Creating Employee Schedules, Days Off, and Attendance Rules Print

Scheduling supports a different start time, end time, and lunch duration for each day of the week, explicit days off, draft and published schedules, repeated weekly patterns, and attendance comparison.

Required access: Schedule-management permission. The Scheduling & Attendance master feature and Schedule Builder sub-feature must be enabled.

Enable scheduling options

1. Go to Time Logger > Settings > Features.
2. Enable Scheduling & attendance.
3. Expand the card and choose:

• Schedule builder — create and publish shifts.
• Days off — mark non-working days in a weekly pattern.
• Attendance tracking — compare scheduled and recorded time.
• Clock-in rules — apply early-clock and published-shift requirements.
• Shift notifications — email employees when shifts are published or cancelled.

4. Select Save feature controls.
5. Reload Time Logger > Workforce and confirm the Schedule tab appears.

Create a weekly schedule

1. Go to Time Logger > Workforce > Schedule.
2. Select the Employee.
3. Select the Week beginning date shown by the form.
4. Choose whether to create only this week or repeat the pattern weekly, up to 12 weeks.
5. For Monday through Sunday, choose Working or Day off.
6. For every Working day, enter that day's Start, End, and Lunch Minutes.
7. Enter Role, Location, and Employee Note when useful.
8. Choose whether to Publish immediately and notify the employee.
9. Select Create weekly schedule.

Example variable schedule

Each day is independent. Do not create a shift for a non-working day merely to show zero hours; choose Day Off.

Draft versus published

• Draft: visible to authorized managers but not employees. It does not satisfy a rule requiring a published shift.
• Published: visible to the employee and used by attendance and scheduled-only clock-in rules.

Build future schedules as drafts when management is still reviewing them. Publish only after confirming employee, dates, times, lunch, role, and location.

Overnight shifts

If End is earlier than Start, the schedule is treated as overnight. Example: Start 10:00 PM and End 6:00 AM ends the next day. Verify coverage and payroll results around midnight before using overnight schedules in production.

Configure attendance policy

1. On the Schedule page, find Attendance Policy.
2. Enter Late grace period (minutes). Example: 5 means a clock-in after 8:05 for an 8:00 shift is late.
3. Enter Allow clock-in this many minutes early. Example: 15 allows clock-in from 7:45 for an 8:00 shift.
4. Enable Require a published shift before clock-in only after all active employees have complete published schedules.
5. Enable Email employees when shifts are published or cancelled when working email has been tested.
6. Select Save attendance policy.

Review weekly coverage

1. Use Previous, This Week, or Next to select a week.
2. Review Published, Drafts, Scheduled Hours, and Attendance Issues cards.
3. In Weekly Coverage, compare Scheduled, Worked, Variance, and Attendance.
4. Investigate late, missed, early, or missing-record issues before payroll review.

Approved time off and scheduling

Review approved time off before scheduling. The scheduler checks conflicts with approved leave. If a conflict appears, correct the schedule or the leave request rather than creating overlapping expectations.

Test scheduled clock-in enforcement

1. Create and publish a test shift for a test employee.
2. Try before the early allowance and confirm the action is blocked.
3. Try inside the allowed window and confirm it succeeds.
4. Create a Draft shift only and confirm it does not satisfy a published-shift requirement.
5. Mark a day off and confirm no working shift appears.

Troubleshooting