Creating a Schedule
Schedules automate your Executions. For example, turn off your dev environment at 7 PM every evening and start it again at 8 AM on weekdays — saving money overnight and on weekends without lifting a finger.
If you used the Target Onboarding Wizard and created schedules in the final step, you may already have schedules. This page shows how to create and customise them.
Creating your first schedule
Navigate to Schedules > Create Schedule, or use the link below.
[SCREENSHOT: schedules-list-empty.png — empty Schedules page]
The schedule form
The form has two tabs: Stop (DOWN) and Start (UP), each with its own schedule settings.
- Name — A friendly label (e.g.
Dev Environment Weekdays) - Targets — Select one or more Targets (multi-select)
- Timezone — The timezone the schedule runs in (respects DST)
- Slack Channel (optional) — Where to post results when the schedule runs
- Status — Active or Inactive
Choosing a schedule type
The guided schedule builder (default) lets you pick a frequency and set times using form fields — no CRON knowledge needed.
| Type | Use case | Fields |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | Same time every day | Time picker (default: 7 PM stop, 8 AM start) |
| Weekly | Specific days of the week | Day checkboxes (default: Mon–Fri) + time picker |
| Monthly | Specific day of the month or Nth weekday | Day selector or "2nd Tuesday" style picker + time picker |
| Hourly | Repeating every N hours | Interval (1–12 hrs) + minute offset + optional day selection |
| One-time | Run once at a specific date/time | Date picker + time picker |
[SCREENSHOT: create-schedule-guided.png — guided schedule form showing the Weekly type with day checkboxes and time picker]
The most common setup is Weekly, Mon–Fri: stop at 7 PM and start at 8 AM. This keeps non-production resources off overnight and on weekends.
Advanced: Custom CRON
For schedules that don't fit the guided types, switch to advanced mode and enter a raw CRON expression (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week).
[SCREENSHOT: create-schedule-cron.png — advanced CRON mode showing the expression input]
Use crontab.guru to build and validate your expression. For more details see the CRON format guide.
It's safe to set a stop schedule every evening as a safety net, even if resources are already off. frugally.app reports them as already in the desired state and takes no action.
Viewing and managing schedules
After saving, your schedule appears in the list with a human-readable summary and next run times.
[SCREENSHOT: schedules-list-populated.png — schedule list with readable summaries and next run times]
From this page you can edit, pause (set to Inactive), or delete a schedule. Results appear on the Executions page and in Slack (if connected).
What's next?
Congratulations — you've completed the Getting Started guide! Here are some next steps to explore:
- Cost Explorer — Analyse AWS spending
- Commitment Utilisation — Track RI/SP usage
- Cost Guard — Budget thresholds and alerts
- Insights — Execution analytics and savings
- Advanced IAM Policy — Tag-based restrictions
- Resource Tag Filtering — Full tag syntax reference