How labor is scheduled and tracked

Workforce answers three questions about the people on your floor: what work needs covering, who is planned to cover it, and what they actually worked. Workcell models those as separate but linked records so each one stays honest. This primer explains the model and why it is shaped this way; the how-to docs cover the clicks.

The unifying idea is simple. Positions define the need, the schedule plans the coverage, and recorded time is the actual against that plan.

The pieces

Positions: the need

A position is a role you staff, such as Machinist or Inspector. It is not a person; it is the shape of the work. Positions carry the scheduling limits the plan respects, like a cap on hours per person or a required rest between shifts. They are the vocabulary everything else is built from.

Employees: the people

An employee is a person who works at your plant. The record holds their pay and employment details and lists the positions they are qualified to fill, with one marked primary. An employee can be linked to an app user account so they can sign in and clock in. When someone leaves, you terminate the record: they drop out of scheduling, but their history stays.

Shifts: the recurring pattern

A shift is a reusable template, not a single day. It sets a start and end time, the days of the week it runs, how many people it needs, and the position it is for. Shifts are the patterns the schedule is built from, so you define the pattern once and reuse it across every week.

The schedule: the plan

The schedule turns shift patterns into dated assignments. Each assignment is one employee, one shift, one date. You can assign people directly, stage a week of changes in a draft before committing them, or let Workcell propose a schedule for you to review and accept. As the day changes, you call off an assignment someone cannot work, replace it with another person, or reinstate one you undid. This is the plan, and it is meant to flex.

Time: the actual

Recorded time is what people actually worked, captured from the floor rather than typed in. Clocking in opens a time card; while clocked in, labor against a work order operation or an indirect code opens a labor ticket under that card. Clocking out closes the card and any open tickets. Those hours feed labor cost and the live production picture, so the actual is always grounded in real clock minutes.

Time off: planned absence

A time-off request is an employee's ask to be off work, with a type, a date range, and a reason. It routes for approval. Approving it draws the hours down from the employee's balance for that type and year and shows the absence against the schedule, so the plan reflects who will not be there.

Why it is separate records, not one timesheet

Each piece answers a different question and has a different owner. Positions describe the need independent of who is around to meet it. Shifts let you express recurring coverage once instead of rebuilding it every week. The schedule is a plan, so it has to flex with call-offs, replacements, and approved time off without rewriting history. Recorded time is evidence, captured at the clock, so it can be trusted for payroll and costing. Keeping them distinct means the plan can change all it likes while the actual stays a faithful record of what happened, and you can always read one against the other.

Ready to walk it? Start with Define positions, then Build the schedule and Review time.