Working hours and time off for a technician
By the end of this article you will have set when a technician works, recorded the days they are away, and know how a time-off request from their phone reaches you.
Where it lives
Open Team → Employees and click the Manage availability icon on a row. The dialog is titled Technician availability and has two parts: the weekly hours, and the exceptions to them.
Weekly working hours
Under Weekly working hours each day of the week has an Open and a Close time, or is marked Day off. Set the hours the person normally works and click Save hours. You will see “Working hours saved.”
These hours are what the schedule counts a person as available for. Assigning them a job outside them, or on a day off, is refused as a scheduling conflict; the job form offers Assign anyway (override the conflict) for the times you mean it. The app shows them the same week under “Weekly hours” so they know what you expect. A technician whose hours you have not set yet sees “Your weekly hours have not been set up yet. Ask your manager.”
Days off and partial days
Under Time off & exceptions you record the days that differ from the weekly pattern:
- Pick the Date.
- Choose the Type: Day off for a whole day, or Partial day to give the hours they are unavailable, from and until.
- Add a Reason if you want one on the record, and click Add.
An exception removes the person from the schedule for that time: an assignment that overlaps it is a conflict, and the customer portal no longer offers them for booking. Remove one with its Remove exception icon if plans change.
Requests from the field app
A technician can ask for time off from the app, one day or a run of days, with an optional reason. Each request arrives on the Employees page as a card headed Time-off requests awaiting your decision, oldest first, so nobody has to open a dialog to learn there is one.
- Approve — you are asked to confirm; the day becomes an exception exactly as if you had added it, and the person is emailed the decision.
- Deny — you confirm, the request is closed, and the person is emailed.
Until you decide, the request shows as Pending in the person’s exceptions list; a denied one stays there marked Denied so you both have the record. A request that someone else on the team already decided is refused with “This request was already decided.”
How the rest of the app uses this
- The schedule reads the hours and exceptions whenever a technician is assigned, and the customer portal reads them when it offers booking slots.
- Overtime is a different setting — the weekly and daily thresholds on the company’s Crew Pay settings, and the optional Max hours per week on the employee record. It applies when you book someone past their cap (a warning or a refusal, as the company setting says) and when the Labor page flags hours worked past the threshold. See “Labor: hours, rates and what a job costs you”.
Good to know
- Only Admins can change hours and decide requests. Everyone with the Team section can open the dialog and read them.
- Managers and Technicians own their own schedule in the app and can request time off; Accounting and Viewers do not.
- A day off is not a leave balance. The app records the days, not an allowance; keep any entitlement outside it.