Switching
CELCAT, module by module
CELCAT and Wise Timetable are built on the same British academic conventions and much of the vocabulary is shared already — clash-free, constraints, resources, registers. This page covers the parts that are not.
The shared half
Both systems say clash rather than conflict, separate hard constraints from soft preferences, and treat rooms, staff and equipment as resources an event draws on. An institution moving between them is not learning a new way of thinking about a timetable, which makes the comparison unusually direct: it is about what each does, not about what each means.
CELCAT to Wise Timetable
| CELCAT | Here | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive Timetabling | The desktop planner | Drag, drop, and an immediate clash warning. |
| Automated Timetabling | Automatic generation | Rules in, complete timetable out. |
| Rooming only | Room allocation for pre-scheduled events | Times already fixed, rooms found around them. |
| Room Booking | Room booking | Included in the licence rather than an extension. |
| Attendance Monitoring | Attendance monitoring | Here it is a rotating QR code rather than a card tap. |
| Exam Scheduling | Exam scheduling | Seating, invigilators, student-level clash checking. |
| Reporting | Timetable reports | Space utilisation, workload, unallocated sessions. |
| Pay Claim | Lecturer payment reports | A separate product there; part of the licence here. See the note below. |
| Publishing | Web publishing | Pages served with your branding. |
| CELCAT Calendar, CELCAT Web | The student timetable portal | No account, no install, five view modes. |
| Now | Mobile apps | Free iOS and Android, included in every licence. |
| Plasma | Digital signage | Screens in the foyer, driven from the live timetable. |
Pay Claim, and how it is answered here
CELCAT sells payment against teaching delivered as a separate product. Wise Timetable does that work inside the timetable rather than beside it, and it is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean.
Each lecturer carries their own hourly rates, and the rates can differ by the kind of session — a lecture, a laboratory and a seminar need not be paid the same — or by the study programme. Everyone can be on a different contract, because the rate table holds a line per person. The report then reads what each lecturer actually taught over a period you choose and works out the money, per programme and per kind of session, as a spreadsheet the accounts department can work from, or as a flat one-row-per-session file for a payroll system that would rather do its own arithmetic. Paying lecturers from the timetable sets out how it is configured and what it counts.
What it is not is a claims workflow. There is no form for a member of staff to submit, no approval chain behind it and no payslip at the end — the office produces the figures from what the timetable records. If the workflow rather than the figures is why your institution bought CELCAT, that is worth raising in the first conversation rather than the fourth.
What actually has to move
Rooms, staff, modules, student sets and the constraint set — and because the two systems think alike, the constraint set usually transfers as a set of decisions rather than as a translation exercise.
Wise Timetable reads Excel, CSV, XML and a documented REST API. There is no CELCAT-specific importer and this page will not imply one.
The wider question is in changing timetabling system.
Want to see this working?
Book a 45-minute online presentation and we will walk through it against your institution's own scheduling problem.