Time Template

A Time Template is a set of times. It says what time work starts and ends on each of the seven weekdays, how many hours the day is worth, how much grace a late arrival gets, and at what point a late arrival stops being late and becomes half a day or an absence. It is the only place in PeopleNest where a working day has clock times on it.

Where

Organization & Setup › Calendar › Time Template

Who uses it

The implementation consultant, once per set of working times the company keeps

When

Before the Calendar, and before any roster

Needs first

Nothing

Read by

Calendar, Shift Roster, Employee Attendance

What it is for

Attendance is a comparison. A machine punch on its own means nothing: 09:14 is early for one group of people and late for another. The Time Template is the thing the punch is compared against.

One template holds exactly seven lines, one for each day of the week. Each line carries the start time, the end time, the hours the day is worth, and whether the day is a weekend or a flexible day with no fixed clock at all. That is why a company that works 09:00 to 18:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00 to 14:00 on Saturday needs only one template, not two: the Saturday line simply carries different times.

Two more grids on the screen turn those times into decisions. The condition lines say what a punch inside a given window means - that an arrival between 09:16 and 10:00 is Late, that an arrival after 10:00 is only half a day, that an arrival after 13:00 is an absence. The policy decision lines then say what the company does about a pattern of them, for example that every three late days costs one day of pay.

Why this is not the Shift screen

This is the question every client asks. The answer is that a Time Template is a set of times, and a shift, as the client means the word, is a Time Template put on a particular day for a particular person.

A Time Template does not know who works it or on what date. The Calendar attaches a template to a span of dates for everyone on that calendar, which is how an ordinary office gets its ordinary hours. The Shift Roster and the Shift Pattern then override that for the people who rotate, and a released Shift Change Request overrides the roster for one person on one day.

The order matters, so it is worth saying plainly. Where the roster has an opinion about a day, the roster is the whole opinion: a day the roster says is worked is worked, even if the Time Template calls that weekday a weekend. Where the roster says nothing, the Calendar's template stands.

Every field, in plain words

Header

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Time Template	The short code you will pick from every other screen.	DAY_SHFT	Required. Keep it short and recognisable, it is what the roster shows.
Name	The readable name.	Day Shift 09:00 - 18:00	Required. Put the times in the name, it saves opening the screen to check.

Basic Data - the seven day lines

The grid always holds seven lines, one per weekday, and you fill all seven. A day that is not worked is not deleted, it is ticked as a weekend.

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Day	Which day of the week the line is.	Monday	Fills itself. The seven lines are fixed and in order, you cannot add or remove one.
Weekend	The day is not a working day. Attendance for it reads as Weekend and nothing is expected.	Ticked on the Sunday line	Leave Time In, Time Out and Working Hours as they are on a weekend line, they are not read.
Alternate	The day is a weekend only on alternate occurrences of it, used for the common arrangement of every second Saturday off.	Ticked on the Saturday line	Tick it together with Weekend on the same line.
Flexible	The day has no fixed start or finish. The employee is judged only on hours worked.	Ticked for the design office	A flexible day is judged by the Hours conditions, not the time windows. See the condition grid below.
Time In	The time the day starts.	09:00	A night shift is entered with a Time Out earlier than the Time In, for example in 20:00 and out 04:00. The system understands that as crossing midnight.
Time Out	The time the day ends.	18:00	Must differ from Time In on a day that is worked and has hours on it.
Working Hours	How many hours the day is worth. This, not the clock, is what the day owes.	9	The number the payroll and the short-hours rule work from.
Tolerance Time In	The grace at the start, in minutes. Arriving inside the grace is simply Present.	15	This is displayed grace. The hard boundary is the Late window you set in the condition grid.
Tolerance Time Out	The grace at the end, in minutes. Leaving inside the grace is not early leaving.	15	Same relationship as above, against the Early window.
Condition	Opens the condition lines for that day.	Click it on the Monday line	Each weekday line carries its own set of conditions.

Condition lines - what a punch at a given time means

These lines are the actual rule. They are per weekday line, so Saturday can be read more leniently than Monday.

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Type	Which judgement this window produces.	Late	Required in practice, the line does nothing without it. Values below.
From Time	The window opens here.	09:16	Leave blank on an Hours line, that line has no clock.
To Time	The window closes here.	10:00	A punch inside From Time and To Time earns the Type of the line.
Hours	For a flexible day: the hours worked must reach this to escape the judgement.	4	Used only on flexible days. The lowest threshold the worked total falls under is the one that applies.
Counter	How many times the judgement is recorded for one occurrence.	1	Blank or zero reads as one. Set it to 2 where the company counts one occurrence twice.

The Type values:

• Late - an arrival inside this window is a late arrival. The day is still a full present day, it is only marked.
• Early - a departure inside this window is early leaving. Also a marked full day.
• Half Day In - an arrival this late costs half the day.
• Half Day Out - a departure this early costs half the day.
• Absent In - an arrival this late is not accepted at all, the day is an absence.
• Absent Out - a departure this early is not accepted at all, the day is an absence.
• Half Day - the plain half day judgement, used on a flexible day against an Hours threshold rather than a clock window.
• Absent - the plain absence judgement, used on a flexible day against an Hours threshold.
• Short Hours - the hours worked fell below what the day owed. Used on the policy decision lines rather than as a time window.

