Scheduling
Scheduling Settings

Scheduling Settings

Overview

The Scheduling Settings page lets you configure key options that affect how scheduling works in your organisation. Here, you can control requirements such as whether a case note must be completed before clocking out, and set how shift approvals are handled, either automatically (including with tolerances) or manually. Over time, additional settings will be added to this section.

To access this page, click the settings wheel on the left-hand menu, select Scheduling. You can access this page here. To make adjustments, select the Edit button in the top right corner.

Payroll Platforms

Select your preferred payroll platform.

Allowances

Under Payroll & Awards → Allowances, you can fine-tune how certain SCHADS award allowances are calculated for your workers.

First Aid Allowance

By default, Astalty calculates the SCHADS First Aid Allowance across all of a worker's paid hours in the pay period. The First Aid Allowance setting lets you exclude cancelled shifts and/or provider travel from that calculation, so the allowance isn't paid on those hours — instead of adjusting timesheets manually every pay run.

Choose one of the following:

Apply to all hours — the default. The First Aid Allowance is calculated across all of the worker's paid hours, so nothing changes for existing accounts.
Exclude cancelled shifts — hours from cancelled shifts are left out of the First Aid Allowance calculation.
Exclude provider travel — provider travel hours are left out of the First Aid Allowance calculation.
Exclude cancelled shifts & provider travel — both cancelled-shift hours and provider travel hours are left out.

Support Worker Compatibility

Incompatible Support Worker Behaviour

The “Incompatible Support Worker Behaviour” option within Scheduling Settings, allows you to choose how the system responds when a support worker is marked as incompatible with a participant. You can select between:

Warn only

Incompatible workers will still appear in selection results and can be chosen, but a warning will be displayed. This is the default behaviour.

Prevent selection

Incompatible workers will be greyed out and disabled within the selection list, preventing them from being scheduled.

When 'Prevent Selection' is enabled, support workers who are incompatible, the incompatible marker will be updated to display that selection has been blocked, and the ability to assign a worker to this shift will be removed.

Conflicting Shifts

The Conflicting Shifts setting lets you adjust the selection behaviour for Support Workers who already have a support scheduled at the same time as the new support you're creating. You can choose to Warn Only, which lets schedulers go ahead and assign the worker after seeing a warning, or Prevent Selection, which blocks the assignment entirely. You can select between:

Warn only

If Warn Only is selected, an icon will be displayed advising the Support Worker is unavailable. You'll still be able to create the support.

Prevent selection

If Prevent Selection is selected, you won't be able to create the support with the relevant Support Worker.

When you create a new shift from the Participant view of the Schedule, the Support Worker selection pop-out will indicate whether each worker is unavailable or blocked from selection, depending on the setting you've chosen.

Schedule Week

The Schedule Week setting controls which day the Schedule Week and Fortnight views begin on. By default these views follow your pay period start day. The Week starts on option lets you choose any day of the week for the Schedule view instead — independently of your pay period — so you can line the Schedule up with how your team plans their week without changing anything about payroll.

Choose a day (Monday–Sunday) from Week starts on to have the Week and Fortnight views always begin on that day.
Leave it blank to keep the current behaviour, where the Schedule week follows your pay period start day. (If you haven't set a pay period either, the week starts on Monday.)

This setting is optional and blank by default, so nothing changes on your Schedule until you set it. While it's blank, the Scheduling Settings summary shows Follows pay period for this option.

Schedule Colours

The Schedule Colours card on the Settings → Scheduling page lets you choose your own colours for events on the Schedule — base colours for each event type, plus status colours (Past, Cancelled, Unassigned, and more) that override the base colours. Colours apply to everyone in your organisation. For the full breakdown of how colours are decided, see Schedule Colours.

Managing Scheduling Behaviours

Note Required on Clock Out

When this setting is enabled, support workers cannot clock out until they have completed a case note for their support. This is useful for organisations that want to ensure case notes are recorded immediately after each shift.

To enable this behaviour, tick the Note Required on Clock Out checkbox.

Participant Sign Off Required

Use the 'Participant Sign Off Required' behaviour if participants must sign off on the support when the Support Worker clocks out.

