Wherever people work in rotating shifts, the answer to „who is on nights next week?“ usually hangs on a notice board that one person keeps and everybody hunts for. Here the monthly grid fills itself from stored shift patterns — and because the clock-in reveals which shift somebody actually worked, reality always stands next to the plan.
Plenty of programs can plan. It gets interesting at the point where the plan and reality diverge — and they do so constantly.
That is what the plan said and what hung on the notice board. Then somebody falls ill and the cover is swapped at short notice.
A night shift was worked. In many systems the plan remains the basis of the payroll — and the night premium has to be added by hand.
The night shift is recognised from the clock-in time, and the calculation follows the shift actually worked, night premium included. The deviation from the plan stays visible — outlined in red, so that nobody misses it.
That is where effort is genuinely saved: not in the planning, but at the month-end close. Anyone who does not have to add the night premium by hand does not have to go looking for it when it is missing either.
A shift consists of very few entries: when it starts, how far a clock-in may stray from that, what it is called and which colour it takes in the grid. Optionally, a planned end with a break, a tolerance before the end and premiums of its own can be added.
Under Time tracking → Shift planning → Shift groups, one group gathers the shifts of an area, say production or sales. Everything is written as „long name (short name)“ — eight early shifts may therefore all be called „F“ and differ only in the start time shown in the cell beneath. Below that it lists who belongs to the shift group — across department boundaries, too; exactly these members get a row in the grid.
The shift planning chapterWith shifts a quarter of an hour apart there is no other way. Anyone clocking in within several matching windows lands in the shift they are rostered for. It only counts as a deviation when the clock-in is closer to the start of another shift than to the planned start — at equal distance the plan stands.
Alongside the shifts there are activities — office, home working, quality management. A shift says when the work happens; an activity says where or what. It has no start time of its own and sits in the grid on equal terms with the shifts.
Under Time tracking → Shift planning → Assignments every employee gets their shift pattern: a weekly grid from Monday to Sunday, plus a column of its own for public holidays. What stands there fills the month later on.
The sequence then repeats from the start. A two-week alternation between earlies and lates is covered just as well as a fixed week that never changes — or a three-shift operation rotating over three weeks.
Not double shifts: the digit in front of the short name is the rank. The planning takes priority 1 and falls back to 2 if that shift is already fully staffed on the day.
But only when it is filled. Left empty, the normal weekday applies on a public holiday — shift operations do, after all, work on holidays too.
Anyone without a pattern is skipped by the automatic planning. Rostering by hand works for every member of the shift group, on any day — the pattern only holds back the automation, not the planner.
Planning is graphical under Time tracking → Shift planning: tap a shift, drag across the days — exactly as in leave planning. Most of the work, though, is taken off you by the automatic pre-fill.
The pre-fill builds the plan from the shift patterns. The preview comes first: how many days come from the patterns, how many open places are filled up, how many stay untouched — and what conflicts there are.
Until then nothing changes. Days set by hand and days already clocked stay as they are in any case; only what the automation itself produced gets overwritten.
If a planned day falls on leave or sickness, the preview says so. Those days are skipped and the rest is set all the same.
A double-click fills the whole calendar week, the eraser takes a planning back, and „frei“ (off) leaves a day expressly empty — unlike an erased day, it will not be proposed again by the next pre-fill.
Stored per shift and weekday, the rows below the grid count how many people stand there on each day: red when understaffed, yellow above the maximum, green when it fits.
The pre-fill tops up open places to the minimum, distributed evenly by number of duties. If the minimum cannot be reached, it plans what it can — and reports the rest.
Employees can be moved by the handle and grouped into blocks that belong together. The printout uses the same order — the PDF looks like the screen.
Planned but not yet clocked. A month in the future therefore consists entirely of dashed cells.
A planned activity rather than a shift.
Clocked as planned — the duty is confirmed.
Clocked differently: somebody turned up for a shift other than the planned one.
Generated automatically from the pattern. Only such days are overwritten by the next pre-fill.
Anyone planning shifts wants to know how many hours someone is already rostered for in the month — without working it out. For that, every shift can carry a planned end and a planned break if you wish.
Both are entered on the shift, and both are optional. The result appears straight beneath the fields, such as „= 8:00 Std. geplant“ (8:00 hrs planned) for 13:30 to 22:00 with a 30-minute break. If the end lies before the start, the shift ends on the following day.
The shift planning shows beside each employee what is rostered in the calendar month, and the target: the month's target hours from the working time model, or the monthly goal where days are chosen freely. „168:00 / 168:00“ means fully rostered.
Every day with a shift that has a planned end — set by hand, from the shift pattern or recognised on clock-in. Days marked „frei“ (off), activities and full-day absences do not count; „+ 3 ohne Ende“ (3 without an end) names days with a shift that has no planned end.
