Rosters, Grace, Rounding & Exceptions

The roster says what was expected. Grace and rounding tidy the punches around it. Exception codes flag whatever still doesn’t match.

This page is a glossary rather than a how-to. It’s here so the terms on your timesheet make sense, and so you can tell us how your business wants these handled.

Every example uses a nine-to-five day. Your own thresholds are set with the biotime team to match how you actually run, so treat the numbers as illustration.

The order things happen in

Each step hands its result to the next, so the sequence matters more than any single setting.

Grace and rounding never both act on the same punch. A punch inside grace becomes the rostered time and rounding doesn’t run on it — which is why a slightly early clock on usually produces no exception and no odd minutes.

Ways a roster gets built

Most sites use more than one method. What they share is the output: a shift on a date for an employee, which grace, rounding and exceptions all measure against.

Method	What it’s for	Produces a shift?
Master Roster	Consistent, repeating patterns — a nine-to-five week, or a longer rotating cycle	Yes
Ad hoc segment	A one-off shift with a start and finish, entered directly	Yes
Auto roster	biotime matches the employee to a shift — early, afternoon, night — based on when they actually clocked on	Yes, once matched
Planner	Drag and drop open shifts onto people or groups. Useful for casual workforces and shifts you can’t assign in advance	Yes
Work Pattern	Contracted hours per day rather than shift times. Common for salaried staff	No

Any of these can be adjusted for one employee afterwards, however the shift was created.

That last column matters more than it looks. Grace and the early and late codes are measured from a shift’s start and finish, so they need a shift to exist at all. Rounding doesn’t, which is why hours on a day with no shift still land as tidy figures.

	Grace	Rounding	Early / late codes
Day with a rostered shift	Applies	Applies	Apply
Day covered only by a Work Pattern	No	Applies	No — the day reads as unrostered
Unrostered day	No	Applies	No Roster instead

Grace

Grace is a window either side of a rostered time where a punch is treated as if it happened at the rostered time. It exists so a few minutes’ difference doesn’t generate work for anyone.

A rule sets how far before the rostered time it reaches and how far after. Clock-on and clock-off usually get different rules.

Clock on at 08:52, inside the window, and you’re paid from 09:00.

Clock on at 08:25, outside it, and you’re paid from 08:25.

Grace decides what gets paid. It doesn’t decide whether an exception code appears — those are separate thresholds, which is why the two are set up together.

Rounding

Rounding moves a time to the nearest interval once grace has had its turn. It’s what makes a timesheet readable instead of a column of odd minutes.

A rule has an interval and a pivot — what it rounds to, and the point where it starts rounding up rather than down.

Smaller intervals stay closer to the punch — six minutes lands on tenths of an hour, fifteen moves times further but reads more simply. Rounding can be set separately for clock-on, clock-off, breaks and transfers, and can behave differently on rostered and unrostered days.

Exception codes

An exception is biotime telling you a punch didn’t match the roster, and by how much. Codes exist so nobody has to read every timesheet — you look at what’s flagged.

They sit on a ladder either side of the rostered start and finish, and the colours follow severity. They also mirror: clocking on early and clocking off late both add time, while clocking on late and clocking off early both take it away.

The windows that catch almost every punch are the narrow ones close to the boundary. Clock on after the rostered finish and biotime stops treating it as lateness and records the day as No Roster instead.

Exceptions cover more than clock-on and clock-off. Others catch breaks that are missing, unscheduled, short or exceeded, plus missing punches, absence, working outside a geofence, and conditions such as insufficient rest between shifts.

What we’ll ask you

You don’t need to arrive with numbers. These are the decisions the setup turns on, and they’re much easier to answer in your own words than in ours.

• How early can someone clock on before it stops counting as their rostered start? How late?
• Should the end of the day get the same tolerances as the start? Usually not — people arrive early far more often than they leave late.
• What interval should times round to, and does that differ for breaks?
• Which exceptions do you actually want to see, and what do you call them?
• What should happen when someone works a day they weren’t rostered for?

Glossary

Term	Means
Punch	A single clocking event — on, off, break start or break end
Segment	A block of time on a timesheet, produced from punches and the roster
Roster	The shift an employee was expected to work on a date
Ad hoc segment	A one-off shift entered directly rather than generated from a pattern
Grace	A window where a punch is treated as if it happened at the rostered time
Rounding	Moving a time to the nearest interval, using a pivot to decide up or down
Pivot	The point inside a rounding interval where rounding switches from down to up
Exception	A flag showing a punch didn’t match the roster, with a code naming how
Unrostered day	A day worked with no roster to measure against
Approval	A manager accepting or declining flagged time so it can be paid

FAQ

An employee clocked on early and nothing was flagged. Why?

They were inside the grace window, so the punch was treated as if it happened at the rostered start. That’s grace working as intended.

The timesheet shows a different time from the clock. Is that wrong?

Usually not. The clocked time is what happened; the paid time is what your rules produce after grace and rounding. Both are kept, so the original punch is always there to look at.

Why did two employees clocking at the same minute get different codes?

Their rosters differ. Every threshold is measured from the rostered start and finish, so the same clock time can be early against one shift and late against another.

What does No Roster mean?

The punch was too far from any rostered shift for biotime to treat it as a very early or very late arrival. It usually means someone worked a day they weren’t rostered for, or a roster is missing.

Do exceptions stop someone being paid?

Not by themselves. An exception flags time for review. Whether that time needs approval before it pays depends on how your site is set up.