MBS Attendance — User Guide

What Departments Do

A department is a grouping of employees that share common working conditions. The department page acts as a template and push tool: configure the values once at the department level, then push them down to each employee so that every person carries their own explicit values. This keeps employee records self-contained and easy to audit.

Global defaults from the Settings page still act as a fallback for any value that has not been set at the employee level.

Department Settings

SettingWhat it controls
NameDisplay name shown across the system.
Work Week DaysNumber of working days per week (typically 5 or 6). Used to calculate the expected monthly hours for display and for the missing-days check on Monthly Fixed employees.
Shift Start / EndThe standard shift window. Clock-ins before shift start are treated as on-time (no grace-period deduction). Used by the absent-days checker.
Month Start DayFor monthly employees: the day of the month the pay period begins. A start day of 16 means the period runs from the 16th to the 15th of the following month.
Bi-weekly Period 1 & 2 StartThe two period start days for bi-weekly employees in this department. Overrides the global setting but can itself be overridden per employee.

Applying Settings to All Employees

Once you have configured a department's shift times, work week length, and pay period start day, click the Apply these settings to all employees in this department button at the bottom of the edit form. This copies the department values directly onto every active employee in the department — each person then has their own explicit record of those values. You can still adjust individual employees afterward without it affecting anyone else.

Pay Components for a Department

The Push Components to Employees section lets you configure Pay Components at the department level and then push them to all employees in one click. When you click Push to all employees in this department, the system creates or updates an individual component assignment for each active employee in the department. From that point on, each employee has their own copy — change it per person on their employee record without affecting anyone else.

💡 Tip

If only one or two employees need a particular component, assign it directly on their employee record instead of going through the department push. The push is most useful when a whole team shares the same allowance or deduction — for example, a transport deduction that applies to everyone on the factory floor.

Adding a Department

  1. Click Add Department.
  2. Enter a name and configure the shift times and work-week days.
  3. Set the month start day if your employees are on a non-calendar-month pay cycle.
  4. Click Save.
  5. Go to Employees and assign employees to this department.
  6. Come back to the department, open it for editing, and click Apply these settings to all employees to push the shift and schedule values down to each employee record.
  7. If the department has shared pay components, configure them in the Push Components section and click Push to all employees.

Renaming a Department

You can rename a department at any time. The name change is cosmetic only — all existing records (clockings, payslips, leave) remain linked to the same department ID and are not affected.

Deactivating a Department

Departments cannot be deleted if employees are assigned to them. You can deactivate a department, which hides it from selection lists while preserving its history. Move any active employees to another department before deactivating.

⚠️ Remember to push after changes

Changing the Month Start Day, Shift Start/End, or Work Week Days on a department does not automatically update your employees — you still need to click Apply these settings to all employees afterward. And as always, changes only affect future payslip generation; payslips already generated are never retroactively altered.