period too short - Video 1 of 4
Facts, not promises
open-source code
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industry solutions
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Junior doctor rotation, one plan
Klacks continuously monitors the 13-hour shift limit and the rest-period cascade under the Junior Doctor Contract, and shows ward managers early on where things are getting tight.
See Klacks in your hospital
Try the Playground to see how Klacks handles shift limits, rest periods and wards — or install it directly within your organisation. No license fees, with no registration required.
Klacks is open source under the AGPL-3.0. Host it yourself, keep your data with you, pay no license fees — you stay in full control.