Shift Roster
A shift roster hangs a Shift Pattern on real people from a real date. One roster covers a whole crew, so a three hundred man department on a rotating cycle is one record, not three hundred records a month.
What it is for
The Shift Pattern says what the cycle looks like. It says nothing about who or when. This screen supplies the who and the when, and it is the record the attendance engine reads to decide which shift a given man was due on a given date.
Three things make it work:
The pattern. One roster carries one pattern. Everybody on the roster follows the same cycle.
The date range. From a date, and optionally to a date. Leave Date To empty and the assignment runs on with no end, which is the normal case for a permanent crew. Fill it in when a crew is on a temporary arrangement, say a plant shutdown or a seasonal second shift.
The Cycle Start Date. This is the date that day 0 of the pattern lands on. It is what staggers crews. Two crews rotating against each other are two rosters on the same pattern with different Cycle Start Dates. The pattern is never copied per crew, which is why a client with five crews still has one pattern to maintain.
The employee grid is just a list of names. Nothing is typed per person and nothing is typed per date. One line per employee, not one line per day - the pattern and the Cycle Start Date work out the day, so a hundred people on one arrangement is a hundred lines once, not a hundred lines a month.
Apply To All Employees. Where the arrangement really is the whole company, tick it and leave the grid empty. On save the screen fills the grid itself with everybody who has an organisation assignment covering the date range - the same population payroll pays, so a man payroll will not pay does not get a shift either. The lines are there afterwards for you to read, and to remove anybody the arrangement does not actually cover.
It does not rewrite a grid that already has names in it: tick it on an existing roster and it adds the people who have joined since, leaving the rest alone.
Shift Roster or Roaster?
PeopleNest has two screens with nearly the same name and clients notice. They are not alternatives. This is the live screen. Roaster is an old one it superseded, it has no logic behind it, and nothing reads what is entered there.
| Shift Roster | Roaster | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | The live screen. Use it | Superseded. Do not configure it |
| What you assign | A shift pattern | A calendar, to no effect |
| How many people per record | Many, a whole crew | One |
| Has a cycle start date | Yes, which is how crews are staggered | No |
| What reads it | The attendance engine, to resolve the shift due on each date | Nothing |
Whatever the client wants to arrange about shifts, it is this screen. If a client asks what the other one is for, tell them it is superseded and should be left alone.
Every field, in plain words
Header
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transaction | The roster's own document number. | Fills itself. Leave it. | Required. |
| Shift Pattern | The cycle this crew follows. | SPIN-6D | Required. Pick it from the list. |
| Description | The name of that pattern. | Spinning 4 on 2 off rotating | Fills itself from the pattern. Leave it. |
| Date From | The first date the assignment applies. | 01-Jan-2026 | Required. |
| Date To | The last date it applies. | Leave it empty | Left empty, the assignment has no end, which is what a permanent crew needs. Cannot be earlier than Date From. |
| Cycle Start Date | The date that day 0 of the pattern falls on. | 01-Jan-2026 | Required. This is what decides where in the cycle any given date sits, and it is how two crews on one pattern are staggered. |
| Apply To All Employees | Tick to have the screen fill the grid with everybody, instead of you typing the names. | Tick it where the whole company is on one arrangement | Leave the grid empty when you tick it. It fills on save from everybody with an organisation assignment covering the dates. Leave it unticked for a crew, a department or anything short of everyone. |
| Transaction Date | The date the roster was raised. | 28-Dec-2025 | Required. |
Details
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line # | The line number. | Fills itself. Leave it. | |
| Employee | The person on this crew. | EMP-0147 | Required. Pick from the list. Nobody can appear twice on the same roster. |
| Name | Their name. | Muhammad Asif | Fills itself from the employee. Leave it. |
Lines arrive here three ways: you type them, Apply To All Employees fills them, or a new employee picked this roster when he was created. The third way only happens where his Employee Policy Profile has Is Roster Applied ticked, which makes Employee Basic Information ask him the question on save. All three produce the same line, and a line you did not type is not a fault.
Lines also leave by themselves, in one case only. When an Employee Clearance is fully cleared, the leaver comes off every roster he was on. Nothing else removes anybody.
The Plan tab
Beside Employees there is a Plan tab, and it is the answer to every argument about a roster. It draws four weeks of calendar across the top and one row per roster down the side, and in each day it shows the shift that roster is due on with its times, or the word off.
Three things about it are worth knowing.
- It shows the other rosters on the same pattern too, underneath this one. That is how you check a rotation: three crews on one pattern with three different Cycle Start Dates should, between them, cover every day. If two crews are sitting on the same shift on the same day, you can see it rather than work it out.
- One row per roster, not per employee. Everybody on a roster is on the same day of the same cycle, because saving copies the pattern, the dates and the Cycle Start Date down onto every line. There is nothing a per-person row could say that the crew's row does not.
- A day outlined in red is a day the pattern asks for more people than this roster has on it. Compare it with Required Headcount on the pattern's day line.
It works before you save, so you can set the Cycle Start Date, look at the Plan tab, and fix the date if the crew is starting on the wrong day of the cycle - instead of saving, waiting for a month of attendance, and finding out then.
Earlier and Later move the four week window. The day's shift is a prediction of exactly what the attendance engine will use, worked out by the same rule, so a shift the Plan tab shows is the shift the punch will be judged against.
How to configure it
- Build the cycle first on the Shift Pattern screen.
- Decide the date day 0 of that cycle starts on for this crew. For a weekly pattern pick a Monday. For a rotating pattern pick the day the crew is actually starting its run.
- Open the screen. Pick the Shift Pattern, for example
SPIN-6D. - Type Date From, for example 01-Jan-2026. Leave Date To empty unless the arrangement ends.
- Type the Cycle Start Date. For a permanent crew this is normally the same as Date From.
- Add one grid line per employee on the crew. For a three hundred man department that is three hundred lines, once - not three hundred a month. Where the arrangement is the whole company rather than a crew, tick Apply To All Employees and leave the grid empty instead.
- Open the Plan tab and look at the first week before you save. If the crew is starting on the wrong day of its cycle, the Cycle Start Date is what to change.
- Save. Repeat for the next crew, same pattern, Cycle Start Date moved on by however many days the crews are apart.
- With all the crews saved, open the Plan tab on any one of them. Every crew on the pattern is drawn there together, which is where you check that the rotation covers every day and that two crews are not doubled up on one shift.
Scenarios
"Three crews rotate against each other on a six day cycle"
One pattern, three rosters.
| Crew A | Crew B | Crew C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shift Pattern | SPIN-6D | SPIN-6D | SPIN-6D |
| Date From | 01-Jan-2026 | 01-Jan-2026 | 01-Jan-2026 |
| Cycle Start Date | 01-Jan-2026 | 03-Jan-2026 | 05-Jan-2026 |
All three start on the same date. What differs is where in the cycle each crew is on that date, and that is the Cycle Start Date doing its job.
Do not take that on trust. Open the Plan tab on any of the three: all three crews are drawn one under the other across the same four weeks, so a day two crews are both on days - or a day nobody is on nights - is there to be seen.
"A man is being moved from the rotating crew to the day shift"
End his current roster rather than editing it. Put a Date To on the roster he is leaving, or take him off the grid from the move date, and add him to the roster for the shift he is joining with its own Date From. Do not change the Cycle Start Date on a roster other people are on, because it moves the whole crew's rotation.
"A man is covering someone else's shift just on Thursday"
That is not a roster change. Raise a Shift Change Request for that one day. The roster and the pattern stay as they are, which is the point: a swap agreed on Tuesday must not silently move a crew's rotation.
"Everybody in the company is on the general shift, I am not typing a hundred lines"
Tick Apply To All Employees, leave the grid empty, save. The screen fills it from everybody with an organisation assignment covering the date range, and the lines are there to read afterwards.
Two things worth saying to the client while you do it. The grid was never one line per day - a hundred people was always a hundred lines, once, and the rotation came from the pattern and the Cycle Start Date, so the fifteen hundred lines he is dreading never existed. And a policy is not where this belongs: the Attendance Policy carries the calendar, the lateness rules and the deduction rules, which are the same for everybody on it whatever shift they work. Which shift a man is due on is a fact about him and a date, so it lives on the roster. Putting it on a policy would mean one policy per shift, and then a man who changes shift changes his whole deduction regime with it.
Where the company genuinely runs three shifts and people are split across them, that is three rosters - one per shift, each with its own names - and Apply To All belongs on none of them.
"We have two shifts and nobody is tied to one"
Then do not create a roster at all. With no assignment, the attendance engine has no rostered shift for that man on that day and judges the day against the calendar instead, which is exactly how a client without shift binding already works. If the client later wants a man bound to a shift and a request raised whenever it changes, create a roster for him and add the Shift Change Request to the approval chain.
What it is connected to
- The Shift Pattern must exist first, with its cycle length and its day lines.
- Employee Attandance resolves the shift due on each date from the roster, and judges the punch against the time template that day of the cycle names.
- Payroll Attendance counts late, half day, early and short hours against the same resolved shift.
- A day with no assignment, a day before Date From, or a day after Date To has no rostered shift. That is not an error. The attendance chain already handles a blank shift.
- A Shift Change Request overrides one day on one person without touching the roster.
- Employee Policy Profile decides, with Is Roster Applied, whether a new employee is asked for a roster at all. The asking happens on Employee Basic Information and the answer is written here as an ordinary line.
- Employee Clearance takes a leaver off every roster the moment its Cleared tick goes on, so a man who has left stops being due on a shift.
If something looks wrong
- "It says Date To cannot be earlier than Date From" - swap the two dates, or clear Date To for an open ended assignment.
- "It says assign the pattern to at least one employee, or tick Apply To All Employees" - the grid is empty and the tick is off. Add the crew, or tick it if the arrangement is everybody.
- "It says Apply To All Employees is ticked and no employee has an organisation assignment covering this date range" - nobody is employed across those dates according to their organisation assignments. Usually the Date From is set years ahead, or the employees have no organisation assignment yet. It is the same population payroll uses, so if payroll would pay nobody for that period this will find nobody either.
- "I ticked Apply To All and it did not remove the people who should not be there" - it only ever adds. Delete the lines you do not want, and leave the tick on only if you want it to top up again later.
- "It says this employee is on this roster more than once" - the same person has two grid lines. Delete one.
- "The whole crew is a day out" - the Cycle Start Date is wrong by that many days. Correct it on the roster, not on the pattern. The Plan tab shows the correction before you save it.
- "The Plan tab says this pattern schedules nothing" - the pattern has no cycle length, or no day lines at all. Open it on Shift Pattern and add its days.
- "A day on the Plan tab is outlined in red" - that day of the pattern asks for more people than this roster has on its grid. Either add the people, or lower Required Headcount on the pattern's day line. Nothing is blocked by it; it is telling you the crew is thin.
- "One man has the wrong shift but the rest of the crew is right" - he is on the wrong roster, or he has a Shift Change Request on that date.
- "Somebody is on this roster and nobody added him" - he picked it when he was created, because his Employee Policy Profile has Is Roster Applied ticked. Delete the line if he does not belong; nothing will put him back.
- "A leaver has vanished off every roster" - his Employee Clearance was fully cleared, which takes him off all of them. The attendance already worked out up to his last working day is untouched; only the days after it have no shift, which is correct.