Understand the key terms
Term | What it means | Where to find it |
Contracted weekly hours | The hours defined in the contract (e.g. 40h/week). Never changes automatically. | Employee profile > Work |
Required time | What the employee must actually work in a period: contracted hours minus time off and public holidays. Basis for payroll and overtime. | Attendance > Attendance Summary |
Scheduled time | The operationally planned working time. With a regular work schedule: the hours from the work schedule, regardless of Shiftplan. With an irregular work schedule and active Shiftplan: only published shift hours, otherwise 0h. | Shiftplan or Employee profile |
Tracked time | The time actually clocked in. | Employee profile > Attendance |
Total time | Tracked time + paid time off + public holidays. | Employee profile > Attendance |
Regular work schedule: Fixed | The same number of hours every working day, e.g. always Mon–Fri 8h. A weekly pattern that repeats exactly. | Employee profile > Work > Work Schedule |
Regular work schedule: Flexible | Also a fixed weekly pattern, but with different hours per weekday, e.g. Mon–Thu 8.5h and Fri 6h. Kenjo stores a specific number of hours for every weekday, just not the same one everywhere. | Employee profile > Work > Work Schedule |
Irregular work schedule | There's no fixed daily pattern. Only a total number of hours per week/month is stored, without fixing which hours fall on which weekday. The actual distribution is either automatic (spread evenly) or, if Shiftplan is active, comes entirely from published shifts. | Employee profile > Work > Work Schedule |
Contract vs. reality: Contracted weekly hours are the fixed agreement from the contract. Required time is what's actually left after subtracting paid time off and public holidays. With no time off and no holidays in the period, both values are the same.
ℹ️ The older term Expected time is no longer used. If you still see it anywhere, it refers to Required time.
For DSPs: Work Schedule (fixed/flexible/irregular) isn't available to you currently. Scheduled and Required time always come from Employee profile > Work > Contracted hours and working days instead, matching the legacy fallback further below in this article.
Where does Scheduled time come from: Work Schedule or Shiftplan?
In short: If your employee has fixed working hours (e.g. always Mon–Fri 8h), the work schedule counts, no matter what's in Shiftplan. Only with changing, irregular hours does Shiftplan take over.
What matters isn't whether Shiftplan is active, but whether the underlying work schedule is regular (fixed or flexible) or irregular.
Regular work schedule (fixed or flexible): Scheduled and Required time always come from the work schedule, even when Shiftplan is active for the employee, and regardless of whether a shift was published that day. The same applies when no work schedule history is stored at all (currently always the case for DSPs), in which case the weekly contracted hours and working days from the employee profile apply.
Irregular work schedule with active Shiftplan: Only published shifts count. A day with no published shift has 0 Scheduled hours. Required time is still spread evenly across the weekly contract, the shifts only decide which days get that share, not how many hours.
With a regular work schedule, a published shift still stays visible in Attendance as a reference, alongside the work schedule value. This is informational and doesn't change Required time.
ℹ️ Exception: for time off, a published shift can still matter, even with a regular work schedule. Details in the FAQ below.
Activate Shiftplan
Go to the employee profile.
Look for Activate Shiftplan in the menu on the right side.
Enable the Activate employee for shift scheduling toggle in the top right.
Deactivate Shiftplan
Go to the employee profile.
Look for Deactivate Shiftplan in the menu on the right side.
Disable the Activate employee for shift scheduling toggle in the top right.
🔍 Quick check: If an employee is active in Shiftplan, you'll see this directly in the header under My Attendance as a badge.
Practical example
For an employee with a 40-hour weekly contract, 5 working days, and no active Shiftplan:
Daily average: 8 hours (40 ÷ 5).
On the 23rd of the month: Cumulative Scheduled time = 17 working days × 8h = 136h.
With 2 public holidays in the period: Required time = 136h − (2 × 8h) = 120h.
Why do Required and Scheduled time diverge across the week?
Required time (net contractual time) stays independent of daily operational planning, to preserve contractual integrity. It's the fixed basis for determining how much time is credited for holidays and paid time off, even when the work schedule distributes hours unevenly across weekdays.
Practical example
For an employee with a 40-hour weekly contract, 5 working days, and a work schedule with an uneven distribution (8.5h Mon–Thu, 6h Fri):
Contractual daily average: 8 hours (40 ÷ 5), regardless of the actual daily distribution.
A public holiday on a Monday (an 8.5h day per the work schedule): the system still only credits 8h, the contractual average.
A public holiday on a Friday (a 6h day per the work schedule): the system still credits 8h, not the lower 6h.
Result: Required time stays the same no matter which weekday the holiday falls on, it's not affected by the uneven distribution in the work schedule.
