Time policies and work patterns
Clock tolerance, geofencing, one job at a time, the leave year and holidays — and where work patterns live.
Timesheets › Policies holds the rules for the whole workspace: how clock events are checked, what the day's schedule lets field staff do, and how leave is measured. Everybody's working week and overtime now live in work patterns, further down the same page.
The tab shows for owners and anyone with the Manage time clock permission. It also needs Work patterns switched on under Global settings › Modules › Time & timesheets — if that feature is off, the whole Policies tab is hidden, not just the patterns.
Change what you need, then Save changes (or Discard to go back). Work patterns save on their own, from their own dialog.
Clock rules
- Tolerance (minutes) — "Auto-approve window vs schedule." A clock-in or clock-out within this many minutes of the scheduled time lands as Auto-approved; outside it, the entry is an Exception for a manager to look at. Default 15.
- Geofence radius (m) — "0 disables the check." With a radius set, a clock-in or clock-out further than this from the site is flagged Outside site geofence. Default 0 (off).
- Max daily hours — "Flags longer days." Leave it empty to switch it off.
None of these ever stops anyone clocking in. They raise flags in the review grid, and a manager decides. Location is read once at each clock event and never tracked in between.
Jobs
One job at a time — "Field staff must finish the job they are on before they can start another one from the day's schedule." With it on, a worker who has clocked into one of today's shifts must say how the visit went as they clock out before they can clock into another, and Switch task is hidden. A job under a route workstream has no outcome to give: the worker ticks I have finished this job instead. Routes and general work are exempt. See Clocking in and out.
Leave
- Leave year starts — 1 January, 1 April, 1 July, 1 September or 1 October.
- Full-time entitlement (days) — what somebody on the default work pattern gets for a whole year. Each person's own figure is worked out from their pattern.
- Leave display unit — days or hours, wherever leave is shown.
Extra days for length of service builds a ladder of extra days by years of service, with A day a year… to fill it and What would this change? to preview it. Public holidays decides whether Public holidays come out of the entitlement or sit on top of it.
How these work together — and how entitlements are then worked out for each person — is in Leave and time off.
Shift times
Shift times are the shifts you book over and over, set once for the workspace: a name and its hours, such as Day 07:00–17:00 and Night 18:00–04:00. One that ends at or before it starts finishes the next day, shown as (+1 day). Add shift time adds one; the pencil renames or re-times it, the bin removes it, and the handle puts them in order. The names are yours: call them Earlies, Lates or Nights if that is what your people say.
They are offered as chips when you book a shift (see Creating shifts: from draft to published), and a work pattern can name one as its people's usual shift or pay more for its hours. A shift time that a pattern pays more for can't be removed until it is taken off that pattern.
Work patterns
The rest of the page is Work patterns: "Everyone works a pattern." A pattern sets somebody's working days, standard day and week, overtime thresholds and multipliers, whether they are paid by the hour or the day, and which days pay more. Every person is on exactly one; new starters go on the one marked Default.
Two workspace-wide things also come from the default pattern: the day the timesheet week starts, and the full-time week that part-timers' leave is measured against.
Setting patterns up and putting people on them is covered in Work patterns: who works which week, and how it pays.
If you used workweek profiles before
Earlier versions had a Workweek card, a Contractors card and workspace Overtime thresholds on this page, with optional "workweek profiles" on top. Those are gone:
- The working week, the standard day and week, and the overtime thresholds and multipliers are set on each work pattern. There is no workspace-level overtime any more.
- "Contractors work different hours" is now a pattern whose Who this is for is Subcontractors.
- On a person's record the field is Work pattern, and "Tenant default" is now Workspace default.
Tip: start with one pattern that fits most of your people and make it the default. Add others only when a group genuinely works differently — a four-day week, nights, a subcontractor day rate.