Create a Cover Plan: Fast, Digital and Always Up to Date

Creating a cover plan costs many schools valuable time every single morning. This guide shows how to plan cover efficiently — and how SchuleVernetzt imports your plan from Untis or Indiware and makes every change visible to everyone in seconds.

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  • GDPR-compliant
  • Hosted in Germany
  • Free for teachers

A product of SavePaper.work

Benefits

What matters most in a cover plan

Always up to date

Last-minute sick leave among staff changes the plan by the minute. A digital cover plan shows every update instantly, instead of going stale on the notice board.

Shared in seconds

Teachers, students and parents see the plan on their phone at the same time. No more crowding around a printout in the hallway.

Fewer gaps and mistakes

Who covers which class in which room? A clear overview prevents double-booked rooms and forgotten lessons.

Plan without double work

SchuleVernetzt imports your timetables and cover plans from Untis or Indiware. You maintain data only once — and later build the plan right inside the app.

How it works

Create a cover plan in four steps

Anyone who has to create a cover plan in the morning works through the same order every time – these four steps turn it into a routine that holds up under time pressure.

1 2 3 4
  1. 1

    Collect the absences

    First gather every report of the morning in one place: sick notes, training days, class trips and excursions. Only once it is clear which lessons are open is a second look at the timetable worth it.

  2. 2

    Assign the cover

    For each open lesson, look for a free teacher and check room and subject while you do. SchuleVernetzt shows available colleagues and reports double bookings before they end up in the plan.

  3. 3

    Make the plan complete

    Record the period, class, subject, room and cover in every row, and mark deliberately which lesson is cancelled without replacement. A note field for tasks or room changes saves many questions later.

  4. 4

    Make the plan known

    Share the finished plan through a route everyone knows. Digitally that happens automatically by push to teachers, classes and parents, and at the same time on the screen in the entrance hall.

In comparison

Digital cover plan vs. the classic notice board

Digital with SchuleVernetzt
TimelinessChanges visible instantly
DistributionAutomatically on everyone's phone
EffortImported from Untis and Indiware
TraceabilityEvery change logged
Classic notice board
TimelinessOnly as current as the last printout
DistributionHallway notice, announcement, word of mouth
EffortEverything retyped and pinned up by hand
TraceabilityHandwritten fixes, no history
In detail

Creating a cover plan: what matters

What belongs in every row

A cover plan is only usable once every row is understandable without a follow-up question. That means the period, the class affected, the subject, the room and the person taking over. Just as important is honestly marking lessons that are cancelled without replacement – otherwise an empty row ends with a class standing in front of a locked door. A short note field takes the special cases: tasks from the staff room, a room change, a lesson moved forward. Schools that keep these six details consistently can later move the plan into software without rebuilding it, because exactly those fields form the basis there too.

The timetable becomes the cover plan

Most of the time is lost not in the writing but in the looking up: who is free in the third period, which room is taken, which class has sport in the hall anyway? Those answers are already in the timetable. SchuleVernetzt reads it in from Untis or Indiware, so classes, subjects, rooms and teachers do not have to be entered a second time. On that basis the software suggests free teachers and points out rooms or people booked twice. Schools without a timetabling tool enter the data once directly in SchuleVernetzt and work on from there.

Publishing without data protection problems

It is at the point of distribution that a cover plan either does or does not become a data protection problem. The reason for an absence does not belong in the plan: it is enough that a lesson is covered, not why. The route matters as well. A WhatsApp group lays open the phone numbers of all parents and cannot be taken back; a closed channel with personal accounts does not. SchuleVernetzt processes the data on servers inside the EU, in Germany, and a data-processing agreement plus a data-protection package are part of the offer. A role concept controls who sees which section. How long cover plans have to be kept comes from the education law your school sits under, and the periods differ widely.

How to get started with a digital cover plan

Existing plans from Untis or Indiware are imported — with no need to re-enter anything. From day one everyone sees the current cover plan digitally; step by step you build and manage it entirely in the app.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions about creating a cover plan

Yes. SchuleVernetzt imports timetables and cover plans from Untis and Indiware. You start with your existing data and never have to maintain anything twice.

Yes. Each role sees exactly the changes relevant to them — teachers their assignments, classes their plan. Everything runs through a secure channel instead of WhatsApp.

No. SchuleVernetzt runs in the browser and as an app, with no new hardware. Data is processed in line with GDPR; a DPA and data-protection package are included.

Every row needs the period, the class, the subject, the room and the person taking over. Lessons cancelled without replacement should be marked as such explicitly. A note field for tasks or room changes answers questions in advance. The reason for the absence, by contrast, does not belong in the plan.

That depends above all on how quickly you can see who is free. When the timetable, the room bookings and the absences sit in one system, the looking up across several lists falls away and the assignment becomes the shorter part of the work. The finished plan then goes out without an extra step.

There is no figure that travels: retention and deletion follow the education law your school sits under and the rules of whichever authority supervises it, and those differ sharply between school systems. It is worth setting your own practice down in writing once. Plans kept digitally can be deleted deliberately, while stacks of paper in the office usually stay until somebody tidies up.
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