Point-in-Time Scheduling: Setting Up Effective-Dated Schedules for Employees

Overview

Employee schedules change all the time — a new shift pattern starts next month, someone moves to a reduced schedule during leave, or a temporary part-time arrangement needs to be planned in advance. Point-in-time scheduling lets you set up multiple schedules for a single employee, each with its own effective date, so the system automatically applies the correct one based on the date — without overwriting or affecting historical data.

Why It Matters

Previously, changing an employee's schedule meant editing their existing schedule directly, which risked altering historical records. With point-in-time scheduling, you can queue up schedule changes ahead of time:

• The current schedule stays intact up until its end date.
• Future schedules take effect automatically on their start date.
• Historical data is preserved — past periods are never overwritten.
• There's no limit to how many future schedule periods you can plan
   

This is especially useful for:

• Planned leave
• Seasonal or temporary schedule changes
• Phased return-to-work plans

How to Set Up a New Schedule Period

Step 1: Open the Employee's Profile

Navigate to the employee's profile page (e.g., Allen's profile). By default, employees inherit the organization's base schedule (for example, 8 hours a day, Monday–Friday, 40h/week).

Step 2: Open "Manage Schedules"

In the Base & Schedule section of the employee's profile, click Manage Schedule.

This opens the Base & Schedule dialog, which shows a timeline of all schedule periods for that employee.

Note:

What if you wanted to revert an employee’s cost rate back to the role’s standard cost rate? What would you do?

You would remove the override and save the change. Effectively, you’re removing the schedule override, but doing so creates a new entry in that screen rather than simply deleting the existing entry.

Step 3: Add a New Schedule Period

Click Add Schedule Period. A new entry appears in the timeline where you can configure:

• Start Date — when this schedule takes effect
• Daily hours for each day of the week (Mon–Sun)
• The option to instead use the organization's base schedule

Each schedule period automatically runs until the next period's start date, so you don't need to set an end date manually.
 

Step 4: Configure the Schedule Details

For example, to move an employee to a temporary part-time schedule:

1. Set the Start Date to the date the change should take effect (e.g., 09/01/2026).
2. Enter hours per day for the part-time period (e.g., 4 hours Monday–Friday, totaling 20h/week).
3. Click Save.

Step 5: Stack Additional Future Schedules (Optional)

You can add as many future schedule periods as needed to plan a full timeline in advance. For example:

Each row in the dialog can be expanded (▲/▼) to view or edit its details, and removed using the trash icon if a period is no longer needed. Deleting a period causes the schedule before it to become effective again for that date range.

Note: Changes can apply retroactively, so double-check start dates before saving if you don't want to affect past periods.

Seeing the Impact on Assignments & Capacity

Once schedules are saved, the effective schedule automatically flows through to other parts of the application — no manual updates needed elsewhere.

1. Go to People → Assignments.
2. Select the employee and view their current assignments.
3. If the employee is scheduled beyond their capacity for a given period (e.g., assigned 30 hours/week during a period when their schedule is only 20 hours/week), the system will flag them as over capacity for that date range.
4. Switch the view to Available Billable Capacity to see how the employee's availability shifts across each schedule period.

The Assignments page always reflects whichever schedule is active for the date range being viewed — so capacity and availability numbers stay accurate as schedules change over time.

Recap

• Employee profiles support multiple stacked schedules, each with its own effective start date.
• There's no limit on how far in advance you can plan schedule changes.
• The Assignments/Capacity view automatically reflects the correct schedule for any given date.
• Ideal for handling planned leave, seasonal changes, and phased return-to-work scenarios — all without touching historical data.