To set up the working week for your employees, we'll use this guide to examine the different employment terms and time recording options. In these examples, we'll assume full-time employment and fixed-time employment. For other employment relationships which do not allow a fixed weekly working time, we suggest using the tracking mode "Basic". Check out product features for more on our various tracking modes. 

Each employee is configured with a tracking type. The following types exist:

• Full-time: the weekly working time is divided into individual working days. Staff Times checks for complete time recording. If no time is recorded, the corresponding day is shown with a negative balance and marked as 'Missing time sheet' in the employee's detail report.

• Part-time: the weekly working time as a% of the full-time workload is distributed over selected working days. The time recording of the configured working days is checked. Any missing time recording is shown with a negative balance and marked in the employee's detailed report.

• Basic: does not require weekly working hours configuration. Therefore, there is no validation applied.

The standard working week: the employee with a fixed weekly working hours divided into 5 evenly divided working days

With this type of employment, there are 5 set working days with consistent daily plan hours. The working week is allocated based on the formula Weekly hours divided by the number of working days. Example: a 40.00 hour week with 5 working days results in a daily plan of 8.00 hours. Thus, a working day is worth 8 hours, which means that every paid holiday as well as any paid absence (for example, sick / accident, vacation / holidays) is worth 8 working hours. Half-day absences count as 4 hours.

In Staff Times, this full-time work week is set up as follows:

The standard week with variable working hours

For employees with fixed working days but different hours of service, e.g. due to different business hours, it is desirable not to distribute the daily plan hours evenly, but apply higher plan time on certain working days and on other days a lower plan applies. Example: a 40-hour week with 5 working days results in a daily plan time of 8 hours. The following deviation may be applied; 9 hours to apply from Monday to Thursday and 4 hours on Fridays (reduced working day). This model is widely used in industries like construction. This requirement prompts the following questions:

1. In this example, how are absences/leaves accounted when Friday shows 4 plan hours and leaves are reported in days instead of hours? Does a 4 hour day count  as a whole or half day if a day of vacation or sick day falls on a Friday? 

2. Since the Staff Times vacation bank handles vacation in days (not hours), the working days must be allocated to half or full days using the illustrated tick boxes above. If the Friday is defined as a half-day, this means that the vacation leave may be considered as half a day and the vacation bank therefore assumes a 4.5 working day week (90% quota).

The employee with variable working days

For employees with variable working days, there are basically two types of working weeks:

Type A with a fixed weekly working time and where working days change from week to week. As an example we take the 40-hour week with 5 working days and 8 hour days. The working days might be Monday to Friday in Week 1, but in Week 2 from Tuesday to Saturday, etc. This type of working week is common in retail shops.

On Staff Times, this type of working week can not currently be configured. As a workaround we recommend using the above standard working week mode model which will balance out at week's end.

Type B with no fixed weekly working time and the working days change from week to week. As an example we take an employee who is assigned 6 working days in week 1, in week 2 he is assigned 4 days, in week 3 he is assigned 3 days with late shift (which triggers a paid day-off) and in week 4 he is scheduled for 4 Days whereby 2 of these are on Sundays which triggers two paid off-days. In total, 20 working days were scheduled for the month. This model is widely used in the restaurant business. To manage this employment relationship, work and duty rosters are needed.

Please note that setting up work schedules in Staff Times is not yet available. However, if you manage work schedules locally (on another tool), it is possible to use Staff Times to record actual working time using the Basic tracking mode.