Managing Employee Availability

What Is Availability?

Availability defines when employees are able to work. It helps the schedule builder avoid assigning shifts during times when employees are unavailable. There are two types:

• Standing availability: Recurring weekly patterns (e.g., "Available Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm")
• Temporary availability: One-time overrides for specific dates (e.g., "Unavailable March 28 due to appointment")

Managing Availability as an Admin

Viewing Availability

1. Go to Employees and select an employee
2. Open the Availability tab
3. View their current availability settings

You can also see a summary of all employee availability from the Time Off page under the Employee Availability section.

Setting Standing Availability

1. On the employee's Availability tab, click Add Standing Availability
2. For each day of the week, set the time windows when the employee is available
3. Set an Effective From date (when this availability starts)
4. Optionally set an end date
5. Add a reason or notes
6. Save

Standing availability repeats every week until the end date or until you change it.

Adding Temporary Unavailability

1. Click Mark Unavailable or add a temporary availability record
2. Select the specific date(s)
3. Optionally set time ranges (or mark the full day)
4. Add a reason
5. Save

Temporary unavailability overrides standing availability for those specific dates.

How Availability Affects Scheduling

When creating a draft schedule with Respect Availability enabled:

• The schedule builder will not assign shifts during times the employee is marked unavailable
• Standing availability windows are checked against shift times
• Temporary overrides take priority over standing availability

If you override availability and manually assign a shift during an unavailable window, CrewHR will flag it but allow it.

Filtering and Searching

The availability admin view lets you:

• Search for specific employees
• Filter by availability type (Standing or Temporary)
• See active vs. inactive availability records

Tips

• Collect availability early: Before building a schedule, make sure employee availability is up to date
• Use standing availability for regular constraints: If an employee can never work Sundays, set it as standing rather than adding one-off entries each week
• Review periodically: Availability needs change. Check in with employees quarterly to keep records current