Unpublished schedule, published schedule: what are the differences ?
1) Unpublished schedule: your draft
When you create your schedule for the week, it's not published. It's a draft that only the admins, directors and managers of the company can see.
If you enable the "Do not display rest days on unpublished schedules" option in Preferences (Configuration > Settings > Scheduling > Preferences), then employees can't see any elements on the schedule, otherwise they have the option to see the weekly rests filled in.
2) Published schedule: shifts visible on the time clock and by all employees
When you publish the schedule, you then have 3 possibilities:
You have invited your team to connect to Combo : all employees can view the schedule on the web and on the mobile app.
You have not invited your team but you have filled in their email address : all employees will receive an email with their schedule for the week.
You didn't invite your team and didn't fill in their email : publishing the schedule will simply allow you to declare your team's actual hours
Once the schedule is published, if you modify, delete any shift it will trigger an email notification to the concerned employee to warn them (if their email is filled in).
In any case, if you are using Combo's time clock, then publishing the schedule makes it visible on the time clock. Without publishing, your employees can’t clock in. Once the employees have clocked in, you will find all the information at the Time Clock Report level. We explain everything here.
Adding and validating real hours: for whom? For what?
Even if your employees don't have access to Combo and you haven't entered their email addresses, publishing the schedule allows you to compare what was planned with what was actually worked and adjust your payrolls accordingly.
Once the schedule is published and the day is over, you can report the actual hours. You can also allow your employees to do this by enabling the option in Scheduling. To see in detail how an employee can report their actual hours, go here.
In all cases, the manager keeps control and can verify that the hours entered by his team are accurate.
To find out how to validate actual hours via the Time Clock report, go here.
And through the schedule scheduling, it's in this article. 👈