„gedeckt“ (covered) is the part of the target already credited by leave, sickness and the like. The tooltip works out what is still to be rostered and shows the totals per calendar week.
Only planners see the figures, and only for the employees they are allowed to plan themselves. As long as no shift has a planned end, the display stays away entirely.
End and break are planning: they change neither the target hours nor the clocked time, and a shift is still recognised from the clock-in time alone. Anyone staying longer is credited with the time as before.
A shift is not just a colour in the grid. It has a say in how the day is calculated — without forcing the same hours on everybody.
A working time model on the shift is optional. Without one, the day is calculated with the employee's personal model — ten people on the same shift therefore still have ten different target figures. A part-timer working 4:30 on Wednesdays and 6:30 on Fridays keeps exactly that.
Store one on the shift and it wins: target hours, break rule and premiums of the shift then apply for that day. The model is dated, as it is for employees — a past day goes on calculating with whatever applied on that day.
Switchable per shift: an earlier clock-in then counts only from the start of the shift — shift 07:00, clocked 06:45, counted from 07:00. Anyone arriving later counts from their clock-in; the trimming only works forwards.
A time window may run across the change of day. The shift belongs to the day on which it begins — a night shift from 23:40 to 07:10 therefore to the day of the clock-in.
Anyone rostered who does not turn up receives the target hours of the planned shift, provided it has a working time model of its own — six hours of deficit for a six-hour shift, then, not eight. Without a model on the shift, the normal case, the personal target applies.
From the selector you can switch a day's shift to another or remove it entirely with the ✕, in which case the personal model applies again. A further clock-in does not overwrite a shift set by hand.
If a month was planned only later, „Schichten nachtragen“ reconciles the existing clock-ins with the planning. A deviation entered earlier goes back to the planned shift if the clock-in is at least as close to the planned start. A second run changes nothing further.
If a shift has a planned end, it can also carry a „Toleranz vor dem Ende“ (tolerance before the end) in minutes; the default is 0, meaning off. Anyone leaving within those minutes before the planned end is credited up to the end. The clock-in record itself stays unchanged, and only the last departure of the day counts.
| Leaving at | counted until | why |
|---|---|---|
| 17:20 | 17:20 | before the tolerance: the actual time |
| 17:30 | 18:00 | within the tolerance: credited up to the end |
| 17:59 | 18:00 | within the tolerance: credited up to the end |
| 18:00 | 18:00 | on time |
| 18:20 | 18:20 | stayed longer: overtime counts |
Anyone leaving at the end or later gets their actual time, and so does anyone leaving before the tolerance. Only the short stretch before the planned end is filled up.
The day shows, for example, „Kurz vor Schichtende gegangen — gewertet bis 22:00 (0:20 angerechnet)“ — in the reports, in the mobile app and, for everyone allowed to edit times, in time tracking as well.
For a night shift the end falls on the following day: 22:00 to 06:00 with 15 minutes of tolerance — anyone leaving at 05:50 is counted until 06:00.
Because the tolerance re-evaluates past days too, entering or changing it requires the admin password once days are attached to the shift.
Every shift and every activity can carry premiums of its own from the catalogue. They apply on every day on which someone has that shift — rostered or recognised on clock-in — on top of the premiums of the working time model.
The shift's premiums are added on public holidays as well and also apply with the „Alle gearbeiteten Stunden zählen“ (all hours worked count) model. If the same premium sits on both the shift and the model, it counts only once.
A fixed amount instead of a percentage, say €20.00 for every early shift — once per day with counted working time, always paid as wages. The reports show „5 × 20,00 € = 100,00 €“, the payroll summary the count and the total.
A flat-rate allowance does not go into the DATEV file; your payroll office transfers it from the payroll summary. Premiums with a wage type appear in the file as usual.
Changing a shift's premiums re-evaluates past days too. Once days are attached to the shift, the page therefore asks for the admin password.
Types, entitlement windows and wage types in detail: premiums.
A plan is only useful once it is where people actually look.
All in landscape format with a colour legend: „PDF Mitarbeiter“ is the grid alone, for the notice board. „PDF Alles“ carries the grid and the staffing levels, for management. „PDF Besetzung“ shows the cover alone, without names.
It lists only their own shift days with date, shift and start time — to hand out to everyone who does not work at a screen.
A tile leads to the coming weeks, one line per day with shift and time — from–to as soon as the shift has a planned end. Below it stands „Geplant in diesem Monat“ (planned this month) with the total of one's own planned hours; what counts is still what is clocked. On a PC the same appears under Time tracking → My shifts. The tile can be switched off per device — a tablet that only hangs in the workshop for clocking in stays free of it.
