Schedule Adherence

Schedule Adherence, available in all ActivTrak plans, enables managers to track how closely employees adhere to their assigned work schedules. By comparing actual work hours against scheduled shifts, you can quickly identify late starts and early departures and monitor productive time during scheduled hours.

To access Schedule Adherence, navigate to Workforce Management > Schedule Adherence.

Tip: Add Schedule Adherence to your Favorites for quick access.

Contents

• When to use Schedule Adherence
• Tips for effective use
• Define a Work Schedule
• Navigating Schedule Adherence
  • Filter settings
  • Summary and Detailed views
  • Reporting by User Time Zone mode*
  • Column selector
  • Exporting data
• Schedule Adherence in other dashboards
• Creating Productivity Signals
• Practical applications
  • Monitoring work patterns
  • Identifying training opportunities
• Learn more

*User Time Zone support in Productivity by User is available in Early Access beginning March 31, 2026, to select accounts. We plan to make this available to all accounts soon.

When to use Schedule Adherence

Schedule Adherence measures how closely your team members adhere to their assigned work schedules. This data helps you:

• Identify employees who consistently arrive late or leave early
• Monitor productivity during scheduled hours
• Understand work patterns across teams and individuals
• Optimize staffing and scheduling based on actual work patterns

Note: Anything set to the Ignore category inside Settings > Classifications will be excluded from these dashboards. You can read more about this feature here.

Tips for effective use

When using Schedule Adherence, ActivTrak recommends the following best practices:

• Set realistic schedules: Define start and end times that align with your team's actual work expectations
• Look for patterns: Identify recurring schedule adherence issues across teams or individuals
• Consider time zones: Remember that the dashboard uses the account's time zone settings for all calculations
• Regular reviews: Check adherence data consistently to address issues before they become habits

Define a Work Schedule

Before using this dashboard, you'll need to create a Work Schedule. A default schedule is automatically set up with all users added to it so that you can get started right away. If you need custom schedules to match different work patterns across your teams, you can create additional ones. The number of custom schedules available depends on your plan.

Navigating Schedule Adherence

Filter settings

Schedule Adherence can be filtered by User, Group, and time range using the drop-down filter menu options at the top of the dashboard. Click the Refresh button after making your selections to ensure they are applied.

Using the Schedule dropdown menu, select to view your data against:

1. Configured schedule (i.e., the Work Schedule you created in Settings > Schedules on the Work tab)
2. Quick entry schedule, where you will set the following using the dropdown menus

Note: These schedule settings will persist when you return to the dashboard, so you don't need to enter them each time.

Click + Filters to select from additional filters: Early End, Late Start, Location, Productive Time, Schedule Days, Schedule Status, Schedule Type, and Time Off. Utilize these filters to drill down into your data and create custom reports for analysis and export.

Pro Tip: When filters are applied, the URL will reflect those changes so you can share or bookmark this exact view.

Summary and Detailed views

Schedule Adherence provides several key metrics in two views: Summary and Detailed. Use the toggle in the top left to switch between them.

The Summary View shows a summary of each employee's schedule adherence, including:

Important:

• ActivTrak uses enhanced logic to determine Late Starts, accounting for Users who work past midnight. The system checks whether a User has engaged in any productive activity within 15 minutes of their scheduled start time. If productive activity is detected in this window, the user is not flagged as starting late. If there's no productive activity during this period, they are flagged as a Late Start. For example, if a User's start time is 9:00 AM and they have activity from 8:04 AM to 8:19 AM, but don't log back in until 9:09 AM, they will be flagged as starting late because there was no productive activity between 8:45 AM and 9:00 AM.
• The Late Start column flags any start that occurs after the scheduled start time, while the late start Productivity Signal triggers when an employee starts 15 or more minutes after their scheduled time. This means an employee can show Yes in the Late Start column without generating a signal notification.

Switch to Detailed View for additional metrics:

The First Activity and Last Activity columns on the Daily Work Metrics display only the timestamps of the day's first and last activities. They don't reflect what work was performed between these points. Subtracting these timestamps to calculate hours worked is inaccurate and won't align with the values in other columns.

