Famly’s Staff hours feature gives you a clear, comprehensive view of how many hours each staff member has worked over a selected period. Whether you're managing rotas, calculating pay, or tracking leave, this tool brings all the data you need into one place.
An Overview of Staff Hours
The Staff Hours page provides a summary of total hours worked by each staff member, viewable by calendar week or custom time range. You can filter the data by staff member or room for a more targeted overview.
The columns displayed are the same as those found in the timesheets and depend on your package. These may include:
Schedule (package dependent)
Attended
Paid leave
Break (package dependent)
Period total
Contracted hours
Difference
Time off balance
Key features of this view include:
Clicking a staff member’s name opens their detailed timesheet for review or editing.
Any missing sign-outs are highlighted under the Attended column.
Time off balances can be manually adjusted to reflect overtime accrued or time off in lieu taken.
A Change log tracks any updates to key data (contracted hours, availability, time off balances) that affect total staff hours.
All of these totals can be exported within any time range selected and used to upload to an HR or accounting tool to inform payroll. You can export all this data in two formats:
Export total: A high-level summary of total hours per staff member, per category, for the chosen date range.
Detailed breakdown: An itemised export of all hour entries per staff member, with the ability to filter by category.
Staff Hours Approval (Early Access)
🔒 Staff Hours Approval is available in Famly’s Professional package. To learn more about pricing, click here
The Staff hours approval (early access) feature gives managers greater control and consistency when reviewing hours and managing overtime. Managers can review all staff hours per week, comparing them to contract hours and allocating the difference between overtime pay and time off in lieu. Approving the hours allows managers to “lock” them from further editing to ensure that system hours and payroll are in sync.
With approvals in place, you can:
Lock weekly hours to prevent further changes once approved.
Allocate differences between worked hours and contracted hours to either overtime pay or time off in lieu.
Access a centralised approval table to review and confirm totals per staff member.
Setting Up Staff Hours Approval
Your system settings allow you to control how default calculations are made. To manage approval for your setting, head to Settings → Staff → Staff hours → Approval to configure:
Base Pay – default setting
Choose whether the system calculates base pay by default from a staff’s contracted hours or by their actual attendance and paid absence within the approval period. Although this setting determines the system default, deviating adjustments can still be made when finalising and approving staff hours per week.
Contracted hours: Uses the staff member’s contract as the baseline. Any extra hours are flagged for overtime/time off in lieu.
Attendance & paid absence: Calculates pay based on actual attendance and paid absence hours. If lower than the contracted hours, no overtime is calculated unless thresholds are exceeded.
Overtime – default setting
Choose whether the system allocates the extra hours above weekly contracted hours to overtime pay or time off in lieu by default.
Overtime pay: Hours above contract are added to the staff’s pay.
Optional: add overtime subtypes for different pay codes.
Time off in lieu: Extra hours accumulate in the staff’s time off balance.
When combined with the attendance-based base pay setting, any shortfall in hours can reduce the time off balance.
Staff Hours Approval Tab
🔒 The staff hours approval tab is available to staff members with the Can approve & lock staff hours permission
The Staff hours approval tab shows the weekly sum of hours that can be approved per staff. The system provides automated default calculations based on system settings, but they can be updated before approval. Here’s what you’ll see:
Column | Description |
Paid total | Attendance + paid leave (minus breaks). Missing sign-outs are flagged. |
Contract | Contracted hours for the week. |
Difference | Shows over/under hours compared to the contract. Any mismatch between this and the allocation is flagged. |
Base pay | Calculated based on the default method (contract or attendance). |
Overtime pay | Payable for extra hours. Calculated based on your settings. |
Time off in lieu | Hours allocated to time off balance. |
Status | Indicates if hours are: unapproved, in progress, approved, or approved (edited). |
You can filter by staff name, room, approval status, or sort columns to quickly find what you need.
Approving Staff Hours
Click on any staff row to open a detailed view in a side panel. Here you can:
Review Paid Total, Contracted Hours, and all adjustments
Open the full timesheet for edits
Adjust the hours for base pay, time off in lieu and overtime pay as needed (e.g. adding extra hours to overtime pay instead of time off in lieu)
Save changes (changing the status to "in progress") or saved and approved
Note:
Hours can only be approved for weeks that have already started.
Once approved, hours are locked. This includes preventing additional attendance logging for that period via the sign-in app.
It’s best practice to approve hours for the week just completed.
How to approve staff hours in bulk
If you need to approve multiple staff members' hours at once:
Use the checkboxes to select individuals or all staff
In the approval modal, click on Approve selected to lock hours in one go (either with saved adjustments or based on default calculations)
☝️ Keep in mind that approvals are final. To make changes after approval, hours must be unlocked
Unlocking Approved Hours
Only staff members with the Can unlock approved staff hours permission can unlock hours. This means you can tightly control adjustments after approval and have different roles for different stages of the process. For example, you can have roles for:
Logging hours
Editing timesheets
Approving hours
Unlocking hours (if post-approval changes are needed)
This separation gives your team a clear, controlled workflow.
Exporting Staff Hours
While approvals happen weekly, exports can cover any time range (up to one year). Export filters include:
Date range: Choose any range within the last 12 months
Status: Filter by approval status. If a staff member’s hours include multiple statuses, these will be broken down in the export.
Staff: Export for all or selected staff members
Unapproved hours: The export modal flags any unapproved hours within the selected range
💡 If you want to integrate this data directly with HR or payroll systems, you can use the Famly API