Working time rules are useful for keeping track of when and how much your employees work. This can help you keep compliant with local labour regulations. You can set up and edit these rules by going to Settings > Schedule > Working time rules.

In this article you can read more information about:

In Planday, you can set up a working time rule to track a large number of scheduling aspects. This gives you the opportunity to build an advanced warning mechanism, for your planning needs.

When a rule is not respected by your schedule, a warning will be triggered by the rule you have set up. This lets you know what is wrong and for which of your employees you have broken the rule so that you can adjust accordingly.

This way you can monitor if your schedule fits within the guidelines you have set up. A working time rule cannot block you from creating or assigning a shift, even if it breaks its guidelines.

💡 If you are looking for a way to enforce limitations or contractual obligations in your schedule, you should consider the Contract rules feature instead.

When choosing a working time rule to fit your scheduling needs, you should first narrow down what the rule needs to monitor. Currently, you can choose between the following rule structures that are based on tracking working hours:

Both the category for monitoring working hours and the one for tracking working days in your schedule take into account the information about the shifts in the schedule, such as the duration or shift type.

Similarly, the rules for tracking time off gather information about the shifts in your schedule focusing on the time difference between the end time of one shift and the start time of the next one.

💡 If you need to use one of the rule structures above and can't find it listed under Settings > Schedule > Working time rules, please contact our support team for assistance.

Once you have decided which working time rule you need, you are ready to start creating it.

To set up a working time rule, you'll first need to create one starting from a structure that fits your needs best.

Go to Settings > Schedule > Working time rules > Create Working time rule.

This will open a new window for you to choose which type of rule you want to start setting up.

Setting up any of the rule types will require that you:

You need to select at least one group, employee type, and leave at least shift type, depending on what you need the rule to monitor and trigger a warning for while scheduling.

For example, you cannot exclude all the Shift types because the working time rule needs at least one parameter to know which Shifts to take into account, from your schedule.

Here is an example of the setup form for a working time rule that can be used to monitor shift length.

Besides the general details needed for a rule, there will be specific details to fill out, depending on the rule type. Once all the details of a rule are filled out, press Create to enable the rule. From now the rule will automatically trigger a warning on the next conflicting shift you create or modify in the schedule.

For instance, taking the Shift duration working time rule, you may want to define the maximum length of a shift. You would also like to be alerted when attempting to create a shift longer than 13 hours, excluding some shifts such as Holiday monthly salaried (Paid) and Off Shift type.

You can also see that the rule is now called Max Shift Length 13hrs as a reference and that it applies to all employees within the organization (all Employee groups and all Employee types).

Consider the Shift length rule in place and the two shifts shown in the image below.

Modifying or attempting to create a new Shift in the schedule that is not a Holiday monthly salaried will trigger a warning similar to this:

As mentioned before, the working time rule cannot block you from creating or editing a shift, which is why you can choose to:

Each working time rule structure allows you to set different guidelines for your schedule.

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