Shifts & rosters
Shift management for companies that do not run one shift
Ten people can have ten different days off without inventing ten shifts to say so. Night shifts cross midnight and land on the right day. A roster change that clashes with an existing one is refused, by name.
What you get
Everything this module does
As many shifts as you run
Morning, evening, night, general — each with its own start, end and grace window. Not a fixed set of three that you have to bend your operation to fit.
Per-employee weekly offs
The part most systems skip. Ramesh is off on Wednesday and Farida on Sunday, and neither requires a separate shift to be created to express it.
Overnight shifts
An end time before the start time is read as crossing midnight, not as a typo. The punch-out at 6am is attributed to the night before, in the muster and in the export.
Per-shift working days
A six-day week, a Sunday-off week and a Wednesday-off week coexist in the same company, and each drives its own holder's leave counting and absence arithmetic.
Assignments by date range
Assign a shift to an employee from a date, or between two dates. Starting a new open-ended assignment closes the previous one the day before, so rotation just works.
Overlap protection
An assignment that clashes with an existing dated range is refused, and the message names the conflicting range instead of failing vaguely.
One working calendar
Shifts, holidays, leave day-counting, the muster roll and the absence counter all read the same source. They cannot drift out of agreement with one another.
Grace, per shift
Lateness is measured against the employee's own shift start plus that shift's grace, in your company's timezone. A 10pm shift is not late at 9:05am.
The problem
Most attendance tools assume one office, one timing, one Sunday.
That assumption holds for a software company in a single building. It falls apart on a plant floor, in a hospital, in retail, in logistics, in security services, and in every company where the week is not Monday to Friday and the day is not nine to six.
You can usually force the software to cope. It costs you a shift called “General (Wed off)”, then “General (Thu off)”, and eighteen months later a shift list nobody can read and an HR executive who knows which nonsense entry to pick for which person. Worse, the night shift ends up recorded on the wrong day, so the muster shows an absence on a night somebody worked.
AMS separates the two ideas that get conflated: the shift is the timing, and the weekly off belongs to the person. A night shift is an ordinary shift whose end time is earlier than its start, and the system draws the correct conclusion from that rather than rejecting it.
A roster history, not just a current setting
Each employee's shift assignments are kept as dated ranges, so last quarter's roster is still readable when you look at last quarter's attendance. Reports for a past month use the shift that person was actually on at the time, not the one they are on now.
Rostering situations AMS handles as-is
- A night shift running 10pm to 6am, recorded against the starting day
- Staff on a six-day week alongside staff on five
- A weekly off that differs for every person on the team
- A rotation where someone moves to nights for a fortnight, then back
- A shift change that must not overwrite last month's history
- A plant shutdown day that is a holiday for some shifts and not others
- Grace of ten minutes on one shift and none on another
- A report for March that uses March's roster, not today's
Questions
Frequently asked
Can each employee have a different weekly off?
Yes, and this is the reason many companies come to us. The weekly off belongs to the employee, not to the shift, so you do not create a separate shift for every combination of days off.
How are night shifts recorded?
A shift whose end time is earlier than its start time is understood as crossing midnight. The punch-out after midnight is attributed to the day the shift started, which is what the muster roll, the hours calculation and the export all need.
Do you support rotating shifts?
Yes, through dated assignments. Starting a new open-ended assignment automatically ends the previous one the day before. A visual roster-planning screen — drag a fortnight of nights across a team — is on the roadmap, not built.
Can employees swap shifts between themselves?
Not yet. Swap requests with an approval step are specified but not shipped. Today a change is made by an admin, which is recorded as an assignment with dates.
Is there a shift calendar view?
There is a per-employee month calendar showing their shifts, week-offs, holidays and leave. A company-wide roster calendar across all staff is on the roadmap.
Is overtime tracked?
Hours beyond the shift end are captured and reported, and appear in the overtime report and the export. They are not yet linked to any pay calculation, because payroll itself is deliberately not shipped.
Keep reading
Next step
See it on your own roster
A working demo takes about twenty minutes, and we will use your shifts and your week-offs rather than a sample company.