13. Creating a reusable working pattern

If your employees work shifts, TimeKeeper will use the rota for that week to determine their scheduled hours. You can set an employee as a shift worker using the guide here

A working pattern within TimeKeeper dictates the expected start and end time of an employee. This can be very important depending on your settings you have enabled.

For example it can be important in the following scenarios:

if you want to track lates/early leaves, then it's important the working pattern is reflective of the actual expected start time
if you want to track daily overtime, then the expected start time and end time is important
if you have settings to not track time worked before expected start time or after expected end time
if you are tracking leave, if that employee books off that day, then the leave that is booked is referenced against their working hours e.g. 9-5PM would be 8 hours leave

To add a working pattern

Go to 'Configure' on the left hand navbar and click 'Working Patterns'

Click "Add New Working Pattern"


Enter in the working pattern details - you have a number of options here which we will describe below

Fields Explained

Name - Name of working pattern for reference

Weekly Contracted Hours - Contracted hours on a weekly basis (if variable, leave as 0).

Eligible for Overtime - Whether this employee is paid for overtime hours or not.

Overtime Rate - The overtime rate multiplier. For overtime at time and half, the multiplier would be 1.5x.

Specify Multiple Overtime Rates - Click this if you have different overtime rates on different days (double time on Saturday, which would be an overtime rate of 2).

Day Breaks (Unpaid) - Any breaks to be automatically deducted from this employee's hours (e.g. 30 minutes lunch, 15 minute tea break for example).

Common Queries

Does the working pattern mean it won't count hours outside of this?
The short answer is no (by default). Employees can still clock in outside of their working hours, and their hours would be counted.

If you'd like to only count hours within their scheduled start and end times, you can enable Rounding Rules under your Account Settings and untick "Count Time Worked Before Expected Start Time" and "Count Time Working After Expected End Time".

I want to exclude breaks from being deducted on a certain day

This is simple - there is a list of days and you can check which day you want to exclude. So let's say you wanted to exclude lunch breaks on Saturday, just click the Saturday next to the break in question. See below as an example.

Updated on: 22/07/2024