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The Hours of Operation FormHours of operation form

This form can be opened from the Settings task group, the HOME form's To do list, or by selecting FORM | OTHER FORMS | HOURS OF OPERATION from the menu.

Purpose of the Hours of operation form

The Hours of Operation form tells ESP your location's opening and closing details.

The form is divided into two sections:

  1. Hours of operation
  2. Openers/Closers

Hours of operation

In this section, you tell ESP the hours that your location is open to the public, the latest time a shift may start in the evening, and if a day should be considered a holiday day.

The fields in this section are:

  • Day: Displays the days and dates for the schedule week that you are viewing; this information may not be changed.
  • Holiday: A checkmark in the Holiday box indicates that the day is a holiday, and ESP should use employees' holiday availability when assigning shifts. This option should only be used when there is only one holiday day in the schedule week. For weeks when the holiday lasts longer than one day use the Alternate availability feature instead.
  • Open: A checkmark in the Open box indicates to ESP that the location is open that day.
  • Open time: The time entered in the Open time field tells ESP the time that the location opens to the public. If you are open 24 hours a day then you must enter 4:00 AM in this field.
  • Last shift: The time entered in the Last shift field tells ESP the latest time that a shift may begin. ESP will not generate any shift to begin past the time entered here. This refers only to shifts generated by ESP and not fixed shifts, which can start at any time.
  • Closing shift: The time entered in the Close shift field tells ESP the time that a person must work past before their shift is counted as a close shift; this field is NOT the time that your closing shifts end. A shift is counted as a close shift if the employee's shift ends at or later than the indicated time. This option helps control the number of times employees work late at night. If you don't place any limits on how many times your employees are allowed to work late at night then set this to the same time as your close time.
  • Close time: The time entered in the Close time field tells ESP the time that your location closes your doors to the public. If you are open 24 hours a day you must enter 4:00 AM here.

Openers/Closers

If your location is open 24 hours a day then this section will remain blank since you never open or close.

For locations not open 24 hours, use this lower section to tell ESP if you require anyone to come in before your location opens to set up and if you require anyone to stay after you close to clean up.

To add an entry in this section choose either the Openers or Closers tab and fill in the following fields:

  • Station: Enter the station, or select it from the drop down list, that the employee coming in early or staying late will be assigned to.
  • Start time: Only on the Openers tab; enter the time that you want the open shift to begin.
  • End time: Only on the Closers tab; enter the time that you want the close shift to end.
  • Day columns: Enter the number of people you require at the Station to come in early or stay late under each day's column.

Feature

A color coded clock appears beside each time entry to help you tell, at a glance, the time of day an entry is for:

yellow indicates daytime hours between 6:00 AM and noon,
orange indicates afternoon hours between noon and 6:00 PM,
light blue indicates evening hours between 6:00 PM and midnight, and
dark blue indicates overnight hours between midnight and 6:00 AM