Advantage has an integrated employee scheduling system you can use with Time Clock. This feature uses Schedule Templates and Employee Schedules to streamline the process of scheduling. Before you can work with scheduling, you must have Work Departments and Work Positions set up.

Employee Availability

Before you begin making schedules for employees, you should enter their availability information into the software. Employees can also edit their own availability directly from time clock by clicking Availability on the clock-in screen. This lets you easily identify who to schedule for what shift.

1. From Manager Console, click Time Clock.
2. Double-click Employee Availability.

   
   
   

3. Select the employee whose availability you want to manage, from the Availability For pull-down list.
   • The employee's weekly availability shows if it has already been set, with Preferred times in green, Available times in blue, and Unavailable times in red.
     
     
     
     
4. To make changes to the employee's availability, click Edit.
5. To add a new block of availability, verify Preferred, Available, or Not Available is selected depending on what type of block you want to add.
   
   
6. Click and drag across the times you want to include in this block.

7. Right click the highlighted portion to select Add.
   
   

   If the availability selection applies to an entire day, you can click All Day to quickly apply the setting to all time blocks.

8. Repeat this process until you have put in the employee's entire availability schedule.

9. If you need to remove or make changes to an availability block, right click it.
10. Select whether you want to Change the availability type to whichever one you have selected above, add a Note about this time block, or Delete the block completely.
    
    

Schedule Templates

Schedule templates are preset starting points from which to create employee schedules. They contain all seven days of the week and let you predetermine which departments need staff in a given day, how many and which positions are needed, and what time the shifts are for those positions. You can pre-select people to work these positions, but you will likely want to just drag and drop staff onto each new schedule as you create it, unless there is only ever one person who works a certain shift or position. You can also create more than one Schedule Template for days or weeks you know ahead of time will be extra busy or slow, so you can schedule the right number of employees.

1. From the Time Clock section of Manager Console, double-click Schedule Templates.
   
   
2. Click Add.
3. Give the template a Name, such as "Summer Schedule".
   
   
   
   
4. Select whether to Show the Template as an option when creating live schedules.
5. Click OK.
   • The Template Grid will appear, which is what you will use to define shifts. Although there are dates at the top, you can ignore these. All you have to pay attention to is the day of the week you are working on.
     
     
6. Open the Depts tab.
   • This tab displays all the work departments you have set up on the left side of the screen.

7. Click and drag whichever departments you need to add staff to from the list to the Dept/Pos column.

   You can remove anything you add to the schedule grid by right clicking it to reveal a menu of options, including one to remove it.

   
   
   
   
   

8. Open the Pos tab.
   • This lists all the positions you have configured.
9. For each department, drag and drop whichever positions you need to staff from the list to under the corresponding department name.
   • For example, if your Retail department needs three cashiers on staff, drag the Cashier position under the Retail department three times.
     
     

10. Repeat this for all the positions you need.

    Always add the maximum number of a position you will need in a day for the whole week. If you don't need three cashiers on Thursdays, you would just not add any shifts for one of them that day.

11. To add a work shift for a position click next to the position at the time the shift is supposed to begin and drag it until the shift is supposed to end.
    
    

    You can change the time block increments by selecting 15 Min, 30 Min, or 60 Min from the top of the screen.

    

12. Add as many shifts as you need for as many positions as you need for each day of the week.
    • You can't copy and paste shifts from one day to another, but you only have to set up a template once.
13. Click Save Changes when you are done.

If you want to add specific staff to your template, you can also open the Staff tab and drag employees into any of the shifts. You only want to do this if the same person always works this shift.

Employee Schedules

Employee Schedules are the live schedules employees will follow to clock into their positions. To make creating these easier, you can pull shift information from one or more Schedule Templates.

1. From the Time Clock section of Manager Console, double-click Employee Schedules.
   
   
   
   
   
   • The Schedule Plans window will appear, which is where you define what date ranges the schedule you are about to create will apply to.
2. Click Add.
3. Enter a Plan Description to help you determine when the schedule will be used, such as the date ranges for the schedule.
4. Set the Status to Not Active.
   • Until the schedule for this plan range is complete, you should leave its status as Not Active, only changing it to Active once it is ready to use.
     
     
5. Select a Plan Date Range from the pull-down to enable the schedule for a single pay period, or select Use Specific Dates to define a custom time range.
   • The dates defined here will use the schedule you create when the plan is Active.
6. If necessary, edit your Operating Hours.
   • The area between the times you enter here will be highlighted in dark blue when you create the schedule.
7. Enter any Notes about the plan.
8. Click OK.
   • The Apply Templates window will appear, where you can select one or more previously configured Schedule Templates to begin creating the schedule.
9. Select a Default Template to apply the same template to every day of the week, or select separate templates for specific days as necessary.
   
   
   
   
10. Click OK.
    • The Scheduling Grid appears, which is where you will assign employees to their shifts. Any shifts you added to the Schedule Templates you are using will show up automatically here.

11. Click a shift time slot to view all employees set up to work in that department and position.

    
    

    

    You can also click Show All Employees to show every employee at your site.

    

12. Drag an employee into the shift time slot to schedule them.
    • When a shift is selected, employees who have that time range as Preferred in their availability, will be highlighted green, those Available will be in blue, those without an availability defined will be in yellow, and those in red are Not Available.
      
      
      

13. Add an employee for each shift.

    To change the Departments, Positions, or Shift Time Slots, select Allow Time Slot Change at the top of the screen. This will not affect the Schedule Template you used to create the schedule to begin with.

    

14. Optionally, click Emp Detail or Sum to see information about the schedule you are creating.
    
    • Emp Detail displays the Employee Scheduling Detail information for whichever employee is scheduled for the shift you have selected. Here, you can see all their shifts, the Number of Hours for each, which Department and Position each shift is for, and a summary of their total Scheduled Hours Per week at the bottom.
      
      
    • Sum displays a Department Schedule Hours Summary, which lets you see the number of Hours employees will work and the amount in Wages you will have to pay for the time period you have selected in Filter Summary.
      
      
15. When you are finished making edits to the schedule, click Save Changes.
    
16. Return to Employee Schedules to select Active when you are completely done with the schedule.

Schedule Reports

1. From the Time Clock section of Manager Console, double-click Time Clock.
   
   
   
   
2. .Double-click any report you want to view under the Schedule Reports section.
   
   
   
   
   • Schedule Summary is especially helpful, as it displays every employee's shift times for each day of the week for whatever time frame you specify. You can send this to employees as needed, or schedule an automatic Notification to send the schedule regularly.