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The factory works six days and the office five

"The plant runs Monday to Saturday. The office is Monday to Friday. Saturday must not show as absent for the office people and it must not show as a holiday for the factory."

What is really being asked​

One company, two working weeks. He wants Saturday to be an ordinary working day for four hundred factory men and a weekend for a hundred office staff, in the same month, in the same reports.

This is two Time Template records, and then everything else follows. The weekly off is not on the Calendar, not on the Shift Pattern and not on the employee. It is a tick on a time template line.

What you need in place first​

Do this​

  1. Create the factory template. Open Time Template, code FACTORY-6, Name "Factory, six day week".

    The screen gives you seven lines and only seven, one per weekday, Sunday first through to Saturday. You cannot add a line and you cannot delete one.

    • On the Sunday line, tick Weekend.
    • On the other six lines, set Time In 08:00 and Time Out 17:00.
    • Set Tolerance Time In to 10 minutes on all six.

    Working Hours fills itself from Time In and Time Out. Do not type it.

  2. Create the office template. Code OFFICE-5, Name "Office, five day week". Tick Weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Set 09:00 to 18:00 on the other five.

    That is the entire difference between a six-day week and a five-day week: one extra tick.

  3. Set the lateness rules per template, on each template's own Conditions and Decisions grids. Conditions say what counts as what: a Type, a From Time, a To Time, Hours and a Counter. Decisions turn a count into a consequence: a Type, a From Count and an Absent Day.

    The factory and the office usually want different rules here, and that is the second reason they are two templates rather than one.

    The screen keeps you honest. On a fixed day you may use any condition type except Half Day and Absent; on a day ticked Flexible only Absent, Half Day and Early are allowed. An out-of-range threshold is refused with "Hours must be between 0 and the working hours of the day (9)."

  4. Create a calendar per population. Open Calendar, code FACTORY, and on its Calendar Working Time tab add one line: Date From 01-Jan-2026, Date To 31-Dec-2026, Time Template FACTORY-6. Then OFFICE the same way with OFFICE-5.

    The Calendar is a date-range map and nothing more: between these dates, these people work to this template. Lines may not overlap and may not run backwards, and the screen says so: "Calendar - Line ID: 1 - Date From cannot be greater than Date To".

  5. Set the attendance policy per calendar, on the Calendar's Policy tab. This is where Attendance Correction Backdate Limit (Days), Sandwich Absent and the two attendance allowances live, and they are per calendar, so the factory and the office can differ. See an allowance must stop when a man goes on long leave.

  6. Create a policy profile per population on Employee Policy Profile, each naming its own calendar, and put every man on the right one through Employee Organization Assignment.

Where two clients differ​

Factory, six daysOffice, five days
Time TemplateFACTORY-6OFFICE-5
Lines ticked WeekendSundaySaturday and Sunday
Clock window08:00 to 17:0009:00 to 18:00
Tolerance Time In10 minutes15 minutes
Flexible daysNoneSometimes all five
CalendarFACTORYOFFICE
Encashment divisor the client will ask for2630

A six-day week and a 26 divisor usually travel together, and a five-day week with 30. They are typed in two different places, so they can disagree, and on one client in three they do. See a man wants his leave balance paid out.

Three things on these screens that do nothing​

Say these out loud at handover, because somebody will tick them and expect a result.

  • The Alternate tick on a time template line is stored and read by nothing. There is no alternate-Saturday logic behind it. A client who wants Saturday off every second week cannot have it from this tick. The nearest thing is two calendars and moving people between them, which is rarely worth doing; most clients settle for a full working Saturday or none.
  • Three columns on the Calendar Working Time grid, Control and the two unlabelled ticks beside it, are read by nothing.
  • Ticking Weekend on a template line clears Flexible and Alternate but keeps the clock times, deliberately: a man called in on a Saturday still has a window to be measured against.

How you prove it worked​

  1. Open Employee Attendance for an office man over a week that contains a Saturday. The Saturday line must come back as a weekend, with no absence and no deduction.
  2. Open the same week for a factory man. His Saturday must carry a Schedule Time In of 08:00 and be measured like any other day.
  3. Check the Schedule Time In on a Monday for both. 08:00 and 09:00. If they are the same, one of them is on the wrong calendar.
  4. Run Payroll Attendance for the month and compare Pay Period Days for the two men. They are the same. Then compare Salary Days. Also the same, if neither was absent. A weekend costs nothing in either week.
  5. Count the absent days for the office population. If every office man has four or five absences in a month, Saturday is not ticked as weekend.

What will go wrong​

  • One template is used for both with the thought that the roster will sort it out. It will not. Every office man collects a Saturday absence every week and payroll deducts for it.
  • The weekend is looked for on the Calendar. The Calendar grid has a Weekend column, but the weekly off that is actually read comes from the time template's seven lines.
  • The templates are correct and the policy profile points at the wrong calendar. The symptom looks like a template fault. Always check the profile first; it is one field and it is wrong more often than the template.
  • The client expects alternate Saturdays because he saw the Alternate column. Tell him on the first day that it does nothing.