Every work schedule consists of one or more time policy rules (schedules). This article assumes you already know how to create a time policy rule. If not, start with Creating a user rule and a work schedule.
First, choose your approach
All Hours has two different ways of deciding which schedule applies on a given day:
| Automatic work plan | Rotating work plan |
How the schedule is chosen | By the actual clock-in | By a predefined sequence |
Best for | Flexible arrival, shifts without a fixed roster, a different schedule on specific days | Rotating rosters where it is known in advance who works when |
If the employee arrives outside the expected time | The system picks another schedule or the fallback rule | The schedule that is next in the cycle applies |
Days off | Not part of the schedule | Part of the cycle |
If employees decide themselves which shift to come in for, use a Automatic schedule. If the roster is set by a manager in advance and repeats, use a rotating one.
1. Automatic work plan
How All Hours picks a rule
On the first clock-in of the day, the system checks the rules in order, from the highest priority down:
Are all the conditions of the rule with priority 1 met? If yes → that rule applies for the whole day.
If not → it checks the rule with priority 2. And so on.
If no conditional rule is met → the rule without restrictions at the bottom of the list applies.
Two practical consequences follow:
Order matters. A rule with narrower conditions must sit above a rule with broader ones, otherwise the broader rule triggers first and the narrower one is never reached.
The rule is chosen once per day. Later clock-ins do not change the choice.
Conditions you can set
Priority
Determines the order in which rules are checked. Priority 1 is checked first.
Example: rule 8:00 has priority 1, rule 8:30 has priority 2. If the employee meets the conditions of rule 8:00, rule 8:30is never evaluated.
Day restriction
The rule applies only on selected days of the week.
Example: a shorter working day applies on Saturdays. Restrict the rule Saturday – 6 hours to Saturday and give it a higher priority than the regular rule. From Monday to Friday the condition is not met, so the regular rule applies.
Arrival window
The rule applies only if the first clock-in falls within a defined time window. This is what makes multiple shifts within the same day possible (only one shift can be enabled at the same time).
Windows should not overlap. If they do, the rule with the higher priority always wins.
Required: a rule without restrictions at the bottom
If all of your user rules have conditions set (day or arrival window), you must add one more rule without any restrictions at the bottom of the work schedule, with the lowest priority.
Why: on a day when the employee does not clock in at all (sick leave, vacation, public holiday), no condition is met. Without a fallback rule, All Hours does not know which schedule to calculate the day against, so the absence is not evaluated correctly.
This rule should match the employee's usual schedule.
Example: a work schedule for shift work
Prerequisite: each shift needs its own user rule — morning, afternoon and night. Create them following Creating a user rule and a work schedule.
Go to Settings → Work plans and click + Add.
Add the user rules for all shifts to the work plan.
Sort them by priority the schedule with the earlier start time goes higher.
Set an arrival window on each rule; this determines which shift is applied based on the clock-in time.
Add a rule without restrictions at the bottom.
Save, then assign the work schedule to your employees.
Priority | User rule | Arrival window | Triggered by |
1 | Morning shift | 05:00–10:00 | Clock-in at 06:12 |
2 | Afternoon shift | 12:00–17:00 | Clock-in at 13:55 |
3 | Night shift | 20:00–00:00 | Clock-in at 21:40 |
4 | No restrictions | – | Absence, or clock-in outside all windows |
2. Rotating work plan
Use a rotating work plan when schedules rotate according to a predefined sequence. The sequence runs day by day; when it reaches the end, it starts over automatically.
Unlike a conditional schedule, the schedule is not chosen based on the clock-in but based on where the day falls in the cycle.
Creating it
Go to Settings → Work plans and click + Add.
Enter a name and select the Rotating mode.
Enter the sequence of shifts the exact order of schedules employees rotate through. Days off are part of the sequence, just like shifts.
Example sequence:
After the last step, the cycle restarts from the first.
Assigning it to an employee
When assigning, click New cyclic work schedule and set two things:
First effective date the date from which the schedule applies (e.g. 1 Feb 2025).
Starting shift in the cycle which step of the sequence this employee begins on. This can also be a day off.
By giving employees different starting shifts, you spread the same cycle across a team so their shifts alternate.
The cycle runs independently of the day of the week. If you want a given schedule to always fall on the same weekday, the cycle length must be a multiple of seven days.: