Shifts
A shift is a working pattern — when work starts and ends, whether breaks are tracked, how much flexibility is allowed, and the thresholds that decide whether a day counts as tardy, half-day or absent. Those thresholds are why shifts deserve real attention: they are what turns a set of taps into a payroll consequence.
Where: Settings › Calendar › Shifts You need: the calendar settings right
When to use this, and when not to
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Define a recurring working pattern | A shift — here |
| Define what the time is and what it pays | An activity |
| Set up a repeating one-off day (training, half-day) | An event template |
| Attach a weekly pattern to a person | A standard schedule |
| Publish work for people to claim | Open shifts |
The shift says when; the activity says what it is and what it costs. Most confusion in Attendance settings comes from looking for a pay setting on a shift, or a timing setting on an activity.
What a shift defines
The times — start, end, and the break in and break out points. Whether breaks must actually be recorded is its own setting: if timekeeping for breaks are required. Turn it on and people who skip break taps will not total correctly; leave it off and breaks are assumed.
Flexibility — flexible check-in time to start work lets someone begin anywhere inside a window rather than at one exact minute. For genuinely flexible arrangements there are also core start first and core start last bounds, which is how you express "start when you like, but be present for the core hours".
Overtime — OT automatically allowed within specified window. Inside the window, overtime is granted without a request; outside it, it is not. This is the setting that explains most "why wasn't my overtime paid" questions.
Holiday behaviour — designate if event falls on a holiday, deciding how the shift behaves when it lands on one. See Holiday rules.
Visibility — a shift can be only visible to select employees, so specialised patterns do not clutter everyone's options.
Scope — branch, department, cost centre, activity and group, so the right patterns appear for the right people.
The thresholds that decide absence
Two settings do more than anything else in Attendance:
- Mark half-day tardy if more than X hours under time
- Mark absent if more than X hours under time
Read those carefully. They measure hours under time, not lateness. This is why someone can check in, check out, and still be marked absent — they fell short by more than the threshold. It is not a fault, and it is the single most-asked question about KAMI attendance.
Event templates carry an equivalent absence threshold that works the same way.
Set these to match your actual policy. Too tight and you manufacture absences for people who worked; too loose and short days pass unnoticed into payroll.
What Happens Next
- The shift becomes available to schedule onto employees, through the team calendar, a standard schedule, or in bulk.
- Scheduled days become events, and those events are what attendance is measured against.
- Existing events do not change when you change a shift. They store the settings they were calculated with. Refresh the affected period to apply a change retrospectively — see How timekeeping is calculated.
- Threshold changes alter what people are paid, from the next calculation onwards.
Tips
- Change thresholds deliberately, then check the next timesheet. Every change here changes pay. Treat it as a payroll change that happens to live in attendance settings.
- Set the overtime window to your real policy, and tell people what it is. Most overtime disputes are someone working outside the window in good faith.
- Prefer one shift per genuine pattern. Near-duplicate shifts differing by fifteen minutes are how a team ends up on the wrong one for months.
- Use scope rather than duplication. A shift restricted to a branch beats two shifts with the same times.
- Decide break tracking once, per pattern. Half-tracked breaks are worse than either extreme, because the totals are wrong only sometimes.
Troubleshooting / FAQ
Q: An employee is marked absent but they were at work all day. Check the hours against the absence threshold. If they are short by more than the threshold, the record is doing what it was configured to do — and if that is wrong, the threshold is what needs changing, not the record.
Q: Overtime is not being paid. Check the overtime window on the shift, and the duration type on the activity.
Q: Break times are not counted. Check whether break timekeeping is required on the shift. If it is not, breaks are assumed rather than recorded.
Q: I changed a threshold and nothing moved. Existing events keep their own copy of the settings. Refresh the period.