The Scheduler is Netchex's hub for managing your team's schedules and attendance in one place. You'll find it under Time & Attendance → Scheduler. This first session is a tour of everything the module brings together so you know where each tool lives before we start building.

What the Scheduler does

• Build schedules and organize your workforce into schedule groups — the containers that decide which employees appear on a schedule and which rules apply to them.
• Manage shift changes — oversee shift trades, drops, and pickups your employees request, and approve them before they take effect.
• See who's working in real time through the Who's In Dashboard, a high-level view of who is clocked in, missing, unscheduled, at lunch, or on a break.
• Report on your scheduling with the Coverage Report, the Scheduled vs. Actual Report, and the Punch Variance Report.

Connection to Violation Points

If your company uses the Performance module, the Scheduler ties directly into the Violation Points feature. This lets you assign points for attendance-related behaviors — punching in late, punching out early, or missing shifts altogether — creating a consistent, trackable system for attendance accountability.

It's not just a manager tool

Employees have visibility into their own schedules right from their employee profile. When a schedule is published or changed, they receive a notification so they're always in the loop. Depending on your company's settings, employees may also be able to drop, trade, or pick up shifts on their own — while managers keep control of the approval process. Everything is also fully available in the Netchex mobile app for both managers and employees.

In this session we build a schedule from the ground up — starting with the schedule group that everything sits on, then adding shifts in the Schedule Builder and publishing so your team can see it.

Start with a schedule group

A schedule group is the container that decides which employees show up on a schedule and which rules apply. To build one, give it a clear name and choose the day your workweek starts. That day matters — it determines how Netchex calculates overtime, so make sure it matches your actual pay week. Then filter your employees by division, business unit, and/or department, and narrow further by employee type if needed (handy for a PRN or as-needed schedule).

Next choose the location that appears on employee shifts. If you have multiple locations, pick one here and use the job name to indicate where people actually report, since this address can't vary shift by shift.

Punch alerts & restrict punches

Punch alerts flag when someone clocks in or out earlier or later than scheduled; set a grace period for each. Important: once you publish the first schedule under this group, these settings lock permanently. If you want to go further, restrict punches actually blocks the punch instead of just flagging it — but this only works for employees using a web clock; hardware time clocks aren't affected at this time.

Options & rules

• Shift trade — employees can request to trade shifts that fit their qualifications and availability (the other employee accepts, then a manager approves).
• Shift drop — after a schedule is published, an employee who can't work a shift can drop it for someone else to cover.
• Shift pickup — employees can proactively request open shifts they qualify for, without waiting for someone to drop one.
• Auto-unassign on approved time off — if an employee gets approved time off on a day they're scheduled, Netchex automatically unassigns that shift.
• Holidays — prevent scheduling group members on company holidays, based on the holiday calendar you select.
• Minor Labor Compliance — automatically prevent or warn when scheduling minors outside allowed hours, daily limits, earliest start, latest end, and overtime restrictions (with a school-in-session option).
• CA Labor Compliance — checks shifts against California's required meal and rest breaks (e.g., a 30-minute meal break after five hours) plus the state's minor labor rules.

Review everything on the summary page (each section has a pencil icon to fix), then click Add Group.

Building the schedule

The Schedule Builder is your home base week to week. At the top you can switch between schedule groups and move between weeks. Click Add Shift, choose the date and time, and pick the job the shift falls under (the job determines who's eligible). Assign it to someone directly or leave it unassigned to place later. For a recurring shift, check Repeating Shift, set the frequency and an end date — shifts can repeat up to a year out.

Drag and drop makes assigning fast: drag an unassigned shift onto an employee, or drag a shift to a different day — hours update immediately on both. You can also click a shift, hit edit, and adjust the time on the fly. Watch for time off tags (PTO, sick, vacation) so you don't double-book someone.

Publishing

If you try to schedule someone during a time they're already working, Scheduler flags it with a warning — always resolve conflicts before publishing, because conflicting shifts won't go out to your team. Once everything looks right, click Publish. If there are conflicts, Netchex stops and shows exactly what needs attention before anything goes live.

This session digs into jobs — think of these as your shift types — and how to set eligibility rules so the right people end up on the right shifts. We'll also cover Copy Week, a time-saver for reusing a schedule that already works.

Creating a job

A job defines a type of shift in your organization — front desk attendant, registered nurse, technician, and so on. Give it a clear name and pick a color; that color shows up on every shift tied to the job, so the schedule is easy to scan at a glance.

