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Configuration: Work Types & Shifts
This guide covers the scheduling building blocks — how someone works (work type), when they work (shift), on what terms (employee type), and the patterns that alternate between them.
These are reached from Settings → Employee. They sit in the Settings screen, but they are configuration rather than administration: almost every other module reads them.
Purpose
This answers: "What working arrangements exist in this organization, and what does a normal day look like for each?"
The Building Blocks
| Screen | What one record is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Work Type | A category of working arrangement. | Office, Remote, Hybrid, Field |
| Employee Type | An employment basis. | Permanent, Contract, Intern, Probation |
| Employee Shift | A named schedule. | Day Shift, Night Shift, Weekend Shift |
| Employee Shift Schedule | One day within a shift. | Day Shift · Monday · 09:00–17:00 |
| Rotating Work Type | A pattern alternating between work types. | Office ↔ Remote |
| Rotating Shift | A pattern alternating between shifts. | Day ↔ Night |
Work Type
A work type is a name plus the companies it belongs to. The same name cannot exist twice within one company.
Work types appear on employee work information, on job openings in Recruitment, and as a condition on payroll rules. Employees can request to change theirs — see Employee: Shift & Work Type Requests.
Employee Type
The same shape: a name and its companies, again unique within a company. It records the basis on which someone is employed, and is available as a filter and a rule condition throughout the system.
Employee Shift
A shift is the schedule an employee is measured against.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Shift name | What it is called. |
| Weekly full time | Hours making up a full week. Defaults to 40:00. |
| Full time | Hours making up a full month. Defaults to 200:00. |
| Grace time | An allowance applied to this shift's check-ins or check-outs, chosen from the grace times defined in Attendance settings. |
| Company | The companies the shift belongs to. |
Employee Shift Schedule — the days within a shift
A shift on its own has no daily hours. Those come from its schedule: one record per day of the week.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Shift and Day | Which shift, and which weekday. One record per shift and day. |
| Minimum Working Hours | The hours that count as a full day for that weekday. Defaults to 08:15. |
| Start Time and End Time | The working window. |
| Night Shift | Set automatically — a schedule whose end time is earlier than its start time is treated as crossing midnight. |
| Enable Automatic Check Out | Whether GoldServe checks the employee out on their behalf if they forget. |
| Automatic Check Out Time | The time it does so. |
A shift with no schedule for a given day gives that day no expected hours, which is how days off inside a shift are expressed.
What shifts drive
- Attendance compares each day's worked hours against that day's minimum, and flags late arrivals and early departures against the start and end times. See Attendance: Clocking In & Out.
- Payroll copies an employee's shift onto their contract, and allowance and deduction rules can be conditioned on it. See Payroll: Contracts.
- Leave and holidays interact with it: a day that falls on a holiday or a company off-day is not held to its minimum hours.
Rotating Work Type & Rotating Shift
A rotating pattern alternates an employee between two or more work types, or two or more shifts.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | What the pattern is called. |
| Work Type 1 / Shift 1, Work Type 2 / Shift 2 | The first two steps of the cycle. |
| Additional steps | Further work types or shifts, for cycles longer than two. |
A rotating work type must not repeat the same work type back to back — the pattern has to actually alternate.
Defining a pattern does not put anyone on it. Assigning employees, and choosing the cycle (after so many days, weekly, or monthly), is done on the assignment screens in the Employee module — see Employee: Rotating Shift & Work Type Assignment.
What Each User Sees
| Action | Employee | Reporting Manager | HR Administrator |
|---|---|---|---|
| See their own work type and shift on their profile | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Request a different shift or work type | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Create or edit work types, employee types, shifts, and schedules | — | — | ✅ |
| Define rotating patterns | — | — | ✅ |
Work types and shifts can also be created on the fly from an employee's work-information form by anyone able to edit it, without coming to Settings.
How Visibility Is Decided
- Permissions. Each screen needs its own permission, and each is listed in the Settings menu only for those who hold it.
- Company. Work types, employee types, and shifts belong to one or more companies and follow the company switcher. A name only has to be unique within a company, so two companies can each have their own "Day Shift".
Good to Know
- A shift without a schedule does nothing. Creating "Night Shift" and stopping there leaves it with no hours, no start time, and nothing for attendance to check against.
- Minimum hours are per weekday, not per shift. A shorter Friday is expressed by giving Friday its own lower minimum.
- Night shifts do not need declaring. An end time earlier than the start time is enough for GoldServe to treat the schedule as crossing midnight.
- Automatic check-out is a safety net, not a policy. It closes off a forgotten check-in at a fixed time rather than leaving the day open-ended.
- Records in use are protected from deletion. A work type or employee type on somebody's work information cannot be removed, and neither can a shift that still has a schedule attached.