How to Set Up Schedule Budgets and Approve Schedules in Fareclock

Fareclock allows administrators to set hours budgets, monitor scheduled paid hours, and control changes to schedules after they have been approved. These tools help organizations manage labor hours, keep schedules within budget, and prevent unauthorized changes to approved schedules.

With Schedule Budgets and Approvals, administrators can:

Availability: Schedule Budgets and Approvals is a premium feature.

Before setting budgets and approving schedules, configure the schedule controls for your organization.

Step 1: Go to Operations > Schedule.

Step 2: Open Settings.

Step 3: Under ‘Defaults’, locate ‘Schedule Controls’.

Step 4: Enable the schedule approval.

Step 5: Configure the options according to your organization's budget and approval requirements.

The settings in this section determine how schedule budgets and approvals are managed. Depending on your organization's configuration, you can control what happens when managers attempt to modify a schedule after it has been approved.

Hours budget: Shows each group's scheduled paid hours against its daily budget and weekly cap. Set default budgets under Schedule > Settings > Budget Defaults or date-specific budgets on the Schedule Review page.

Budget groups: Sets how workers are grouped for budgets and approvals. Changing this setting does not transfer existing budgets or approvals. You cannot change it if an approved period under the current grouping ends today or later.

When a period is approved: Choose whether to lock all schedule changes or allow changes that do not add hours.

Approval period: Sets the period managers must approve: a week, two weeks, a month, or a custom date range.

Important: Review these settings before approving schedules because they determine which changes managers can make to an approved schedule.

Hours budgets allow administrators to establish limits for scheduled paid hours. You can configure budgets for the entire organization or apply them to specific organizational groups.

Budgets can be configured at different levels:

Daily budgets help monitor scheduled hours for individual days, while weekly budgets help control the total scheduled hours for the week.

Step 1: Go to Operations > Schedule.

Step 2: Open Settings.

Step 3: Under ‘Defaults’, locate ‘Schedule Controls’.

Step 4: Select the organizational scope for the budget, such as the whole company, an organizational unit, a department, or a custom field group.

Step 5: Select the budget period: a week, two weeks, a month, or a custom date range.

Step 6: Go to the ‘Budget Defaults’ to enter the target number of hours for the selected period.

Step 7: Review the selected organizational scope and budget values.

Example: If a department has a weekly budget of 200 hours, managers can monitor the total scheduled paid hours for that department throughout the week. If the scheduled total exceeds 200 hours, the schedule indicates that the budget has been exceeded.

Note: The available budget levels and configuration options depend on the organization's settings and the selected budget scope.

Fareclock provides live budget tracking directly in the schedule. The schedule's totals row displays the scheduled paid hours alongside the applicable budget, allowing managers to identify potential budget overruns while preparing or reviewing schedules.

The totals row helps you compare scheduled paid hours with the configured budget.

Example

Suppose your weekly budget is 200 hours, but the current schedule contains 212 paid hours.

The schedule indicates that the weekly budget has been exceeded. Click the totals row to review the budget details, then adjust shifts as needed. Once the scheduled hours fall within the budget, review the totals again.

Tip: Monitor the totals row while creating or updating schedules rather than waiting until the end of the scheduling period. This makes it easier to identify budget issues before the schedule is approved.

Fareclock includes a Schedule Review page where authorized managers can review scheduled hours for each organizational group before approving a period.

The Approve schedule permission determines which managers can approve schedules. Having access to the schedule alone does not necessarily grant approval privileges.

Step 1: Go to HR Portal > Users.

Step 2: Locate the admin/manager who needs to approve schedules.

Step 3: Under ‘Permissions’, enable the Approve schedule.

Only managers with the required permission can perform schedule approval.

Step 3: Go to Operations > Schedule.

Step 4: Select ‘Review’ tab.

Step 5: Open and review the schedule period that needs approval and locate the organizational groups available for review.

Important: Review budget overruns before approving the schedule. Approval locks the schedule according to your organization's configured rules, which may limit subsequent changes.

Step 6: Once the schedule has been reviewed, a manager with the Approve schedule permission can approve the applicable period.

Approval indicates that the schedule has completed the review process. After approval, Fareclock restricts subsequent schedule changes according to the organization's schedule control settings.

If multiple organizational groups require review, make sure each applicable group has been reviewed before completing the approval process for the period.

After a schedule is approved, Fareclock restricts further changes based on the organization's configured schedule control setting.

There are two possible behaviors:

Option A: Prevent all changes

With this setting, other managers cannot make changes to the approved schedule.

This option is useful when an organization wants approved schedules to remain unchanged unless the approval process is addressed through its configured administrative workflow.

Option B: Allow changes that do not add hours

With this setting, other managers may make changes that do not increase scheduled hours. Changes that add hours are restricted.

This option provides some flexibility for schedule adjustments while helping the organization maintain control over labor budgets.

Example

A manager approves a weekly schedule after confirming that it meets the department's budget.

The Labor Budget report helps administrators compare three key measures:

Comparing these values helps administrators evaluate whether scheduled and actual labor hours align with the organization's budget.

Step 1: Go to Administration > Reports Center.

Step 2: Locate and open the Labor Budget report.

How to interpret the report

Example: A department has a budget of 200 hours and schedules 195 hours. If employees ultimately record 205 actual hours, the report helps the administrator identify the difference between the original budget, the planned schedule, and the actual hours.