Setting who qualifies

Layer eligibility so only the right employees can be scheduled:

• Positions — turn this on to restrict the shift to certain job titles.
• Skills — require a specific skill, great when a shift needs someone trained on a particular piece of equipment or software.
• Licenses & certifications — your safety net. You don't want to schedule someone as a nurse if their RN license isn't on file. Set the requirement, then click Add Job.

Here's where it pays off: when you build a shift using this job, Netchex splits your employees into two groups — Available (they meet every requirement) and All Employees (they don't, but you can still schedule them manually if you choose).

Copy Week

If you've already built and published a solid week, don't start over. Click the drop-down next to Publish and select Copy Week. Pick the week you want to copy the schedule to, decide whether to keep the same people assigned or leave it open, and click Copy Week. One important note: copied shifts always come over unpublished — intentionally, so you can review everything before it goes live.

This session covers what happens after a schedule is published — how employees trade and drop shifts, and how you, as a manager or administrator, review and approve those requests.

The employee side

Once a schedule is published, employees view their shifts from their dashboard. Clicking a shift shows the details — location, notes, and swap options.

• Trade shift — the employee chooses from eligible shifts shown. They'll only see shifts from coworkers who share the same position, skills, and license/certification requirements (where applicable).
• Request an open shift — employees aren't limited to swapping with a specific coworker; if there's an open, unassigned shift they qualify for, they can request that instead.
• Drop shift — if an employee simply can't work, they can drop the shift. Depending on your configuration, they may be required to line up a specific coworker to cover it before the drop request goes through.

One thing to highlight for your team: whether it's a trade or a drop, the employee is still responsible for that shift until a supervisor actually approves the request. Nothing changes until it's approved.

The manager / administrator side

All pending trade and drop requests land under Shift Requests. You'll also get an email notification if that event is turned on. Approving or denying is a single click — the checkmark approves, the X denies. Either way, both the employee and the schedule update immediately, and if you've enabled schedule or shift-request notifications, the employee gets an email or text with the outcome.

Three reports help you understand coverage, compare scheduled versus actual hours, and catch punch discrepancies tied to the schedule. All three live in the same place.

Coverage Report

The Coverage Report shows staffing levels by day and time. Filter it three ways — by schedule group, department, and job — then choose how to sort, pick your date range, and set your coverage window. The increment you choose determines how finely the report breaks down staffing, down to 15-minute blocks if you need that detail. Pull it as a PDF for a clean summary with headcount and hours, or Excel for the fully detailed, sortable version. Either way you'll see total headcount up top and a breakdown by your chosen increment.

Scheduled vs. Actual

This report compares the hours employees were scheduled for against what they actually worked, based on their timecard with any punch-rounding rules already applied. Filters work the same — schedule group, department, job, or specific employees — and it only shows employees you have access to. Two options worth calling out: include unpublished shifts to factor those in, and include labor costs for hours worked, which is great for spotting where actual costs are running ahead of plan.

Punch Variance

Punch Variance compares scheduled shift times against actual time worked and lets you review punch alerts based on those scheduled shifts. Filters and sorting match the other two. What's unique here are the punch options — six checkboxes that mirror the punch alert events you configured when you built the schedule group. All six are checked by default, but you can narrow to just the events you care about. Because they mirror the schedule group's punch alerts, if an event wasn't enabled there, it won't produce results here either.

The Who's In Dashboard sounds simple but delivers real operational value. It lives under Time & Attendance → Scheduler → Who's In Dashboard, and it turns reactive management into proactive management.

Real-time visibility

At a glance, managers and supervisors can see exactly who is clocked in, absent, on break, or hasn't shown up yet — all in real time. Click any status to filter: who's in, unscheduled, at lunch, on break, and missing. For shift-based workforces — restaurants, healthcare, automotive — that visibility is critical for making fast decisions before a shift goes sideways.

Catching gaps early

Instead of reacting to a no-call/no-show after the fact, you can catch gaps early and bring someone in before it impacts operations. Clicking the Missing status shows exactly who was scheduled but hasn't clocked in — which is also a chance to fix missing punches in real time. For example, if Parker shows as missing but you've seen her in the hallway, you can stop and ask why she hasn't clocked in, keeping your records accurate before it becomes a payroll issue.

A bird's-eye view you can trust

The dashboard gives leadership a view across departments, locations, or company codes without chasing down supervisors for headcounts. For healthcare or government, knowing exactly who is on-site supports safety compliance, emergency headcounts, and audit readiness. Because it pulls live data directly from Time & Attendance, it reflects actual clock activity — not just a schedule on paper.

Acting from the dashboard

You can refresh the data anytime, sort by status or name, and search for specific employees. Click into an individual and you can send them an email, view their profile, or pull up their full schedule — all without leaving the page.

