Labor budget
The "Labor budget" tab lives in "Settings" → "Organization". It's only visible to users with the "Labor budget" permission — by default, the organization owner and administrator. If you don't see the tab, ask your organization owner.
Rates
The cost of a shift is calculated from a rate. There are two kinds of rates:
- Position rate — the base rate for every employee with that position. Set it in the "Position rates" section: pick a type and an amount for each position from your position list.
- Employee override — an individual rate for a specific person. When set, it always takes priority over the position rate — the system checks it first.
For each rate, pick one of two types:
- Hourly — shift cost = number of hours × rate.
- Per shift — a fixed amount per shift, regardless of its length.
If an employee's position isn't in your "Positions" list, you can't set a rate for them yet — add the position there first.
Monthly cost
The "Current month" section shows the estimated schedule cost: the sum across all shifts based on their rates, plus a switcher to move between months (forward and back).
Next to the cost is an "uncounted shifts" counter. A shift is uncounted in two cases:
- the employee has neither a personal rate nor a position rate;
- the rate is hourly, but the shift has no start and end time — there's nothing to calculate hours from.
The system never invents hours or guesses a rate — such shifts are simply left out of the total, and the counter shows how many there were.
Limit and modes
The "Monthly limit" section lets you set a limit amount and one of three modes:
- Off — the limit isn't calculated and has no effect on the schedule.
- Soft — the limit is visible on this page (progress bar and amount), but it doesn't block scheduling shifts. Useful for simply tracking spending over time.
- Hard — once the monthly cost reaches the limit, the system won't let you schedule a new working shift. Whoever tries to save a shift sees a clear message — without specific amounts, since they may not have permission to view the budget.
An important detail of the "block after exceeding" semantics: the limit is checked before saving a new shift, not after the fact. The shift that first pushes the month over the limit is still saved — the block only kicks in starting with the next attempt. This means the actual monthly cost can slightly exceed the limit by one shift, rather than stopping exactly at the boundary.
Editing already-saved shifts or deleting shifts (for example, cancelling a working day) never runs into the hard-mode block — reducing the monthly cost always works.
Manual scheduling vs. the schedule generator — different checks
When you schedule a shift manually in the grid, the hard limit is checked shift by shift, right when you save: if the month is already at the limit, that one shift won't save. The schedule generator checks differently — the limit is looked at once, right before applying the whole draft, so the month's resulting cost can end up over the limit for the entire draft at once, if the limit hadn't been exceeded yet at the moment of applying.