Documentation
How ShiftTracker works, and how to run it — rostering, agency requests, compliance and reporting.
Organisation
11 pagesAccount setup
Registering creates the organisation, its first Admin login and a 14-day trial in one four-step form. Everything after that is set under Settings — the organisation's timezone, the address alerts go to, the minimum wage fallback, and the other logins your team needs. Timezone is the one worth getting right first, because every shift time is read in it.
Create your first site
A site is the place work happens — shifts, patterns, check calls and client billing all hang off one. Creating a site is a five-step wizard covering details, contact, geofencing and optional coverage, and it finishes on the site's own configuration screen. Only the name and the postcode are genuinely required, and the client a site bills to is set afterwards rather than during.
Configure check-call patterns
Check-call timing comes from two places — one set of organisation defaults, and any number of named patterns created below them on the same screen. A pattern overrides those defaults field by field for the sites you attach it to. This page covers turning the system on, creating a pattern, attaching it to a site, and the fields that are stored but never read.
Recurring shift patterns
A shift pattern is standing cover at one site — a start and end time, the days it runs, and how many people it needs. Patterns are built one site at a time in the pattern builder; the catalogue under Scheduling is read-only. A pattern does not create shifts by itself. It draws empty seats on the roster that somebody still has to fill.
Broadcast open shifts
A broadcast offers one or more open shifts to a list of employees you pick, and the first person to accept is assigned there and then with no approval step. It is composed from the roster's More menu, has no entry in the main navigation, and cannot be withdrawn once sent. Only shifts starting within the next 30 days can be offered.
Overtime and Working Time Directive
ShiftTracker checks two UK Working Time rules whenever a shift is assigned — a 48-hour week and 11 hours' rest between shifts. Both raise warnings you can override rather than blocks. The per-employee opt-out changes the wording of the warning and nothing else. Overtime is a separate calculation with its own threshold, and it is not 48 hours.
Upload employee documents
Documents hang off a person's login, not their roster row, and live on the Documents tab of an employee record. An Admin or Manager picks a file, a document type and an optional expiry date; verifying it afterwards copies what the document says onto the roster's own compliance fields.
Document expiry alerts
A daily sweep looks at every document with an expiry date and raises an alert when it falls inside 30 days, inside 7 days, or has already passed. Alerts go to the organisation's Admins and Managers and to the document's owner. They repeat every day the document sits in a window, and a document with no expiry date is never chased.
Audit reports
The Audit Trail is the organisation's change log — one row per change, carrying the old and new value of every field that moved, who did it and when. It covers shifts, requests and pay arbitration, and nothing else. You can filter it, export the result as CSV for an evidence pack, and re-check that nothing in it has been altered.
The reporting dashboard
Reports is the shift-and-payroll screen at the top of the Reports menu — a date range, three filters, six headline figures, and two tabs giving either one row per shift or one row per employee. Four deeper reports hang off its header. Everything on it is pay-sensitive, so although the menu offers it to Control, only Admin and Manager get data.
Export reports as PDF or CSV
Every report on the platform exports as CSV, and several also offer Excel. PDF is the exception — no shift or payroll report produces one on the server. The three pay reports give you a Print button that prints a stripped-down version of the page, which is where their PDF comes from, and only form submissions are rendered as true PDFs.
Agency
1 pageEmployees
2 pagesBook on and off a shift
Book On, your check calls and Book Off all happen on one screen in the employee portal, and each has a window. On the default settings Book On opens an hour before your shift starts, a check call can be logged from fifteen minutes before it is due until thirty minutes later, and Book Off opens fifteen minutes before your shift ends. Outside a window the platform refuses.
Request leave
Leave is requested from Holidays & Leave in the employee portal. You pick one of seven types, a start and an end date, and the platform counts only the days inside that range you were rostered to work. Every request starts as Pending until an Admin or Manager approves or rejects it, and approval takes you off the shifts it covers.
Officers
2 pagesBook on and off in the app
Officers book on, log check calls and book off from the Check Calls tab of the ShiftTracker mobile app. You have to accept the shift first, and a four-digit PIN is usually required. Book-on opens an hour before the start, while the check-call and book-off windows are much narrower — and the app hides the button once one closes.
Keep your documents and SIA licence current
ShiftTracker records your SIA licence number and expiry date; it never checks either against the SIA register. Your agency uploads and verifies every document — you can view and download, not upload. Nothing notifies you when a credential is about to lapse, so the Compliance screen under Me is somewhere you have to go and look.
Clients
1 pageConcepts
6 pagesPatterns, seats and ad-hoc shifts
A shift pattern describes cover that repeats at a site — a start and end time, the days it runs, and how many people it needs. Each person the pattern needs is a seat. A shift that does not belong to any pattern is ad-hoc.
How a request becomes a rostered shift
A request asks agencies to cover one shift. An agency replies with a proposal naming one of its own officers and an hourly rate. You confirm one proposal, that confirmation is recorded as an assignment, and the roster cell the request came from then reads as filled and names the officer.
Organisation, agency, client — who is who
An organisation runs the rota and raises requests when it wants agency cover. An agency proposes its own officers against the requests shared with it. A client is the company a site is billed to, and can be given a login to a portal of its own. One shift can involve all three.
Scheduled vs actual vs arbitrated times
A shift carries three sets of times — what the rota scheduled, what book-on and book-off recorded, and what an Admin or Manager arbitrated for pay. Screens that answer what time the shift actually ran read the first of those that exists, taking arbitrated before actual before scheduled, which is how a correction made for payroll reaches the employee's own schedule.
Check-call windows and escalation
A check call is a scheduled moment when the person on shift confirms they are safe. Each one has a window that opens a set number of minutes before it is due and lasts a set number of minutes. A call not logged before that window closes is missed, and a missed call alerts administrators — nothing on the shift itself changes.
Four ways to fill an open shift
An open shift is a shift on the roster with nobody on it. Four things can put a worker there — a manager assigns someone, a manager broadcasts it to chosen employees, an employee applies and a manager approves, or an agency officer is confirmed against a request. The four run in parallel on the same shift, so the platform guards against two of them landing at once.
Reference
3 pagesStatus reference
ShiftTracker shows a status as a chip carrying an icon and a word, never colour alone. This page lists every status the interface can render, what each one means, which database value produces it, and which of 6 colour roles it uses. It also lists the 28 database values the interface has no styling for, which fall back to a plain grey chip.
Roles and permissions
ShiftTracker gives every login exactly one of 10 roles, and describes what a role may do with a catalogue of 282 permissions in 21 categories. This page lists the roles, shows how much of each category each role is granted, and then gives every permission in full. It also explains what a grant does and does not tell you.
Glossary
Short definitions of the words ShiftTracker uses for its own moving parts — seat, pattern, request, proposal, assignment, book-on, check call and arbitration among them. Each is defined as the platform actually uses it rather than as the security industry generally does, and drawn from the product's own code or from the concept pages linked at the end.