Anyone turning up for a different shift than planned sees it in the app as ≠ beside the day. In the grid and in the PDF, the day is outlined in red.
As a whiteboard, a screen in the corridor shows a shift group's monthly plan full-screen — like a notice, only always up to date. It needs no user login and refreshes itself; planning still happens in shift planning.
One button sends everyone affected a message in the app with their own days — new, changed or dropped, compared with the last state announced. If you wish, it also arrives as an email through your own mail server. Nothing is ever sent automatically.
„Excel (CSV)“ outputs the same grid as a table, one column per day and one row per employee, with appointments and cover underneath. The last column, „geplante Std.“ (planned hrs), carries the month's planned hours as a decimal number (162,50 = 162 hours 30 minutes) so that Excel can calculate with it; the printed PDF shows no hours.
Wherever people work in rotating shifts, the plan has a say every day — over cover, over premiums and over the month-end close.
The bakery from three in the morning, the shop from six, several branches on top of that, and apprentices with vocational school days. The night premium here is not an exception but the norm.
Early, late and night duty in fixed rotation, cover at short notice, and payroll that has to state every premium correctly. Minimum cover per weekday is no detail here but the condition.
Two or three-shift operation in fixed rotation. Anyone alternating weekly stores that once as a shift pattern and gets the month at the touch of a button.
Changing duties, a lot of part-time work, changes at short notice. What pays off most here is that everyone keeps their own hours and sees their plan on their own phone.
What this looks like in particular industries: bakeries · hospitality · multi-site businesses
No. It is part of ITN-Zeiterfassung and included in the price of €2.90 per employee per month, or €1.00 for church, non-profit and public-sector employers. It is not an add-on module, and there is no higher tier.
From the time of the clock-in. For each shift you store a start time and a tolerance in minutes either side — an early shift at 6:00 with 60 minutes of tolerance is recognised on any clock-in between 5:00 and 7:00. Time windows may overlap; with shifts a quarter of an hour apart there is no other way. Anyone clocking in within several matching windows lands in the shift they are rostered for. If the rostered one does not fit, it only counts as a deviation when the clock-in is closer to the start of another matching shift than to the planned start — at equal distance the plan stands. A planned end plays no part in recognition, and the „Toleranz vor dem Ende“ (tolerance before the end) is something else: it concerns leaving, not recognising.
Yes, through the shift pattern under Time tracking → Shift planning → Assignments. Each employee has a weekly grid there from Monday to Sunday, plus a column of its own for public holidays. The cycle runs over up to twelve weeks and then repeats — a two-week alternation between earlies and lates is covered just as well as a fixed week that never changes. „Automatisch vorbelegen“ (pre-fill automatically) turns those patterns into the monthly plan.
Choose a shift group and a month, optionally one to three months at a time. A preview appears first: how many days come from the patterns, how many open places are filled up, how many stay untouched and what conflicts there are — days of leave, for instance, are skipped and the rest is still set. Nothing is written until you confirm. Days set by hand and days already clocked stay as they are.
Yes, a minimum and a maximum per shift and weekday. Below the grid you then see how many people stand in each shift on each day — red when understaffed, yellow above the maximum, green when it fits. The pre-fill tops up open places to the minimum, distributed evenly by number of duties. If the minimum cannot be reached, it plans what it can and reports the rest.
Only if you want them to. A working time model on the shift is optional; without one — the normal case — the day is calculated with the employee's personal model. Everyone keeps their own hours, even when ten people work the same shift. If the shift does have one, it wins: target hours, break rule and premiums of the shift then apply for that day. That model is dated, so a past day still calculates with whatever applied on that day. Premiums attached to the shift itself apply on top in both cases; a planned end on the shift does not change the target hours.
The planning stays visible and the actual shift appears beside it — outlined in red in the grid, shown as ≠ in the mobile app, outlined in red in the PDF as well. The calculation always follows the shift actually worked: whoever works at night receives the night premium, even if they were rostered for the early shift.
Anyone rostered who does not turn up receives the target hours of the planned shift, provided the shift has a working time model of its own — a day missed from a six-hour shift with its own model therefore produces six hours of deficit, not eight. Without a model on the shift, which is the normal case, the employee's personal target applies. Anyone not rostered for a day at all continues to be calculated with their own working time model — the shift planning does not touch them.
Yes, as soon as the shifts carry a planned end. The shift planning then shows „geplant / Ziel“ (planned / target) beside every name, such as „152:00 / 168:00“: the hours rostered in the calendar month and the target — the month's target hours from the working time model, or the monthly goal where days are chosen freely. „+ 3 ohne Ende“ (3 without an end) counts days with a shift that has no planned end, and „gedeckt“ (covered) is the part of the target already credited by leave, sickness and the like; the tooltip shows what is still to be rostered and the totals per calendar week. Only planners see the figures. It is planning alone: target hours, clocked time and shift recognition do not change.
