Attendance & shifts
Overview
This area records attendance (when someone was there) and plans shifts (when someone should be there). From attendance follows the working-time account — the overtime or shortfall.
An important distinction: attendance is not project time. Clocking says "I am here"; booking project time says "I worked on this". Both can run side by side and answer different questions.
Core tasks
Clock. Arrival, departure and breaks are recorded. Anything forgotten can be filed afterwards — as a correction, not by overwriting. Every correction records whether a punch was added or counter-booked, with the reason and the day's net time before and after.
Read the account. The working-time account shows target, actual and balance. A manual correction is possible and stays visible as such.
Approve and lock days. Approval confirms a day — only approved days count in the payroll export. An approved day can still be corrected; it is frozen by Lock day or by locking the whole month (below). There is no withdrawing an approval — a correction stays visible as such.
Close the month. In the Month-end closing section of the team view the manager picks the month (the previous month by default) and locks it for payroll — per brand of the brand switcher or across all brands. Locked days carry a padlock; times, account and shift plan of that month no longer change. Release lock is a separate permission and asks first. The team view does not create the payroll export itself: Go to payroll export leads with the chosen month and brand to HR → Payroll Export, the one logged route. While the month is open, a hint points out that exported values may still change.
Analyse. Above the team attendance sits the report with two views for the chosen period (the current month by default). Per employee shows actual against target, the deviation, the number of shifts and — right next to it — the open days. That last column is not decoration: a balance built from half-recorded days looks tidy and is not. Sorting is by the largest deviation, because that is the line someone cares about.
Plan vs. actual per day sets, for every employee and day, the attendance (actual, net) against the planned shift (shift time minus break) and the booked project time, and names both deviations: Deviation from shift (attendance minus shift) and Not booked (attendance minus project time). A day with a planned shift but no attendance carries the note "did not show up"; a day without a shift has no plan and therefore no plan deviation ("–"). The Employee selection narrows the days; a period covers at most 92 days.
Both views show exactly what the attendance list would show — the report opens no second door. Shift drafts appear for planners only, project time only with read access to time tracking; otherwise the cell shows "–".
Plan and publish shifts. In the shift plan, the plus in the employee × day cell creates a shift. A template hands over times and break as a copy — if the template changes later, shifts already planned stay as they are. For several days, Duplicate to next day in the edit dialog carries a shift forward day by day; there is no bulk creation across a whole period. A shift plan is first drafted and then released for the displayed week with Publish. Staff only see published shifts; a draft everyone can see would not be a draft. If a published shift is changed in content, it falls back to draft and only reappears with the next publication — with a fresh notification. Your own shifts also appear in My calendar, with their time and the shift template's name; planners also see their own drafts there, with a dashed outline.
Move shifts. A shift chip can be dragged with the mouse onto another cell — another person, another day. Without a mouse: focus the chip and Alt + arrow left/right moves it by one day (within the displayed week), Alt + arrow up/down to the person above or below. The checks are the same as when editing: an overlap or absence is reported, and the shift stays where it was.
Staff week. The Staff week button in the shift plan shows, per person and day, the shifts, the absences (approved and requested) and the planned project time from resource planning side by side, with weekly totals per person. The view is read-only — planning still happens in the shift plan or on the planning board. Absences appear with the permission to see team absences, project time with resource planning active and capacity read access.
Fields in detail
Shift
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Employee employeeId | yes | an employee | Who works. |
Date workDate | yes | date | On which day. |
From / to startTime, endTime | yes | time | The shift times. A shift across midnight is recognised as such and not calculated as a negative duration. |
Break (minutes) breakMinutes | no | 0 or more | How much break. It comes off the working time — and is why an eight-hour shift yields seven and a half hours of work. |
Template templateId | no | an existing shift template | Which template the times come from. The way to create recurring shifts without typing them. |
Note note | no | text, max. 255 characters | A note on the shift. |
Publish
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
From / to from, to | date | The period whose drafts are published at once — in the shift plan the displayed week. Only drafts are published; drafts in a month locked for payroll stay drafts, the rest is published anyway. |
Attendance
Attendance arises from clocking in and out, not from an entry. A working day is the calendar day in the employee's time zone: whoever clocks shortly after midnight belongs to the new day, and a time without a time-zone suffix counts as their local time. The day's target comes from the employee's working hours; on a public holiday of their holiday region it is zero, on a half holiday (such as Christmas Eve) half. A day only books into the working-time account once it is approved; holiday or sick leave without clocking does not burden the account.
