Core concepts

Shifts, scheduling & leave

Shifts set when each person is expected to work. They decide how time is labelled: productive inside a shift, overtime outside it. Schedules and leave are planned around them. Shifts are available on Startup and above; the personal schedule calendar is on every plan.

On the Shifts page you create shift templates and assign them to your team on specific dates. The Schedule page shows the result as a calendar: a personal view for everyone and team views for managers.

No shift means overtime

TimerOS does not assume a default 09:00–18:00 day. When someone works outside their shift hours, the desktop app relabels their time: productive becomes overtime, and idle or break become off-work, which is never counted or sent. A day with no shift falls entirely outside shift hours, so any work done that day is overtime.

Freelancer & no-shift workspaces
A workspace without the Shifts feature tracks the whole day as regular time. Productive time stays productive and never becomes overtime. See time states for the full breakdown.

Shifts follow your time zone

Shift times are checked against each employee’s saved time zone, not the computer’s clock. This stops anyone from adjusting their hours by changing the computer’s clock. If no time zone is set, the app uses the computer’s clock. You can set your time zone in the desktop app’s Settings or on the website under workspace settings.

Assigning shifts

  • Create shift templates you can reuse, with start and end times and optional breaks.
  • Assign templates to team members. Assigned shifts appear in each person’s Schedule calendar.
  • Overnight shifts are supported: a shift can end after midnight and is still checked as one continuous window.

Leave, time-off & approvals

On Startup and above, a manager with the right permission approves or rejects leave and time-off requests in the pending-requests panel on the Shifts page. Pre-approved leave and leave balances are managed there too, in the desktop or web dashboard. The same leave requests appear in the Pending and My Requests tabs of the Approvals page, so a team leader or above can decide from either place. The Approvals page handles other requests as well, such as org-structure changes, employee transfers, and project, billing and shift-assignment requests.

Plans & access
Shifts and Approvals require Startup or above. The Schedule page is on every plan; its team and organization views depend on your role and access level, not on your plan. The server checks leave changes with the same access levels as the rest of scheduling: members manage only their own leave, team leaders their team’s, managers their department’s, and C-level executives the whole workspace. Questions? Write to [email protected].