You decide that per shift. With a „Toleranz vor dem Ende“ (tolerance before the end) in minutes — 0 by default, meaning off — anyone leaving within those minutes before the planned end is credited up to the end; the clock-in record itself stays as it is. Anyone leaving at the end or later gets their actual time — overtime counts — and so does anyone leaving before the tolerance. Only the last departure of the day counts. The day then shows, for example, „Kurz vor Schichtende gegangen — gewertet bis 22:00 (0:20 angerechnet)“ (left shortly before the end of the shift — counted until 22:00, 0:20 credited). Because the tolerance re-evaluates past days too, changing it requires the admin password once days are attached to the shift.
Yes. Under „Zuschläge dieser Schicht“ (premiums of this shift) you attach premiums from the catalogue to a shift, such as the night premium to the night shift. They apply on every day with that shift — rostered or recognised on clock-in — on top of the premiums of the working time model, on public holidays too, and also with the „Alle gearbeiteten Stunden zählen“ (all hours worked count) model. If the same premium sits on both the shift and the model, it counts once. This includes a flat-rate allowance per shift, say €20.00 for every early shift: the reports show it as „5 × 20,00 € = 100,00 €“, the payroll summary with count and total. The allowance does not go into the DATEV file; your payroll office transfers it from the payroll summary.
A time window may run across the change of day, and the form always shows which period results from the start time and the tolerance. The shift is assigned to the day on which it begins: a night shift from 23:40 to 07:10 belongs to the day of the clock-in, even though it ends the following morning. Which calendar day the hours themselves land on is decided by the working time model through its carrier day.
Yes. Recognition normally happens at the moment of clocking in, so anyone planning after the fact would otherwise end up with a lot of unconfirmed days. That is what „Schichten nachtragen“ (add shifts) is for: it works through the existing clock-ins of the month on display and reconciles them with the planning. The current rule always applies: a deviation entered earlier is set back to the planned shift if the clock-in is at least as close to the planned start as to the start of the shift entered. Days set by hand are left untouched, and a second run changes nothing further.
Yes, in two ways. On a computer, Time tracking → My shifts shows their own shifts of the month and, below them, the grid of their own department, for viewing only; another department stays closed to them. In the mobile app the „Meine Schichten“ (my shifts) tile leads to the coming weeks. Where a shift has a planned end, it shows the time from–to instead of just the start, and below the list „Geplant in diesem Monat“ (planned this month) with the total of their own planned hours — nobody sees their colleagues' hours. The tile can be switched off per device — a tablet that only hangs in the workshop for clocking in stays free of it.
Yes, in three cuts, all in landscape format with a colour legend: „PDF Mitarbeiter“ shows the grid alone, for the notice board. „PDF Alles“ shows the grid and the staffing levels, for management. „PDF Besetzung“ shows the cover alone, without names. Alongside them there is a slip per employee with their own shift days. The printout takes the order in which the employees stand on screen — you drag them by the handle to where they belong.
With a staffing post. It groups several shifts that differ only in their start time — say 5:00, 6:00, 7:00 and 7:15 — into one target: „four people on the early shift“. The total is counted, the grid shows one row for the post below it, and the automatic pre-fill follows it too.
Yes, as a whiteboard: a screen with a browser shows a shift group's monthly plan full-screen, with full-day absences, the „appointments“ row and whole weeks. It is set up in administration as a terminal and needs no user login. Which month appears, at what size and how often it refreshes is set in the terminal list.
Yes, at the press of a button. „Announce changes“ sends everyone affected a message in the app with only their own days — each marked as new, changed or dropped, compared with the last state announced. If you wish, it also goes out as an email through your own mail server. A window shows beforehand who would get what, and a remark can be added at the top.
Yes. „Copy month“ takes over the plan of another month weekday for weekday: anyone on the early shift on Mondays in the template is on it on Mondays in the new month too. Only empty days are filled, and a preview shows beforehand what will be taken over. For Excel, the plan is also available as a CSV table, with the planned hours per employee in the last column.
That requires the admin password, and the dialogue first states what depends on it: how many planned days would lose it, how many of those fall in months already closed, and how many shift patterns refer to it. Past days remain afterwards — they are the record of what happened — and go on calculating with the personal model. Future planning on that shift disappears.
Every setting in detail — with screenshots from the application — is in the shift planning chapter of the feature reference. How target hours, breaks and core hours behave behind it is covered under working time models.
Step by step in the manual (in German): shift plans · whiteboard.
Tell us which shifts there are, how much tolerance is reasonable and whether the weeks alternate. Then we will show you the planning on your own case rather than an invented one.
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