Scheduled paid hours
Objective. Define scheduled paid hours as the planned, paid time base and keep it apart from the hours actually attended or worked.
Scheduled paid hours is the denominator most WFM and productivity figures quietly sit on. If you cannot say what it is and what it is not, you cannot defend the percentages built on top of it.
See it in the demo
Definition
Scheduled paid hours is the planned amount of time an employee is rostered and paid to be at work over a chosen period - the time the organisation expects to pay for, before any question of whether the person actually showed up or produced anything. It is a plan figure, not an outcome figure.
How it is calculated
At app-logic level it is the sum of paid shift time across the period for the people in scope. Numerator: scheduled/rostered shift hours; the denominator is simply the headcount and period you scoped to. Typically it includes paid breaks where the customer pays for them and excludes unpaid breaks; treatment of leave, holidays and paid-but-not-rostered time depends on configuration. Confirm with product exactly which shift types, break rules and leave categories are counted for a given customer - never assert a formula.
How to read it and the common misread
Read it as the capacity you are paying for, the baseline against which attendance, overtime and utilization are measured. There is no universal target - it is a quantity, not a score. The common misread is treating scheduled paid hours as hours worked. Scheduled time is a plan; attended and productive time are separate, usually smaller realities. Blending them inflates every downstream percentage.
Where it appears
It surfaces in Time and Activity under attendance and hours, and in Scheduling as the rostered/paid basis for a published schedule. Exact labels and break/leave handling are SME-validation-pending; confirm with product per customer configuration.
Interpretation check
Scheduled paid hours is planned, paid time - not hours attended and not hours worked; it is the denominator, not the result.
Practical task
Open attendance and hours for one team and one week, note the scheduled paid hours, then write one line stating what it includes and excludes for this demo and what you would confirm with product before using it as a denominator with a real customer.
Self-check
A manager says 'we had 400 hours of work last week' pointing at scheduled paid hours. What do you correct?
That is planned paid time, not work done. Attended hours and productive time are separate and usually lower. Scheduled paid hours only tells you what was paid for, not what was delivered.
Why does the exact figure need a 'confirm with product' before you quote it?
Which break, leave and shift categories count toward paid hours is configurable per customer. The concept is stable; the precise inclusion rules are not, so the number must be validated against that customer's setup.
Is there a good target value for scheduled paid hours?
No. It is a quantity of planned paid time, not a score. Targets apply to the ratios built on it, such as attendance or utilization.
Verified vs demo. Scheduled/paid hours are shown in the Time and Activity demo; exact break, leave and shift-type inclusion rules are configurable and SME-validation-pending - confirm with product.