The the Time & Attendance module's Scheduling feature provides a robust set of features that makes it easy for you to assign and manage your employees' schedules. The topics below provide an introduction to scheduling.

Why Use Schedules?

Assigning schedules allows you to see when specific employees are scheduled to work and to compare each employee's actual reported work time to his or her assigned schedule. If you schedule both your employees' expected work hours and their planned non-worked time (such as vacations, jury duty, or bereavement), it will be easy for you to see at a glance the impact of non-worked time on your staffing levels.

Many features depend on the existence of schedules. If you have assigned schedules to your employees, you can flag as exceptions certain types of deviations from assigned schedules (such as early or late arrivals or departures). When some types of exceptions occur (such as missing in or out punches), you can quickly resolve them by choosing the automatic solution "Use Schedule." If your company supports employee loan, you can schedule an employee to work certain hours in a labor charge category overseen by a different manager.

Your employees also benefit from having their schedules recorded in the Time & Attendance module. They will be able view their assigned schedules, which makes it easy for them to verify when they are expected to work. Schedules can also make certain time recording tasks more efficient, because the application can use an employee's scheduled times as default values in many procedures. For example, a time sheet employee who works his scheduled time can record his time quickly by simply accepting the scheduled times that appear by default on his time sheet.

Types of Schedules: Daily Schedules and Recurring Schedules

As a manager, you can create individualized daily schedules for your employees, or you can assign employees to standard recurring schedules  that are predefined by a practitioner. You can use recurring schedules and daily schedules together, which allows you to assign a standard recurring schedule to an employee while also accommodating special circumstances that cause deviations from the assigned recurring schedule. All deviations are recorded as daily schedules, which supersede employees' assigned recurring schedules. For more information about recurring schedules and deviations, see Understanding Recurring Schedules.

Note: You can use any combination of daily and recurring schedules, as long as two daily schedule time pairs do not overlap. If a daily schedule and an assigned recurring schedule overlap on a given day, the daily schedule takes precedence.

Using the Schedules Feature

The Scheduling feature is very flexible and allows you to perform a wide variety of scheduling tasks. Most of these tasks are initiated from a schedule grid on the Schedules page . The schedule grid can be viewed using either of two subtabs, each of which displays different information and allows you to perform different scheduling tasks:

The schedule grid that appears on the Daily Schedules tab and the Recurring Schedules tab displays scheduling information for up to 100 employees for up to 31 days. You can use the grid to perform scheduling operations for multiple employees in one operation, and to visualize the effects of your actions both before and immediately after you submit your actions.

Using Single-Employee Calendar View and Drill-Down Pages to Perform Scheduling Tasks

Although the schedule grid makes it easy to view and manage schedules for one or more employees, you may prefer to view and manage individual employees' schedules using the single-employee monthly calendar and recurring schedule calendar. These pages display four weeks of a single employee's complete schedule or effective recurring schedule assignments. From these calendars, you can open drill-down pages that allow you to create, edit, or delete assigned daily or recurring schedules, one employee and one schedule at a time.

Note: Unlike the schedule grid, the single-employee calendars and drill-down pages do not allow you to edit schedules for multiple employees or multiple days at one time, preview the results of your edits, see the results of your edits immediately, or view your overall employee staffing levels.