To enable this behaviour, tick the Participant Sign Off Required checkbox.

Location Data Required

Use the 'Location Data Required' behaviour if a support worker device must share their location when recording clock in/out and travels.

To enable this behaviour, tick the Location Data Required checkbox.

Multi-Timezone Scheduling

Use the 'Multi-Timezone Scheduling' behaviour if support workers need to be scheduled across different timezones.

To enable this behaviour, tick the Multi-Timezone Scheduling checkbox.

Show Pending Leave on Schedule

The Show Pending Leave on Schedule setting controls whether pending (unapproved) leave and unavailability requests appear on the Schedule alongside approved leave. This setting lives in Settings → Scheduling and is on by default for all accounts.

When enabled (the default), pending requests show on the Schedule with a distinct colour and dashed outline (versus the solid block used for approved leave), so schedulers can see what's still awaiting a decision while they plan. Clicking a pending request opens the review panel inline, where it can be approved or declined without leaving the Schedule.
When disabled, only approved leave and unavailability appears on the Schedule. Pending requests are hidden from the Schedule and are actioned from the Unavailability Requests page instead.

To turn it off, untick the Show Pending Leave on Schedule checkbox and save.

For more on how pending requests appear and are reviewed, see Pending Leave & Unavailability on the Schedule.

Unscheduled Travel

Allow Unscheduled Travel lets support workers report travel in the app that wasn't scheduled on the shift. When you tick it, an extra option appears beneath it: Allow Reporting Unscheduled Travel after Clocking Out.

Allow Reporting Unscheduled Travel after Clocking Out

By default, support workers can only report unscheduled travel while they are clocked in to a shift. Tick Allow Reporting Unscheduled Travel after Clocking Out to let them report unscheduled travel on a completed shift as well — that is, after they've already clocked out.

This setting only appears once Allow Unscheduled Travel is ticked, and it sits indented beneath it.
It is off by default, so the after-clock-out behaviour is opt-in.

To see how support workers report unscheduled travel in the app, see Record Travel During a Shift.

Leave Policy

The Leave Policy section groups the settings that govern how support workers request time off and update their availability: Negative Leave Balance, Notice Periods, and the Policy message shown when a request breaks your rules. These options were previously mixed in with Scheduling & Travel — they now sit in their own section to make them easier to find. No settings were removed or changed in that move.

Which fields appear depends on whether Leave is enabled for your organisation:

Availability notice period and Policy message are always available.
Negative Leave Balance and Leave notice period only appear when Leave is enabled.

Notice Periods

Use Notice Periods to require support workers to give a minimum number of days' notice before the start date of an availability change or a leave request. A worker who tries to create or edit a request that starts inside the notice window is blocked from saving it, and the policy message below is shown instead.

You can set two separate periods:

Availability notice period (days) — applies when a worker creates or updates an unavailability.
Leave notice period (days) — applies when a worker creates or updates a leave request. This field only appears when Leave is enabled.

Leave a field empty or set it to 0 to allow changes at any time for that type.

Policy message

The Policy message is the explanation shown to support workers when they try to make a change inside a notice window. Use it to point workers to your organisation's leave and availability policy, or to tell them how to request an exception (for example, "call the office"). The field supports basic formatting and links.

If you leave the Policy message empty, workers see a default message instead — This change requires at least X days' notice., where X is the relevant notice period.

Negative Leave Balance

Negative Leave Balance controls what happens when approving leave would take the worker's balance below zero — that is, the requested hours exceed the balance they have available. Choose Allow to let the leave be approved anyway, or Prevent to block approval until the worker has enough balance. This setting only appears when Leave is enabled.

What support workers see

When a support worker on the mobile app tries to create leave or unavailability that starts inside the notice window, the date field shows a validation error made up of two parts:

Your Policy message (or the default message if you haven't set one).
A line confirming the requirement — for example, "Leave must be requested at least 7 days in advance." for leave, or "Availability changes must be submitted at least X days in advance." for an availability update.

The worker cannot submit the request until they choose a date outside the notice window.

