AboutEvery roster tool tells you when you're short. Shiftly fills the gap.
Shiftly is an Australian workforce management platform that gives hospitality venues rostering, timesheets and award pay for free, then fills the shifts nobody could cover from a pool of on-demand workers inside the same tool.
What is Shiftly?
Shiftly is a free workforce management platform for Australian shift-based businesses, built in Brisbane in 2025 by Milan van Niekerk and Beth and operated by Squiggle Creative Pty Ltd. Venues get rostering, timesheets, leave and award interpretation at no charge, and from September 2026 Sydney venues can fill open shifts with independent workers through Shiftly On-Demand.
Around 30 venues and roughly 4,500 onboarded employees use the platform (figures as at 30 June 2026). Shiftly is a partner of the Restaurant & Catering Association and is unrelated to other products that share the name, including driver apps and car-dealer software.
- Legal entity
- Squiggle Creative Pty Ltd
- ABN
- 26 672 118 464
- Founded
- 2025, Brisbane, Queensland
- Founders
- Milan van Niekerk and Beth
- Serves
- Venues across Australia
- On-Demand
- Sydney, from September 2026
Why two hospitality workers built a roster tool they give away
A backpacker lands in Sydney for a month and wants bar shifts, not a permanent job. Across town a pub needs a glassy for one busy Saturday and does not want to hire anyone to get it. Beth and Milan had stood on both sides of that gap as students, travellers and hospitality workers, and in 2025 they started building the thing that closes it: a marketplace where a worker picks up a short, standardised shift and a venue gets an extra pair of hands without an agency or a payroll file.
The marketplace hit the problem every two-sided marketplace hits. Venues are the hard side. They are inviting strangers into their business, and the pull of signing up just to post an occasional shift was too weak. Venues do not know what they do not need yet. So the founders changed the order of operations. Build a genuinely useful rostering, timesheet and award-pay tool, give it to venues for free with no per-employee fee, and earn the trust and the roster data first. Then, when a shift sits unfilled on that roster, offer to fill it.
Come for the tool, stay for the network.
That sentence is the founders' shorthand for the whole company. Shiftly's free workforce management launched in February 2026 and the marketplace follows in Sydney in September 2026.
The people behind Shiftly
Shiftly is founder-run and bootstrapped. Both founders still work hospitality problems directly with venues.
Co-founder
Milan van Niekerk
Milan has worked hospitality shifts as a student and a traveller and now works with venues across Australia on rostering, timesheets and award-based pay. He writes most of the Shiftly blog and leads the venue side of the platform.
Co-founder
Beth
Beth came to Shiftly the same way: student, traveller, hospitality worker. She saw the worker side of the gap first, people in a city for a month who wanted shifts without a permanent job, and that view shaped the on-demand marketplace.
Follow the team on LinkedIn (Shiftly Australia).
Founded 2025, software live 2026, marketplace next
Three dates cover what Shiftly has shipped and what is coming.
2025: Shiftly founded in Brisbane
Beth and Milan start building an on-demand labour marketplace for hospitality. The company is registered as Squiggle Creative Pty Ltd. The free rostering tool is added to the plan once the two-sided cold-start problem becomes clear.
February 2026: free workforce management launches
Shiftly Team (web), Shiftly Go (managers) and Shiftly Me (staff) go live with rostering, timesheets, leave, paperless onboarding and award interpretation for Australian venues, free with no per-employee fees.
September 2026: Shiftly On-Demand launches in Sydney
The on-demand marketplace opens to venues in and around Sydney, anchored on the Sydney Fringe Festival. Sydney is the only region at launch; other Australian cities follow as the worker pool grows.
Where Shiftly is today (as at 30 June 2026)
Around 30 venues rostering on Shiftly
Cafes, bars, restaurants and multi-site groups across Australia running weekly rosters and timesheets on the free platform.
Roughly 4,500 staff profiles set up
Hospitality workers onboarded through Shiftly Me, with availability, leave and clock-ins handled in the app.
About 700 managers and owners
People building rosters, approving timesheets and exporting award pay from Shiftly Team and Shiftly Go.
Why is Shiftly free?
Shiftly is free because the software is how Shiftly earns the right to fill your shifts. Rostering, timesheets, leave, onboarding and award interpretation cost nothing for any number of staff or sites. Shiftly earns revenue in one place: when a venue fills a shift through Shiftly On-Demand, it pays for the hours worked plus an 8% service fee.
Workforce management
Rostering, timesheets, leave, onboarding and award pay for any number of staff and sites.
On-Demand service fee
Charged to the venue only when a shift is filled through Shiftly On-Demand, on top of the hours worked.
Per-employee software fees punish the venues that hire the most casuals, which are exactly the venues with the most unfilled shifts. Removing the fee gets those venues onto one roster, and an open shift on that roster is the moment on-demand cover is useful. A venue that never uses on-demand never pays. The pricing page sets out the full model, and the on-demand marketplace page covers how a shift gets filled.
What Shiftly is not
Three things that get mixed up about Shiftly, set straight.
Not a payroll provider
Shiftly calculates award pay for each shift and exports timesheets and pay data to your payroll software (Xero included free). Your business checks the figures and runs the pay run.
Not a labour-hire agency
Shifters on Shiftly On-Demand are independent contractors engaged directly by your venue. Shiftly facilitates the payment through the platform; it does not employ the worker or place staff on your behalf.
Not any other Shiftly
Shiftly (shiftly.au) is an Australian company, Squiggle Creative Pty Ltd. It is unrelated to driver apps, car-dealer software or overseas products that share the name.
Industry partnership and support
Restaurant & Catering Association partner
Shiftly is a partner of the Restaurant & Catering Association (R&CA), the national industry body for Australian restaurants, cafes and caterers. The partnership puts Shiftly's free rostering and award-pay tools in front of R&CA member venues and keeps the product close to the operators whose award questions it has to answer. Look for the R&CA mark alongside the Shiftly logo in the footer of every page.
Australia-based support by email, phone or text
Support is handled in Australia by the Shiftly team, by email, phone or text. Start at the contact page for a reply from a person, or use the help centre for setup guides on rostering, timesheets, award interpretation and the Shiftly Go and Shiftly Me apps.
Questions people ask about the company
Ownership, location, availability and what Shiftly does and does not do.
Shiftly is owned and operated by Squiggle Creative Pty Ltd (ABN 26 672 118 464), an Australian company founded in Brisbane in 2025 by Milan van Niekerk and Beth. The company is bootstrapped and founder-run. Shiftly also trades as Shiftly Australia on LinkedIn and software review sites.
Run your venue, not the roster
Set up free rostering, timesheets and award pay today, and be first in line when on-demand cover opens in your city.