Fixed Hours or Custom Shifts?

Atteny plans work in one of two ways: Custom Shifts, where you build shifts per person, or Fixed Hours, where everyone follows their location's opening hours. The choice applies to your whole company.

1. 1

   Open the scheduling settings

   Open Settings and then Scheduling. The two modes are the two cards under Schedule Mode.

   

2. 2

   Pick a mode and save

   Select a card, then select Save at the top of the page. Save stores everything this page shows: the mode, the Breaks settings and, when that card is shown, the Availability settings.

Custom Shifts#

This is the mode a company starts in. Admins, and managers who are allowed to, build individual shifts for each person. See Building the week.

Fixed Hours#

Nobody builds shifts. The schedule is worked out from each location's opening hours every time someone looks at it, and nothing is stored.

• Who gets hours. Every active person assigned to a location, whatever their role, gets one shift for each opening window of each open day there. Someone assigned to two locations gets both. A day that is closed, or has no saved hours, gives nobody a shift.
• Where the hours come from. Open Locations, your location, then the Scheduling tab. The hours are in the Shifts card, under a Fixed Hours Active notice. In this mode the tab hides the settings for shift length, people needed, availability, shift swaps and open shifts.
• Shifts cannot be changed. Adding, editing, cancelling or deleting a shift, copying a week, publishing drafts and Auto Schedule are all refused when you save. To change who is expected when, change the location's hours, or switch back to Custom Shifts.
• Late or on time. A person's first clock-in of the day is measured against the opening it was for: one that starts within the next 30 minutes, otherwise the one it falls inside, otherwise the last one that had begun that day. With openings at 08:00 and 13:00, a clock-in at 12:50 is on time for 13:00, and one at 12:20 counts as late for 08:00. Coming back from a break is not measured again, even when the break runs past midnight, and a rejected clock-in is not measured.
• No alerts for these hours. Late arrival or no-show and Missed or short break go by a shift somebody scheduled. Fixed Hours has none, so neither is sent. For the same reason the Schedule vs actual report is empty for weeks spent in Fixed Hours.
• A shorter menu on the web. Under Schedules, the entries Shifts, Availability, Shift Swaps and Open Shifts are hidden.
• On the phone. An employee's Schedule tab is marked Fixed Schedule and shows their own hours. On Manage Schedule, the buttons for adding, copying and auto-scheduling are hidden, and so is the draft switch. Shift Swaps can still be opened while its module is on: the screen explains that there is no individual shift to hand over.

Which one suits you#

Pick Fixed Hours when the same people work the same hours every week: an office, a clinic, a shop with settled hours. Pick Custom Shifts when who works when changes from week to week, as in most cafés, restaurants and retail.

If the Scheduling module is off#

With the Scheduling module off, the schedule screens are gone in both modes: the web has no Schedules entry, and on the phone the Schedule tab gives way to Notifications. So people in a Fixed Hours company lose the page that lists their fixed hours. Clock-ins are then measured against each location's opening hours, in both modes. The page with the mode switch is gone until the module is on again: see Choose your features.

Missing a menu entry that a colleague has? See I can't see a button or page someone else has.