"Shifts"  in ExakTime are used to label and better divide their time for the workday and/or "bundle" up an employee's hours to properly calculate their overtime. It can also consolidate work spanning through midnight to go to the initial day worked.

Table of Contents

• Things to Note
• Example of Shifts
• Enabling Shifts
• Permissions for Shifts
• Shift Pay Codes
• Creating a Shift
• Assigning a Shift to an Employee
• How it Appears on the Time Card

Things to Note

• Shifts will not prevent an employee from clocking in/out and are designed to label and bundle employee hours appropriately. 
• "Shifts" are not designed to notify an employee of when they are expected to be working. If you want to show employees their work schedule, you should consider using the "Schedules" feature. 

Example of Shifts

"Shifts" will label employees' hours to their respective shifts, "bundle" their hours based on the label, and help calculate their hours for the day/week.

In the example below, we have an employee who has worked the day and night shifts on a single day.

• The time records that fall into the day and night shifts have been labeled appropriately.
• The shift has "bundled" the hours for the night shift so they are part of the initial day worked, instead of being separated into two different days for the days actually worked. While this may appear incorrect, it allows their daily overtime to be calculated as you would expect based on all the hours worked for their "work day".

You can see additional examples of Shifts in ExakTime in the following dedicated article.

Enabling Shifts

Shifts are not enabled by default and must be enabled from the "Company Settings" 

• Go to Manage and click Company Settings.

  

• Click the Optional Features tab and enable Shifts.
  • Adjust the Off Clock Tolerance as needed. This allows employees to have gaps between time records, so employees can clock out for unpaid time, such as a break or lunch, and Connect considers the separate time records to be part of the same shift.
  • For example, an employee working the day shift will be working late, and their time would overlap with the night shift. They clock out for 45 minutes for a long lunch and back in to continue work. If the Off Clock Tolerance is set to 2 hours, ExakTime Connect will consider the time before and after lunch to be part of the same shift. If the Off Clock Tolerance is set to 30 minutes, the time before and after lunch can be considered different shifts, such as a day and a night shift.

  

  

• Click Save.

Permissions for Policies

Administrators will have access to Shifts for Policies by default, while other users can be permitted to manage Shifts via Security Roles. Permission to manage shifts does not determine if a shift policy is assigned.

• Go to Manage and click on Security Roles.

  

• Click the ExakTime Connect tab.

  

• Click on the role that should have access, or create a new role. 

  

• In the permissions to the right, enable the settings for policies and/or shift pay codes.

  

• Click Save at the bottom. 

Shift Pay Codes

Shift pay codes allow you to associate a specific pay code with a shift and also note if the pay code can be paid or not. For example, if an employee is scheduled for a day shift normally, but is asked to work a night shift, you can set up a premium shift pay code.

Shift pay codes are primarily used for reference in ExakTime Connect and do not affect AccountLinx when exporting records or estimated payroll calculations.

• Go to Manage and click on Shift Pay Codes.

  

• You will see a list of previously created pay codes if any.

  

• Click Add Shift Pay Code.

  

• Enter the name for the Shift Pay Code. You can also enter an ID, enter a description, and if the pay code should be paid or not.

  

• Click Save or Save & New when finished.

Creating a Shift

Shifts are set up by dictating the time frame for the start and end of a shift, what pay code the shift should be associated with, and if the shift should apply to employees with other default shifts. Overtime and time roundings can also be set up for anyone that qualifies for the shift.

Setting Up Shift

• Go to Manage and click on Policies.

  

• Click the Shifts tab.

  

• Click Add Shift.

  

• Enter the required information to set up your shift parameters.

  

  • Give the shift a name (i.e. Day Shift, Night Shift, Swing Shift, etc.)

    

  • Specify when the shift starts & ends. A grace period must be set up to allow punches before or after the start/end time to be considered part of the shift.
    • For example, the start of the Day shift is 8 AM and has a grace period of 30 minutes. If the employee clocks in any time between 7:30 AM and 8:30 AM, they are considered to be part of that shift.

    

  • (Optional) Specify the pay code for the shift.

    

  • Use the provided checkboxes to include employees that have a specific Default Shift. By default, a shift will only apply to employees that have the shift set as their default. If you select "None", then any employees without a specified shift can have the current shift apply to them.

    • For example, if you are setting up a Graveyard shift and your Day shift employees may also work the Graveyard shift, then you would select the Day shift so any employees that have a default Day shift can also have the Graveyard shift policy applied to them.

    

• Click Save when finished.

Set Up Shift Policies

Shift policies are used like Employee and Location policies to help calculate an employee's overtime and time roundings based on what shift an employee worked. 

• Click the Policies tab for the selected shift. 

  

• Enable and adjust the available overtime and rounding settings. If you are unfamiliar with overtime/rounding policies, you can refer to the Shift Policies article.

  

• Press Save at the bottom when finished. 

Assigning a Default Shift to an Employee

Assigning a Shift to an employee as their Default Shift will allow ExakTime to label a time record as the respective shift if it meets the shift requirements.

If an employee does not have a "Default Shift", then the Shift will not apply to their time records, even if their time record is within the threshold, unless the Shift is set to apply to employees that do not have any default shift.

• Go to Manage and click Employees.

  

• Click the pencil icon to the left of an employee entry.

  

• Specify the "Default Shift" from the drop-down menu provided.

  

• Click Save at the bottom when finished. 

How it Appears on the Time Card

As employees clock in/out and/or when time is manually added to the time card, the appropriate shift and pay code will be automatically associated with the time record(s) in their respective columns, if the time records are eligible for the Shift. The shift and pay code can be manually adjusted if needed and override the shift/pay code that the system automatically assigned. 

Please Note

• When adjusting the time records, please be aware of the dates during your adjustments as records for the following day can appear on the initial day.
• If you have an auto-lunch policy enabled for your employees, the auto-lunch will view each shift as a separate work session. For example, if the employee works a day shift and a night shift, they can receive an auto-lunch for the day shift and one for the night shift.
• If the Shift and Pay Code columns need to be added or removed, you can use the column manager button and adjust them as needed.