Compliance Warnings
Understanding roster compliance warnings — working time limits, rest periods, TES rule violations, and availability conflicts.
Warning Types
| Type | Severity | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Long shift | Warning | Shift exceeds 12 hours net |
| Insufficient rest | Warning/Error | Less than 11h (warning) or 8h (error) rest between shifts |
| Consecutive workdays | Warning | More than 7 consecutive workdays |
| Insufficient free weekends | Warning | No free weekend in a 5-week rolling window |
| Missing weekly rest day | Warning | No rest day in a 7-day window |
| Period hours exceeded | Warning/Error | Approaching (warning) or exceeding (error) the period overtime threshold — 80 h for a 14-day window, 120 h for a 21-day window |
| Insufficient break | Warning | Shift over 6h with less than 30min break |
| Availability conflict | Warning | Shift assigned to an employee who is marked as unavailable |
| Approved leave | Warning | Shift assigned to an employee on a day of their approved leave |
| Shift overlap | Error | Assignment would overlap one of the employee's other (non-cancelled) shifts |
How Warnings Appear
- While editing — when you save a shift that triggers a warning, the Compliance warnings dialog lists the problems and asks whether to Save anyway.
- On the grid — affected shifts carry a yellow (warning) or red (error) triangle badge, and a summary bar above the grid counts warnings and errors (e.g. "3 warnings · 2 errors"). Click the bar to expand the list, grouped by employee, and click an entry to highlight the shift.
- On publish — if the window still has active violations, the publish dialog becomes Publish with warnings? with a Publish anyway button. See Publishing Rosters.
Rest-period, period-hours and consecutive-workday checks also count the employee's project gigs, so fixed-fee work still counts toward TES rest rules.
Shift Overlap is a Hard Stop
Most warnings are advisory — they surface in the manager UI so the supervisor can override and assign anyway. Shift overlap is the exception. The database itself enforces the rule via an exclusion constraint: one employee, one slot, no overlap. Period.
The check runs before anything is saved, so you see a clear message such as "Conflicts with existing shift on 2026-05-01 08:00–16:00". It fires on every reassignment path: shift swap accept (fails immediately, no manager escalation), supervisor approve, supervisor-brokered swap, and offer claim.
If you legitimately need to assign a conflicting shift, the right move is to first reschedule or cancel the conflicting shift, then create or accept the new one. There's no override for this rule, by design.
Availability Conflict Warnings
When you assign a shift to an employee who has marked themselves as unavailable (via one-off entry, recurring entry, or their default availability setting), the system shows an availability conflict warning.
These warnings are informational only — they don't prevent the assignment. This allows managers to override availability in emergencies while still being aware of the conflict.
The warning includes the employee's notes if they provided a reason (e.g., "Team practice").
See Employee Availability for details on how availability is managed.
Approved Leave Warnings
When a shift falls on a day the employee has approved leave (annual leave, unpaid leave, AP day or other leave), the system shows an Approved leave warning, for example "Employee is on approved unpaid leave on this day". The shift's start time decides the day: a night shift that starts the evening before the leave begins does not warn.
- Like the availability warning, it is informational — you can still Save anyway or Publish anyway.
- Pending (not yet approved) leave never warns; it only shows as a lighter marker on the grid.
- When leave is approved after the roster exists, the employee's shifts on those days get the warning immediately, so you can see which shifts to reassign. Cancelling the approved leave clears the warnings again.
- Reassignments check it too: a supervisor-brokered swap or a shift-offer claim that would put someone on their own approved leave day is refused with the warning, and a colleague's swap acceptance is held for supervisor review.