# Introduction - Shifts

The working pattern every attendance day is judged against, and the roster of who is on it.

**Video coming soon:** A tour of Shifts: the patterns your organisation runs, and who is currently on each.

A shift is the expectation. Without one, a check in is only a timestamp; with one, Worklink can say whether the day started late, ran short or earned overtime.

![The Shifts screen, headed Shifts above the line Configure and manage work shifts for your organization, with a Central Warehouse location picker and a blue New Shift button. Two shift tabs read Office Standard 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM and Day Shift 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM, each with a gear icon. Below them an Assignment Roster heading sits beside an Assign button, above a table with columns Employee, From, To, Shift Status and Actions listing twenty people, all From 1 Jan 2026 with an open To date and an Active status.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/worklink/shifts/shifts-list.png)

*One screen, two halves: the shifts across the top, and who is on the selected one underneath.*

## The screen is a tab per shift

Each pattern your organisation runs is a tab. Selecting one changes the roster below it, so the list is always "who is on this shift" rather than "everybody".

![Two shift tabs. Office Standard, selected and shown in blue with a clock icon, reads 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Day Shift beside it reads 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Each tab carries a gear icon at its right.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/worklink/shifts/shift-tabs.png)

*The gear on a tab edits that shift. The tab itself just selects it.*

## What a shift decides

| Field on the shift | What it decides |
| --- | --- |
| Start and end time | Whether a check in is on time, early or late. |
| Break duration | How much of the day is subtracted before net working hours are counted. |
| Total work hours | The target the Remaining countdown on My Attendance runs against. |
| Work days | Which days produce a record at all. Everything else is a weekend for that person. |
| Effective period | When the pattern starts applying, and when it stops. |

## An assignment is dated, not permanent

The roster is a list of assignments rather than a list of people. Each row carries a **From** date and an open or closed **To** date, which is what lets somebody's pattern change in March without rewriting January.

- **From** (when it starts): The date this person began the shift. Attendance before it is judged against whatever they were on then.
- **To** (when it ends): Usually a pair of dashes, meaning open-ended. Setting it closes the assignment on that date.
- **Shift Status** (active or not): Whether the assignment is currently in force.

> **Note:**
>
> **Somebody with no shift cannot be late**
>
> Late, early and short all compare a timestamp to an expectation. A person nobody has assigned has no expectation, so their days record hours and nothing else. An unexpected run of blank statuses is usually a missing assignment rather than a bug.