Creating a master schedule

Configuring master schedules is the first step to setting up your weekly schedule for a given customer. We've designed this set-up to be as flexible as possible given your officer configurations, while incorporating various requirements like:
different officers scheduled for a shift over the course of a week
different certification / training requirements for each post
pay rates dictated by the officer's standard pay rate or dictated by the post itself
and others...

Our core guidance when setting up the shifts for a given customer is to create your master schedules to mimic how your shifts are assigned to your officers. For example, if you have a "168" (24/7 coverage) and you typically have three 8-hour shifts per day that start and end at the same time each day, you should create three different master schedule entries. (e.g., Front Gate, Monday-Sunday, 7a-3p; Front Gate, Monday-Sunday, 3p-11p; Front Gate, Monday-Sunday, 11p-7a). (Note: We currently assume that all breaks are paid, this will be configurable in the next couple of weeks.)

Fields to enter

Schedule information

Post Name: Enter the name of the post. Common post names are as simple as "Unarmed Officer" or indicate the location of the post (e.g., "Front Gate," "Parking Lot," "Building A Entrance").
Days: Choose a pre-filled option (every day, weekdays, weekends) or choose specific days for this post (e.g., Tuesdays & Thursdays)
Shift Start and Shift End: Choose the times that the officers should start and end their shifts (e.g., 8am to 4pm, 10p to 6a). Note that if the end time is earlier in the day than the start tie, we'll assume this is an overnight shift.
Post Start Date and Post End Date: By default, the Post Start Date will be today and the End Date will be the Contract End Date that you've already configured. This gives us the parameters for how long to pre-populate the schedule.

Post information

Bill Rate: Hourly rate you're billing your client for this post-shift. This will be used when auto-generating invoices at the end of each billing period.
Pay on: There are two options that can dictate the pay rate: employee pay rate or post pay rate.

If you choose employee pay rate, officers assigned to this shift will be paid according to the pay rate configured on their employee page. We will then ask for an optional "Pay Rate Guidance," which is a guide for your schedulers to aim to place officers whose employee pay rates are below the configured amount. (For example, if you're billing this shift at $30/hr, you can only afford to schedule officers that have a $20/hr pay rate or less. If you've configured "$20" as the Pay Rate Guidance, we'll flag officers that are above that amount during the scheduling workflow.)

If you choose the post pay rate, officers assigned to this shift will be paid a set hourly amount specific to this post (i.e., their employee pay rates will not be taken into account). This data will be used to generate payroll runs.

Certification requirements: Here, you can list what specific state licenses or custom certifications are required for this post. If you have set up a contract-level certification requirement already, you'll see that pre-loaded here (e.g., all officers must have "CA Security Guard License" for the contract). When scheduling, we'll indicate officers that meet all certifications requirements and suggest them first to fill any open shifts.

Officer assignment

Number of officers per shift: Indicate how many officers you have to this specific shift-post combination (e.g., 2 officers at the Front Gate from 8a-4p daily).
Assign default officer: This step will pre-populate officers in the Scheduling workflow for this shift on an ongoing basis. (Note: if you terminate officers or have changes to your master schedule template, change it here instead of changing assignments one-by-one in the Scheduling tab).

Here, you have the option to fill in the same officer for all days of the week that this shift is assigned, or to configure a different default officer based on days of the week.

Updated on: 06/12/2022