Violation Points is a feature within the Netchex Performance module that lets you build a standardized, automated attendance policy. Instead of tracking tardiness and absences by hand or relying on a manager's memory, the system assigns point values to specific attendance events and tracks them automatically from your Time & Attendance data in Scheduler. The result is a process that's fair, consistent, and defensible — every employee is held to the same standard, and every occurrence is documented in the same place.

Before you configure

Make sure three things are in place first:

• Your Scheduler module is active and employees are clocking in and out through Netchex — Violation Points pulls directly from clock data, so accurate punches are essential.
• Your attendance policy is documented: the violation types you track (tardiness, early departure, no-call/no-show, etc.), the point values for each, and the thresholds that trigger a response.
• You have admin-level access in Netchex.

Getting to the policy

Navigate to Performance → Violation Points → Settings, then click Org-Wide Policy.

Rolling Expiration Period

At the top of the page, the Rolling Expiration Period controls how long points stay on an employee's record before they expire. Enter the number of days that reflects your policy — for example, 90 days means any points older than 90 days no longer count toward the employee's current total.

Defining which events earn points

This section defines which attendance events earn points and how many. It's divided into three subsections — Late Arrivals, Early Departures, and Missed Shifts.

• For late arrivals and early departures, you can create multiple rules based on how late or early the employee was. Each rule specifies a time range, which days it applies to, and which shift durations it applies to. For example: 5–10 minutes, all days, shifts up to 4 hours = 1 point; 10–30 minutes, all days, any duration = 2 points; above 30 minutes, all days, any duration = 3 points. Late arrivals and early departures can be configured differently — they don't have to mirror each other, though many clients keep them consistent for simplicity.
• Under missed shifts, you assign points for absences, and you can set different values based on whether the employee missed a single shift or consecutive shifts.

Threshold rules — what happens as points add up

Next you define what happens when an employee accumulates a certain number of points. For each threshold rule you set:

• Points — the point total that triggers this escalation.
• Notify — who receives an alert: Employee and Manager, or Employee, Manager, and Admin.
• Action — what happens automatically: take no other action, create a disciplinary note automatically, or a PIP review. If you choose to create a disciplinary note, you also choose the type and severity; if you choose a PIP review, you link an existing PIP review template.

Manual point configuration

The manual point configuration section lets you define violation types that managers can assign by hand for behaviors that can't be detected from clock data — for example, phone policy violation, misconduct, lack of discipline, or theft. These appear as options when a manager or admin manually adds a violation to an employee's record.

Enable Manager Approval

At the bottom of the Edit Policy page, the Enable Manager Approval toggle, when on, requires that any disciplinary action created automatically by a threshold escalation gets manager review and approval before it's sent to the employee. Once every section is configured, save your policy.

Once Violation Points is configured, the system runs largely on autopilot — points are assigned automatically from Time & Attendance data in Scheduler, and tardiness or missed shifts are detected when employees clock in late or not at all. Your day-to-day role is to monitor point balances, spot employees approaching a threshold early, and manually log violations for behaviors clock data can't catch.

The admin view: Manage Violation Points

Admins have full visibility across the organization. The Manage Violation Points page is your central view. From here you can:

• Filter by company, location, manager, or employee.
• See a summary of current point balances across all employees.
• Review bar graphs of attendance trends over time.
• Identify employees approaching a threshold before it's triggered.

Adding a manual violation

Some behaviors — a phone policy violation, misconduct, or other manual types configured in your policy — can't be detected from clock data. In those cases you add a violation manually, and the points for that violation type are added to the employee's current balance automatically. If the new total crosses a configured threshold, the system handles the escalation per your policy settings.

The manager view

Managers can see violation point data for the employees on their team, so they can monitor trends and act proactively. If a manager sees someone approaching a threshold, that's a prompt for a one-on-one coaching conversation — addressing violations early is far more effective than waiting for a formal escalation.

The employee view

Transparency is core to a fair policy, so employees can view their own balance and history right in the Netchex self-service portal. They see the violation type, date, and points for each occurrence, can acknowledge them, and can view their running total along with their threshold status and actions.

Better because it's connected

Violation Points works best connected to the rest of Netchex. Points are sourced from Time & Attendance in Scheduler (so accurate clocking matters), and because scheduling visibility, PTO requests, and shift swaps all live in the same system, employees have fewer reasons to miss a shift unexpectedly and managers have full context when a violation does occur. When scheduling, time tracking, and policy enforcement all live in one place, the process becomes proactive rather than reactive.