Build a reusable one-to-twelve-week schedule, assign it with an effective date and let HollyHR use the applicable working days for each leave request. Contracted hours also produce a clear current FTE and current-FTE allowance for regular-hours staff.
A working pattern records the days and hours a person is expected to work, including repeating weeks, daily start and end times and unpaid breaks. HollyHR stores reusable organisation templates, assigns the right template to each person from an effective date and uses the applicable schedule to distinguish working days from regular non-working days when leave is requested.
That is different from a rota, timesheet or flexible-working request. A working pattern is the durable contracted schedule behind core HR calculations. HollyHR supports fixed weekly, flexible and zero-hours template types, plus cycles of up to twelve weeks; it does not publish shifts, collect hours worked, track office attendance or decide statutory entitlement for irregular-hours staff.
The pattern is not a decorative profile field. It supplies the date-specific schedule for leave and the non-working days in Who's Away. Contracted hours on the employment record supply current FTE and bounded payroll-readiness data.
Build a reusable fixed, flexible or zero-hours template with one to twelve repeating weeks. Record working minutes for each day, optional start and end times and unpaid breaks, then assign the template from the person's employment record instead of recreating the week in every HR workflow.
Person assignments are effective-dated. When HollyHR saves a leave request it resolves the schedule covering each requested date, follows the correct week in a multi-week cycle and stores the calculation breakdown so a later template or assignment change does not silently rewrite that request.
Set the organisation's full-time week and record contracted weekly hours. HollyHR calculates the person's current FTE and applies it to the current policy allowance for regular-hours staff: 30 hours against 37.5 is 0.8 FTE, so a 25-day current policy allowance displays as 20 days.
Time Off uses the applicable working days, Who's Away distinguishes regular non-working days from absence, and the payroll-readiness CSV includes contracted hours, full-time hours and FTE. Scoped REST endpoints expose reusable templates, with lifecycle webhooks for template writes made through the public API.
Record daily hours, optional start and end times and unpaid breaks across a cycle of up to twelve weeks. HollyHR shows the cycle's average week and can use it to initialise contracted hours when none are set separately. Current FTE still comes from contracted hours on the employment record—not from pretending the template is a live rota.
Pattern assignments start from an effective date. Saved leave duration resolves the assignment covering each day, follows the right cycle week and keeps the sources behind the answer.
The assigned pattern already informs Time Off and Who's Away. Current hours and FTE also travel through the payroll-readiness CSV, while scoped API endpoints support approved integrations and API-origin template writes emit lifecycle webhooks.
HollyHR keeps the durable working-week record that core HR needs. It does not turn that record into a promise of live workforce scheduling, office attendance or statutory advice.
A working pattern is the repeatable schedule a person is expected to work: the days, daily hours and, where useful, start time, end time and unpaid break. HollyHR stores reusable organisation templates and assigns one to a person's employment record from an effective date.
For a regular-hours employee, HollyHR divides contracted weekly hours by the organisation's full-time weekly hours to calculate the current FTE, then applies that factor to the current policy allowance. Thirty hours against 37.5 is 0.8 FTE; a 25-day current allowance therefore displays as 20 days.
Yes. A template can repeat over one to twelve weeks. HollyHR stores each cycle week's daily minutes and uses the assignment's effective week as the cycle anchor, so an alternating or fortnightly schedule resolves the right working days for the dates in a leave request.
The new assignment can start from an effective date, and saved leave duration uses the working pattern covering each requested date. The annual allowance is not yet blended across old and new FTE periods automatically; HollyHR currently applies the person's current FTE, so HR must review the allowance when hours change mid-year.
Not from hours worked today. HollyHR can record a zero-hours template, but it does not collect actual worked hours or calculate worked-hours entitlement for irregular-hours or part-year staff. Use the appropriate current guidance and a reviewed allowance until that accrual workflow is shipped.
The saved request duration uses the person's effective pattern to skip regular non-working days. Public-holiday treatment then follows the configured time-off category rule, so HollyHR can include or exclude the relevant configured holiday without pretending every organisation uses the same policy.
No. HollyHR can mark one active template as the organisation default, which keeps the library's common choice clear, but a new starter's current pattern must still be assigned explicitly from their employment record. The page does not treat a label as an automatic onboarding workflow.
No. It records the contracted repeating schedule used by core HR. HollyHR does not publish shifts, approve statutory flexible-working requests, track hybrid office days, collect availability, run shift swaps, capture clock-ins or replace a rota and time-and-attendance product.
Yes, with precise limits. The beta REST API can list, read, create, update and archive templates and assign the current pattern through employment writes, with scoped access, idempotency and ETag protection. The payroll-readiness CSV includes current hours and FTE; the organisation export does not yet contain the complete template and assignment-history dataset.
The whole core product, no card, no trial clock — with a broad self-service organisation export if you ever want to leave.
Related: Time off & leave · Who's away · People records