With employees now active in the system, Sarah begins configuring shifts, attendance policies, grace periods, and biometric tracking rules so working hours can be monitored accurately every day.
She carefully sets up attendance structures because even small configuration mistakes could affect check-ins, overtime, payroll calculations, approvals, reporting accuracy, and compliance workflows across the organization.
Shift schedules, attendance rules, and biometric integrations are configured successfully so employees can start tracking time without operational confusion.
Marking someone late is where attendance stops and payroll starts. A late arrival costs nothing on its own — what it costs is decided by the deduction rules on the payroll policy, covered in Chapter 11. Grace lives in one place — the shift. It decides whether an arrival counts as late at all, and that is the whole of its job: it does not also make a late day look less late. The deduction bands are counted from the shift's start time, so a band set at 2 hr charges an 11:00 arrival on a 9:00 shift no matter how generous the grace is. The payroll policy used to carry a second grace of its own; it did not replace the shift's, it stacked on top of it, so that field has been retired.
| Failure | What the user sees | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Invalid shift time range configured | Validation rejects shift timing | Correct start and end time values |
| Break duration exceeds total shift duration | Validation rejection shown | Reduce break duration within shift limits |
| Delete shift with active employee assignments | Deletion blocked or reassignment required | Reassign employees before deletion |
| Overlapping effective shift dates for the same employee | Conflict validation shown | Adjust assignment date ranges |
| Employee has no assigned shift | Company default shift applied automatically | Assign a dedicated shift if needed |
| Invalid IP whitelist range configured | Validation rejects IP configuration | Enter a valid IP or CIDR range |
| Biometric device goes offline | Attendance sync interrupted | Fallback to manual attendance until device reconnects |
| Duplicate biometric punch events received | Duplicate attendance entries detected | System automatically deduplicates punches |
| Scenario | Behavior | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Overnight shift crosses midnight | Attendance is recorded against the original shift start date | Maintains accurate attendance and overtime tracking |
| Late mark should trigger only after grace period | Late status activates after configured grace duration | Supports flexible attendance policies |
| Employee is marked late but loses no pay | The payroll policy has no late deduction rule in effect, the lateness sits below every configured band, or the band covering it charges 0 | Attendance records the fact; the payroll policy decides the price |
| A day is late on the attendance screen but the payslip charges no lateness | Only a day whose recorded status is Late is charged as late. A weekend or holiday punch, a status set by hand, a flexible-duration day and a late arrival that ended as a half day all keep the minutes without being late days | Attendance measures the minutes from the punches whatever the day turns out to be; a day that ended short is charged once, under Days missed |
| Shift contains multiple break periods | Break sessions are tracked separately within attendance logs | Improves detailed work-hour tracking |
| Employee uses secondary shift on selected days | Primary shift remains default while secondary shift overrides specific schedules | Supports flexible workforce scheduling |
| Strict IP enforcement enabled | Check-in attempts outside whitelisted IP ranges are blocked | Strengthens attendance security controls |
| Soft IP enforcement enabled | Check-in is allowed but flagged with a warning | Balances security with operational flexibility |
| Biometric device clock drifts from server time | Tolerance window adjusts punch acceptance automatically | Prevents false late or absent records |