What is a Shift type?

A Shift type helps mark non-regular shifts on the schedule, such as sick leave, trial shifts, or training. This allows for better tracking, reporting, and payroll accuracy.

How to create a Shift type

Go to Settings > Schedule > Shift types.
Pre-existing shift types can be viewed and edited here; otherwise, create a new one by clicking Create.

In the Create shift type window, customise the following details to set up your shift type:

Name - Shown to staff on the schedule.
Colour - (optional) Helps visually identify shift types on the schedule and reports.
Salary code - (optional) Use for payroll mapping or integrations. Leave this field blank if it is not relevant to you. See How to set up Salary codes to learn more.

Please note:

Depending on the setup of your payroll system, you might want to set up Payroll supplements in order to match your Salary codes correctly.
If you are using the Xero Integration, please ensure you map your custom shift types to the appropriate earning rate in Xero if you need those hours synced. Learn more in our Xero integration FAQs.

Calculate pay as - Set how the shift type should affect employee pay:
- Hourly wage + fixed amount per hour - Adds a set amount on top of the employee’s hourly wage.
  Example: Pay standard hourly rate + £5 extra/hour.
- Fixed amount per hour - Replaces the hourly wage with a fixed rate in your workspace’s local currency.
  Example: Pay exactly £15/hour, regardless of the employee’s normal rate.
- Percentage of hourly wage - Pays a percentage of the employee’s normal hourly rate:
  - 100% (default) = full wage
  - 150% = 1.5× wage (e.g., for overtime or weekends)
  - 50% = half pay
- Unpaid - No payment is made for scheduled hours. Use for unpaid leave, no-shows, or volunteer shifts.

Description - (optional) Internal notes for admins. These are only visible when editing the shift type.

Set additional shift type settings

Affects salaried employees - Turn this on if the shift type should also apply to employees with a fixed salary.
Allow conflicting shifts - By default, you’ll get a warning if you try to schedule an employee for two shifts at the same time.
Turn this on if you need to allow overlapping shifts, for example, when someone is covering two roles or attending training during a shift.
Allow shift and swap requests - Enable this to let employees swap, handover or sell, shifts of this type when marked as Open.
Keep this off for shift types like sick leave, training, or staff meetings.
Overwrite when applying a template - When this is on, any existing shifts with this shift type will be replaced by shifts from a schedule template.
Turn this off for shift types used to plan future events, like meetings, that should remain.
Include in schedule export - Check this if you want the shift type to appear when printing or downloading the schedule.
Include in Schedule message - Enable this if you want the shift type included in messages sent to employees about the schedule.
Typically disabled for shift types like sick leave.
Count hours in payroll report - Uncheck this if hours with this shift type shouldn’t be counted toward worked hours in payroll.
This option is usually kept on.
Shifts of this type are affected by:
- Payroll supplement - Check this box if you want hours from this Shift type to be affected by Payroll supplements.
- Break - Check this box if you want breaks to apply for this Shift type. Read more about setting up and working with breaks.
- Meal contribution - Check this box if you want meal contribution and deduction to apply for this Shift type. Meal contributions and deductions can be set up by going to Settings > Payroll > Meal contribution and deduction.

Press Create to save your settings. You can edit them at any time.

Please note: When creating a new shift type, check whether it should be linked to an existing Contract rule. This will ensure the completeness of the contract term as all relevant shift types will be included. Learn more here: Creating and applying Contract rules.

How to change a Shift type of a shift on the schedule

You can manually change the Shift type of a shift on the schedule. You have several options to do this:

Click on the three dots on the shift and select Apply shift type. Then choose from the list. (see screenshot)
Click on a shift and edit it, select a new Shift type from the drop-down list under Shift type and confirm via Save.
When editing several shifts simultaneously, you can apply a Shift type to all selected shifts.

Statistics on Shift type usage

If you use Shift types, you can view insightful reports: View sickness absence, trial hours, punctuality, overtime or other Shift types you have set up.

To do this, navigate to Reports > Shift type statistics.

Find out all the details in the article Using Shift types for reporting and payroll.

Use Shift types to record overtime (TOIL) hours

One of the methods for recording overtime is based on using Shift types that you can set up for overtime or undertime hours. In practice, minus or overtime hours are transferred to your employees' overtime accounts as soon as the corresponding Shift type is applied to one of their shifts.

To learn more about this method and compare it with other ways of overtime management, take a look at the article How is TOIL handled with Shift types.

Set pay rates using Shift types

Shift types can be applied to any employee on a per-shift basis to make payroll adjustments such as unpaid leave or manual overtime pay.

Example usage of a shift type to set an extra allowance

In the example shown above, a Shift type is created for employees who work overtime and should be paid 50% on top of their normal wage.

Additional settings:

Affects salaried employees has been enabled.
The option to Allow conflicting shifts has been enabled in this example, as the Shift type may only apply to part of a shift for an employee.
The Allow shift and swap requests option is disabled since a shift with this Shift type applied to it should not be swapped or set to open.
The option Overwrite when applying a template is deselected to prevent a template from overwriting the Shift type.
The option to Include in schedule export and Include in Schedule message has been deselected, while the option to Count hours in payroll report is enabled so that the shifts count towards worked hours for payroll in this example.
Lastly, the Shift type has been set so that shifts marked with it will count towards Payroll supplements, breaks, or Meal contributions.

If you want to deduct pay from a salaried employee’s fixed salary, you would need to set the Percentage of hourly wage to 0%.

Please note: Remember to set the hourly wage to zero "0" for your salaried employees so that the system applies the extra payment to the salary.

How to create and use Shift types