From shift draft to payroll#

For: Manager | Admin You’ll need: Nothing.

A shift travels through six stages between pencilled in and paid. The same record carries the data the whole way — there is no hand-off, no separate „payroll system“ to sync with. This article walks each transition: what triggers it, what flips, and what locks behind you.

The flow at a glance#

Draft
  │  publish
  ▼
Published
  │  clock-in / clock-out
  ▼
Submitted
  │  manager approve
  ▼
Approved
  │  period close
  ▼
Locked
  │
  ▼
Payroll export

Each arrow is a deliberate action by a specific role. Each transition narrows what’s still editable.

1. Draft — the planner’s sandbox#

A new shift is Draft. Visible to planners and managers; invisible to shift workers. Free to move, resize, reassign, or delete.

This is where most of your work happens. Bring shifts in from a schedule template, a recurring pattern, or Alt+drag. Validate against your team in the coverage grid and the assignment dropdown. Iterate until you’re happy.

A draft shift has draft assignments. Workers see nothing yet.

2. Published — released to the team#

You promote drafts in bulk from the publish horizon: pick a cutoff date and Shiftavo flips every draft shift starting on or before that date to Published. Each shift’s draft assignments flip with it.

What changes:

Workers see the shifts on their calendar and (per their notification settings) get an email.
The shifts feed availability and coverage as committed work.
Managers can still edit, but edits are now visible to assignees.

There is no „unpublish“. To pull a shift back, cancel it — the worker sees the cancellation but the shift stays on the calendar as a record. See the full state diagram in Shift lifecycle — from draft to approved.

3. Submitted — the clock data is in#

Once a published shift starts, workers (or a manager on their behalf) clock in and out. When both ends are recorded, the assignment is Submitted.

Submission is what makes the time real. Specifically, it:

Locks in the worked hours that drive overtime tiers and premiums.
Triggers leave accrual for accrual-style policies.
Triggers time-comp accrual for time-comp policies.

A submitted entry is still editable. Unsubmit clears the clock data and reverses the accruals.

See Timesheet.

4. Approved — the manager signs off#

A manager reviews submitted entries on the timesheet and approves them. Approved is the sign-off state — what you’d filter the payroll export to when you want to see only manager-blessed hours.

Approval also locks the underlying shift — you can’t change times, position, or assignment after approval without first unapproving. Unapprove clears the audit stamp and re-opens the entry.

5. Period close — bulk lock for payroll#

A company period (typically a pay cycle) is either open or closed. Closing the period locks every time entry inside it: no more edits, no more deletes, no more unsubmits. Until an admin re-opens the period, the data is frozen.

Closing is the contract with payroll: the numbers won’t move under you.

6. Payroll export#

With the period closed, the payroll summary is the final view. It groups time entries by person inside a pay cycle (the cycle length is configurable per tenant on the company period) and totals regular hours, overtime tiers, premiums, paid and unpaid absence, time-comp, and gross pay. By default the report includes Published, Submitted, and Approved entries — filter to Approved-only for a clean post-close export.

Export the report to CSV, XLSX, or PDF and hand it to your payroll vendor.

Payment itself doesn’t have a status — once you’ve exported, the payroll vendor takes over.

What locks behind you, in order#

State	What you can still change
Draft	Everything
Published	Everything; edits notify workers
Submitted	Times, breaks, assignment; submit can be undone
Approved	Nothing, until unapproved
Closed period	Nothing, until an admin re-opens the period

When a save is refused, unapprove the entry. Reopen the period if needed. See Why a shift can’t be edited or deleted: locked periods.

The other people in the flow#

Shift worker — sees the shift only after publish. Can submit their own clock data or have it submitted on their behalf.
Manager — publishes, approves, exports.
Admin / Owner — opens and closes company periods; reopens a closed period if a correction is needed after the fact.

From shift draft to payroll

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