What reduces Required time
Regardless of whether Scheduled time comes from Shiftplan, work schedule, or contract, this applies:
Situation | Required time on this day |
Public holiday / time off (full day) | 0h, full deduction |
Hourly time off | Required time − hours of the time off request (min. 0h) |
Time off with no reduction selected | No change |
How is the time off deduction calculated?
In each time-off policy you set two separate deduction settings: which days are deducted, and how many hours per deducted day. The full guide with scenarios and a decision table is in Set up deduction rules for time off.
Calculate overtime
The key rule: Overtime and undertime always come from Tracked time − Required time. Scheduled time from Shiftplan plays no role, Shiftplan and contract are two entirely separate figures.
Example: An employee has 5h30 published in Shiftplan for a day (Scheduled time), but their contract sets 7 Required hours for that weekday. If they actually work 5h45, the result is: 5h45 − 7h = −1h15. That's correct even though they worked 15 minutes longer than the shift said, because the comparison is against the contract, not the shift.
To build up positive overtime, an employee has to work more than their contracted Required hours on a given day, regardless of what was planned in Shiftplan.
Two settings that affect this:
Overtime tracking: Only employees who have this enabled in their work schedule are tracked for overtime at all.
Allow undertime: If enabled, negative days stay negative and offset against later positive days, instead of being rounded to 0.
Why can values differ slightly by view or report?
Required time isn't floored at 0 per day internally, it's only capped at 0 within a given view. That means a view that sums the whole period first and caps afterward can land on a slightly different number than a view that caps each day before summing. This doesn't affect the overtime calculation: that always uses Tracked time − Required time with the daily cap, regardless of which view or report is showing the number.
Frequently asked questions
Does the shift or the contract count for overtime?
Always the contract (Required time). Scheduled hours from Shiftplan are only for operational planning and don't feed into the overtime calculation.
Is overtime tracked for every employee?
No, only if overtime tracking is enabled in the employee's work schedule.
Why does a published shift show different hours than my work schedule, but doesn't change my Required time?
With a regular work schedule, the work schedule still determines Scheduled and Required time, regardless of Shiftplan. The published shift is shown for information only. There's an exception for time off: if a published shift exists for the day, its length can determine the time off deduction, depending on which deduction setting your time off policy uses.
Are there exceptions where a published shift counts anyway, even with a regular work schedule?
Yes, in four cases. For time off requests, a published shift replaces the work schedule value as the basis, even on days that wouldn't otherwise be a working day (e.g. an extra Saturday shift, previously blocked there). For the balance deduction, this only applies if your time off policy is set to Actual shift, see Set up deduction rules for time off. The daily view additionally shows published shifts as blocks (display only). And without a fixed check-in time, the allowed check-in window follows that day's shift.
Example week with an extra shift:
Day | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
Published shift | — | — | — | — | — | 10h | — |
Work Schedule | 8h30 | 8h30 | 8h30 | 8h30 | 6h | — | — |
Time off allowed? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (new) | No |
Hours deducted from balance | 8h30 | 8h30 | 8h30 | 8h30 | 6h | 10h | — |
Where to find this in Kenjo
My Attendance, showing the published shift as a reference next to the work schedule value.
My Attendance daily rows.
Attendance Summary: Scheduled vs. Actual.
Time Off > Request time off: available days now include the extra published-shift day.
Time off policy deduction settings, unaffected by this behavior.
Why does Scheduled time show 0h even though my employee is working?
Usually because the employee has an irregular work schedule with active Shiftplan, and no shift is published for that day. With a regular work schedule this shouldn't happen, since the work schedule counts regardless of Shiftplan, check whether the work schedule is correctly assigned and the weekdays are enabled in it.
I have a DSP account, where do I find my work schedule?
DSPs currently don't have a Work Schedule with Fixed/Flexible/Irregular. Your Scheduled and Required time always come from Employee profile > Work > Contracted hours and working days.
Can I change Required time manually for a single employee?
Required time is derived automatically from Contracted weekly hours in the employee profile (Employees > [employee] > Work). To change it, adjust the contracted weekly hours there, not Required time directly.
Can Contracted weekly hours and Required time be the same?
Yes. If there's no paid time off or public holidays in the period, Contracted weekly hours equal Required time.
Can I disable this deduction behavior for specific employees?
No. The behavior is set per time off policy in the deduction setting, not per employee. If you need different behavior for different groups, create separate time off policies with different deduction settings.
What happens if a shift is changed or removed after a time off request was approved?
The time off deduction is locked at the amount deducted when the request was approved. Changing or removing the shift afterward doesn't recalculate the balance.
What happens if a shift changes before I approve a time off request?
Unapproved time off requests are recalculated when the time off day arrives, following the standard process. Already-approved requests are locked at the time of approval, you'll be asked which value to keep, and they aren't recalculated afterward.