Effective shift planning starts with up-to-date user contracts, which are key to aligning schedules with the arrangements you've made with your employees. Before scheduling shifts, it's crucial to ensure each team member's contract settings are correct to maintain compliance and prevent conflicts. This guide shows you how to quickly update these settings, an essential step for smooth scheduling and effectively using the Auto-Fill feature.

Updating a team member's contract settings in Soon is straightforward. You can take two different paths, each leading to the contract settings section for making necessary updates. Here are the steps for both methods:

Through the Main Menu:

Via the Schedule Board:

In both scenarios, once you select a user, their individual contract settings panel will open. Here, you can edit various parameters, such as working days and hours. Changes are saved automatically as you make them.

To navigate to other users, click on someone else in the list or use the "Next" and "Previous" icons, which are arrows pointing downwards and upwards, respectively. Regularly reviewing and updating these settings ensures your schedule accurately reflects current contracts, aiding in the efficient use of the Auto-Fill feature and in manual scheduling.

The contract settings panel is only accessible by admins and is designed to be flexible and support different work arrangements. It contains important fields that determine the working terms of each user. Any changes made are automatically saved. By configuring these settings, you can ensure that your schedule complies with employment contracts and operates efficiently with foresight.

The Availability Time Zone setting ensures that the user's working hours and days are viewed from their local time perspective. Initially, the Availability Time Zone is set based on the location of the administrator who creates or invites a user to Soon. However, this setting can be changed anytime to match the user's working location. Users are also able to update this setting as needed.

Working Days are in place to ensure that employees are not scheduled to work on their days off. By default, all working days are enabled to allow for the greatest flexibility in scheduling. To avoid scheduling conflicts, non-working days can be easily unchecked. This functionality is important for both manual scheduling and the Auto-Scheduler. For manual scheduling, it highlights potential conflicts, while for the Auto-Scheduler, it ensures users are not scheduled on non-working days when the working days constraint is applied.
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The Hourly Cost field tracks labor costs and guides the Auto-Scheduler regarding budget constraints/objectives. Initially, this field is left unset, effectively representing zero, until an admin inputs a value. Inputs are allowed with up to two decimals. Please note that only admins have access to cost-related information in Soon. The currency for the hourly cost can be adjusted in the team profile settings under "Menu" → "Account" → "Profile".

The Maximum Working Hours parameter is a crucial part of scheduling. It identifies the overallocation of hours in manual scheduling and prevents excessive hour allocation by the Auto-Scheduler when the max. working hours constraint is active. It allows for values with two decimals for accuracy. The input should not include unpaid break time as it reflects actual paid working time. This parameter sets an upper limit on the number of hours an employee can work in a day, week, or month, and it only accepts values equal to or greater than the minimum values. Minimum working hours set the lower limit and often represent the required contract hours, while maximum hours indicate the allowed overtime. If no values are set, it is assumed that there are no upper limits, and no conflicts will be triggered.

The Minimum Working Hours parameter has no value by default. If there's no value or it's set to "0", there's essentially no specific minimum requirement for weekly and/or monthly working hours unless an admin enters a number greater than zero. This setting allows you to input values with up to two decimals, playing a crucial role in the app by tracking remaining work hours (as displayed in the people picker and hours overview panel) and guiding the Auto-Scheduler when the minimum working hours constraint is enabled. It's important to note that the input should not include unpaid break time as it represents actual paid working or contract hours. Scheduling people for more than the minimum hours doesn't trigger any conflict warnings. Importantly, the minimum hours can never exceed the weekly or monthly maximum hours.

The examples below demonstrate various contract hour setups to accommodate different working arrangements, providing flexibility and ensuring compliance with employment terms.

Default Scenario for New Users:

Employee with Flexible/Zero Contract Hours:

Employee with Fixed Weekly Contract Hours:

Employee with Fixed Monthly Contract Hours:

Employee with a Combination of Fixed Weekly and Monthly Contract Hours:

There are no restrictions with manual scheduling. Automated scheduling obeys enabled constraints to avoid conflicts.

The app shows remaining hours, based on the minimum working hours input, in areas like the people picker for manual event assignments and the hours overview panel. If scheduling exceeds the minimum hours, the display will show a negative value, indicating how many extra hours a person is scheduled beyond the minimum required.

Your insights are vital in our journey to enhance and tailor the User Contract experience. We're eager to hear your ideas and suggestions. Please feel free to share them on our feedback page, send us an email, or contact us directly via our in-app chat.