Locking Case Notes After Clock-Out

The Lock Case Notes After Clock-Out setting stops case notes from being edited once a support worker has clocked out of their shift. This helps keep a reliable record by preventing notes from being changed after the fact, while still giving workers a short window to finish and tidy up their note before it locks.

To turn it on, tick Lock Case Notes After Clock-Out under Notes & Visibility.

Grace period after clock-out

The Grace period after clock-out (minutes) value sets how long support workers can keep editing a case note after clocking out before it locks. You can set anything from 0 minutes up to 48 hours (2880 minutes) — giving management more time to review notes before they lock in.

The quick-select buttons above the field fill in a common value with a single click:

5 minutes
15 minutes
30 minutes
1 hour
2 hours
6 hours
12 hours
24 hours
48 hours

Selecting a preset fills the grace period field for you, or you can still type any custom number of minutes (up to 2880) directly into the field.

Managing Note Visibility

Support Note visibility settings to give organisations greater control over how historical Support Notes are shared, helping Support Workers feel more prepared and informed before heading into a shift.

Support Worker visibility options include:

Disabled — Support Workers will not be able to view any Support Notes for their Participants that were created by other Support Workers.
Show All — Support Workers will be able to view all Support Notes for their Participants from all Support Workers, providing full historical context.
Show for Time Range — Support Workers will be able to view previous case Notes for their Participants from all Support Workers within the defined History Limit (set in days). This allows organisations to tailor how much historical information is shared, based on what best suits their operational preferences.

In addition, organisations can control Support Note visibility for users with the Team Member role. Team Members may include roles such as Support Coordinators or other administrative or clinical staff who may find it useful to review Support Notes for oversight, planning, or continuity purposes.

Team Member visibility options include:

Visible
Hidden

No history limits apply to Team Member visibility settings.

Managing Push Notifications

Enabling Notifications on the Astalty App

Push notifications keep support workers up to date by alerting them whenever changes are made to their shifts. These settings can be managed in the Scheduling Settings.

To disable notifications, leave the checkbox unticked. No push notifications will be sent to support workers when shifts are updated.
To enable notifications, tick the checkbox. Support workers will then be notified of any roster changes.

Note: Enabling push notifications is recommended to ensure support workers always have the most current schedule information.

Enabling Notifications for not Clocking In or Out of a Support

Within the push notification settings section of Astalty's Scheduling settings page, if you have Push Notifications 'Enabled' you can also toggle whether you can send push notifications for users who have not clocked in, or out of their supports.

You can;

Toggle the Clock Reminder Notification by clicking the check box
Set the tolerance for the notification to be sent i.e. 5 minutes after the support starts, and 5 minutes after the support ends

Support Worker Notification

When switched on, the staff member will receive a push notification for missed a clock in/out. They can select and it will navigate them to the shift that they need to action.

Shift Auto Approval

Overview

The Shift Auto Approval setting controls whether shifts and travel must be approved manually or if they can be approved automatically within certain tolerances. This helps reduce admin time while still giving you control over exceptions.

Manual Approval

If Manual is selected, every single shift and travel entry must be approved manually. Nothing will be approved automatically.

Automatic Approval

If Auto is selected, shifts and travel will be approved automatically if they fall within the tolerances you set. Anything outside of those tolerances will still require manual approval.

Shift and Travel Clock In/Out Thresholds

Early Window (min) – How many minutes early a worker can clock in or clock out and still be automatically approved.
Late Window (min) – How many minutes late a worker can clock in or clock out and still be automatically approved.

Example: If the late window is set to 5 minutes, a worker who clocks in up to 5 minutes late will be approved automatically. If they clock in later than 5 minutes after the scheduled start time, that will require manual approval and the Support Worker will receive a pop up on the screen to confirm the reason. You can set different early/late tolerances for clocking in and out.

Travel Distance Thresholds

Min (km) – The minimum kilometres below the expected or budgeted travel that can be auto-approved.
Max (km) – The maximum kilometres above the expected or budgeted travel that can be auto-approved.

Example: If a trip is budgeted for 20 km and you set a max tolerance of 10 km, then claims up to 30 km will be auto-approved. Anything above 30 km will require manual approval.