For example, an employee logs in at 8:00 a.m. and works for an hour, takes most of the day off, then logs back in at 4:00 p.m. and works until 5:00 p.m. Calculating the difference between the 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. timestamps would show an apparent 9 hours of work. However, the actual working time would be just 2 hours.

For accurate work duration metrics, please refer to the calculated columns in the dashboard, which provide a more precise representation of the time actually worked.

Reporting in User Time Zone mode*

*User Time Zone support in Productivity by User is available in Early Access beginning March 31, 2026, to select accounts. We plan to make this available to all accounts soon.

When User Time Zone mode is enabled under Settings > Time Zone, Schedule Adherence reflects each monitored user's local time zone. A new User Time Zone column appears immediately after the Date column, displaying each user's designated UTC offset (for example, UTC-5:00 or UTC+5:30).

Timestamps across the dashboard reflect each user's local time zone, so you can interpret adherence data in the context of each user's actual working hours without manual time conversions.

For more information on enabling User Time Zone mode and managing user time zones, see the Time Zone Settings article.

Column selector

The column selector dropdown in the top-right corner of the dashboard provides flexible customization of the displayed data:

1. Click the Columns dropdown to view all available columns for your current view (Summary or Detailed)
2. Check or uncheck boxes to show or hide specific metrics
3. Customize both views independently - set up different metrics for the Summary view and the Detailed view based on your needs
4. Click the Apply button
5. Your customizations persist - once set, your column preferences will be saved for when you return to the dashboard

Important: Your column selections are specific to each view (Summary or Detailed). When you switch between views, the column selections will update to reflect your saved preferences for that view.

This feature is especially useful when you need different metrics for different purposes:

• Configure the Summary view for quick status checks with essential metrics
• Set up the Detailed view with comprehensive data points for deeper analysis
• Both configurations remain saved, creating a personalized reporting experience

Exporting data

Use our Export feature to seamlessly integrate ActivTrak data with additional metrics to uncover correlations between schedule adherence and other performance indicators.

The metrics you've selected to display using the column selector will be included in your export. If you need additional data in your export, please add those columns to your view before clicking the Export button.

1. Set your desired filters for user, group, time range and columns
2. Click the Export button in the top-right corner of the dashboard
3. Choose to Download the data directly to your device or Save to Google

The exported data will include:

• Time-based columns in both HH:MM:SS format and raw seconds
• This dual-format approach enables you to both read the data easily and build custom reports/calculations using the raw seconds data

This new export functionality gives you greater flexibility in analyzing and reporting on schedule adherence data, whether you're creating quick summaries or building detailed custom reports.

Schedule Adherence in other dashboards

Schedule start and end times are also available in the:

• Productivity by User helps you analyze user productivity within the context of scheduled hours
• Productivity Trends shows productive and unproductive time, with scheduled hours highlighted
• Daily Work Metrics provides an overview of daily activity, including a summary of team and individual working hours

Creating Productivity Signals

Productivity Signals are smart notifications that alert you when specific workforce events occur. Think of them as your early warning system for schedule adherence issues. Instead of discovering problems after the fact, you get timely alerts that let you address situations as they happen. For more information about our newest type of notifications, see our Productivity Signals article.

Practical applications

Monitoring work patterns

Schedule Adherence helps managers understand teamwork patterns:

• Identify consistent schedule adherence issues that may need addressing
• Recognize employees who consistently work beyond scheduled hours
• Monitor changes in work patterns that might indicate engagement issues
• Track improvements in schedule adherence after implementing policy changes

Identifying training opportunities

Schedule Adherence data can highlight areas for improvement:

• Identify team members who may need coaching on time management
• Recognize departments with systemic adherence challenges
• Provide data-backed feedback during performance reviews
• Set realistic expectations based on actual work patterns

Learn more

• Understanding Live Data and Insights
• Active Time and Passive Time
• Activity Classification in ActivTrak
• Offline Meetings
• Productivity by User
• Productivity Trends
• Daily Work Metrics