Plan vs. actual per day
| Column | Field | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Shift (plan) | shiftMinutes | Sum of the day's shifts minus break; "–" = no (visible) shift. |
| Attendance (actual) | attendanceMinutes | Net attendance; 0 with a planned shift means "did not show up". |
| Deviation from shift | deltaShiftMinutes | Attendance minus shift — negative means: present less than planned. |
| Project time | projectMinutes | Time booked to projects that day; "–" = time tracking off or no read access. |
| Not booked | deltaProjectMinutes | Attendance minus project time — the time that sits on no project. |
Settings & permissions
Working time settings. The Settings button on the time clock and in team attendance opens the rules that apply to all brands (permission workforce.config.manage, granted to the HR role by default):
| Field | Values | What it does |
|---|---|---|
First break threshold breakThreshold1Minutes | 0–1440 minutes (default 360) | From this working time the first minimum break applies. |
Minimum break from first threshold breakMin1Minutes | 0–240 minutes (default 30) | Break required from the first threshold. |
Second break threshold breakThreshold2Minutes | 0–1440 minutes (default 540) | From this working time the second minimum break applies. |
Minimum break from second threshold breakMin2Minutes | 0–240 minutes (default 45) | Break required from the second threshold. |
Maximum working time per day maxDailyMinutes | 60–1440 minutes (default 600) | Above it the day reports a violation. |
Minimum rest period minRestMinutes | 0–1440 minutes (default 660) | Rest between two working days. |
Location required to clock in gpsRequired | on/off | Clocking in is not possible without a location. |
Wage type attendance wageTypeAttendance | text, up to 10 characters (default 200) | Wage type of attendance in the payroll export. |
Wage type overtime wageTypeOvertime | text, up to 10 characters (default 400) | Wage type of overtime. |
Wage type absence (default) wageTypeAbsenceDefault | text, up to 10 characters (default 600) | Wage type of an absence without its own wage type. |
Wage type unpaid absence wageTypeUnpaidDefault | text, up to 10 characters (default 690) | Wage type of unpaid absence. |
DATEV consultant number payrollConsultantNumber | up to 7 digits | Header of the payroll export. |
DATEV client number payrollClientNumber | up to 5 digits | Header of the payroll export. |
Values outside the allowed range are rejected; only someone holding the permission for all brands may save.
- Clock own time:
workforce.attendance.clock_own - View:
.view_own/.view_team/.view_any - Correct:
workforce.attendance.correct· Approve/lock a day:workforce.attendance.approve - Report and plan vs. actual: the same view permissions as attendance; the project time in it only with
time.report.view (others) or time.entry.view_own (own)
- Month-end closing:
workforce.period_lock.view(see),.manage(lock),.release(release the lock — deliberately separate) - Payroll export:
hr.payroll.exportunder HR → Payroll Export — the former
Working time export permission has been merged into it
- Account:
workforce.account.view_own/.view_any/.adjust - Shifts:
workforce.shift.view_own(published only) and the module's planning permissions
Module flag: module.workforce.
FAQ & troubleshooting
The balance is wrong. Check the employee's target hours and absences first — both feed into the target.
A day can no longer be changed. Then it is locked — as a single day or because its month is locked for payroll (padlock on the day). A day that is only approved can still be corrected. For a month lock, someone with workforce.period_lock.release releases the lock in the month-end closing.
Where did the DATEV or CSV export go? To HR → Payroll Export. The Go to payroll export button in the month-end closing leads there with the chosen month; every export is logged there.
An employee cannot see their shift. The plan has not been published yet — or the shift was changed after publication and is a draft again.
Plan vs. actual shows only "–" for project time. Time tracking is switched off, or you lack read access to this employee's times (time.report.view).