Best Practices for Schedules

Flowtly Editorial Team2 min

When making changes to a schedule, it's important to consider the scope of the changes and how they will impact employees already assigned to that schedule.

1. Use Schedule edition for small changes

The Edit Schedule function is best used for minor adjustments that you want reflected across all employees assigned to the schedule.

For example: Adjusting lunch breaks or slightly modifying start/end times for workdays.

You want to move the start time from 9:00 AM to 9:30 AM for all employees on the schedule. In this case, using Edit Schedule will efficiently apply the change without the need to create a new schedule.

2. Create a new Schedule for major changes

If you are making significant changes, such as completely different work hours or days, it is better to create a new schedule from scratch and assign employees to it. This helps avoid unintended consequences from changes that may not suit everyone already on the schedule.

For example: Switching from a Monday-Friday schedule to a Monday-Thursday or adding weekend shifts.

These kinds of changes affect the structure of the schedule and may need to apply only to certain employees. Creating a new schedule ensures clarity and flexibility.

Example use cases

  • Edit Schedule: All employees on a particular schedule need their lunch break shifted by 30 minutes, or their daily start time moved 15 minutes earlier.
  • Edit Schedule: A specific holiday requires a one-off adjustment to the working hours for a schedule, and this change applies to everyone assigned.
  • Create New Schedule: A new project requires a subset of employees to work completely different days (e.g., Tuesday-Saturday instead of Monday-Friday).
  • Create New Schedule: You need to introduce a rotating shift pattern (e.g., day/night shifts) that significantly alters the current fixed schedule for specific teams.

Connection map

Refers toPart ofDerived from
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
person works under agreement. agreement is of type agreement-type. agreement commits to job-size. agreement states weekly-working-time. weekly-working-time capped by job-size. job-size sizes capacity. work-schedule assigned to person.works underis of typecommits tostatescapped bysizesassigned toPPerson — An employee. The central record the rest of the workforce data hangs off — profile, documents, leave, benefits, rates.PersonAAgreement — The document formalizing the terms between the organisation and one employee or contractor. It is the foundation of the employees module: whether someone has an active agreement decides whether they appear in the other modules at all.AgreementAAgreement type — Which kind of document an agreement is. A standard employment agreement carries the terms; an annex extends one that would otherwise end; a termination closes the cooperation on a named date.Agreement typeJJob Size — The employment capacity an agreement commits to, in hours and minutes per week. The FTE percentage is calculated from it rather than entered: someone whose hours per week equal their job size is full-time.Job SizeWWeekly working time — The hours an employee is expected to work in a standard week. It may be less than job size but never more — entering more raises the job size to match.Weekly working timeCCapacity — A person's contracted week, less absence. Bookings are measured against their own contracted week, so 20 hours fills 83% of a 0.6 FTE and not 50%.CapacityWWork schedule — The working days, hours and breaks assigned to an employee, from the week the assignment starts. It is what the Work Time calendar draws.Work schedule