A day with no punch at all, or with only one punch, is an absence without needing a line for it.

Policy Decision lines - what a pattern of them costs

The condition lines mark a day. These lines convert a month of marks into days of pay. They are read for four of the types only.

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Type	Which marks are being counted.	Late	Only Late, Half Day, Early and Short Hours are read here.
From Count	How many marks make up one charge.	3	On a Short Hours line this is counted in whole hours, not in days.
Absent Day	How many days of pay one charge costs.	1	Enter 0.5 to charge half a day.

A line of Late / 3 / 1 means: every complete group of three late days in the period costs one day. Nine late days costs three days, eight costs two. The remainder is not charged.

Keep Short Hours and Half Day apart. A template carrying a slab for both will charge the same shortfall twice, once as the half day it produced and again as the hours it was short.

How to configure it

1. Open Time Template and enter the code and name, for example DAY_SHFT and Day Shift 09:00 - 18:00.
2. On the Basic Data tab, work down the seven lines. For Monday to Friday enter Time In 09:00, Time Out 18:00, Working Hours 9, Tolerance Time In 15, Tolerance Time Out 15.
3. On the Saturday line, if the factory works a short Saturday, enter 09:00 to 14:00 with Working Hours 5. If Saturday is off, tick Weekend instead and leave the times alone.
4. Tick Weekend on the Sunday line.
5. Open the condition lines on the Monday line and add the windows the company actually enforces. A common Pakistani office set is: Late from 09:16 to 10:00, Half Day In from 10:01 to 13:00, Absent In from 13:01 to 18:00, and Early from 09:00 to 17:45.
6. Repeat the condition lines on each worked weekday line. Saturday usually needs its own, narrower set.
7. Go to the Policy Decision tab and enter the company's rule, for example Late / 3 / 1 and Half Day / 2 / 1.
8. Save. Then attach the template to a date range on the Calendar, or the times will never reach anybody.

Scenarios

Our factory runs a six day week but the office runs five

Two templates. FAC_6DAY has Monday to Saturday worked and Sunday ticked as a weekend. OFF_5DAY has Monday to Friday worked and both Saturday and Sunday ticked. The two groups then sit on different calendars, or on the same calendar with the roster assigning the factory template to the factory crews.

Every second Saturday is off

One template. On the Saturday line tick both Weekend and Alternate, and leave the times. The alternate tick is what stops every Saturday being treated as a holiday.

We run three shifts round the clock

Three templates - DAY_SHFT 06:00 to 14:00, EVE_SHFT 14:00 to 22:00, NIG_SHFT 22:00 to 06:00. The night one is entered exactly like that, with the Time Out earlier than the Time In. Then build a Shift Pattern that cycles the three and hang it on people with the Shift Roster. Do not try to express the rotation here, this screen has no idea what a week after this one looks like.

Our designers can come and go as long as they do their eight hours

Tick Flexible on each of their worked days and set Working Hours to 8. Leave Time In and Time Out as they are, they are not read on a flexible day. Then add Hours conditions instead of time windows: Half Day with Hours 4 and Absent with Hours 2. Someone who works six hours is Present, four is a half day, one is an absence.

Ramadan hours

A separate template, for example RAMZAN at 09:00 to 15:00 with Working Hours 6. On the Calendar, close the normal line the day before Ramadan starts and open a RAMZAN line for the month, then open the normal template again afterwards. You do not edit the normal template, or last year's attendance changes meaning.

What it is connected to

• Nothing needs to exist before this screen. It is one of the first things configured in a new installation.
• The Calendar attaches a template to a span of dates. Until it does, the template is not in use by anybody.
• The Shift Roster, the Shift Pattern and a released Shift Change Request all name a Time Template, and all of them outrank the Calendar for the day they cover.
• Employee Attendance shows the result of comparing punches against this template, including the grace minutes it reports back to you.
• Payroll Attendance turns the Late, Early, Half Day and Short Hours counts into deducted days using the Policy Decision lines.
• A blocked template cannot be picked on the Calendar. Changing a template's times changes how a day already past is read, so close the old line on the Calendar and open a new one instead of editing times that have been worked.

If something looks wrong

• "It will not let me save, it says Time Out must differ from Time In" - a worked day with hours on it has the same start and finish. Either correct the times, or if the day is genuinely not worked, tick Weekend.
• "Everyone is marked absent" - the template is probably not reaching them. Check that the Calendar has a working time line covering those dates with this template named on it, and that the employee's Employee Policy Profile points at that calendar.
• "People who come at 09:10 are marked late although we allow fifteen minutes" - the tolerance minutes are what is displayed, the Late window is what decides. Your Late window starts too early. Move it to 09:16.
• "Night shift people are absent every day" - the Time Out is later than the Time In on the night line. A night shift is entered with the out time earlier, for example in 22:00 and out 06:00.
• "A man worked the day but the system says weekend" - no roster row covers him for that date, so the Calendar's template decided, and that weekday is a weekend on it. Put him on the Shift Roster or raise a Shift Change Request.
• "Deductions are double what we expect" - the Policy Decision tab has both a Short Hours slab and a Half Day slab. The same shortfall is being charged twice. Keep one.