€ Account & billing · 11 min read

Which messages Zeitflex sends — and how to get peace and quiet at night

Where the switches are

Zeitflex sends push messages in two ways: to the mobile app and to browsers in which you have turned on notifications. The rules for this are in one place — the Notifications page, reachable via the bell at the top right. What you switch off there applies immediately to the app and all browsers together, because the server checks the setting before sending. The few exceptions are listed further down under “What cannot be switched off”.

The default is: all types on, no quiet hours — with one exception: New requests in the team is off by default (the reason is in the table). Switching off is a deliberate step. The information itself always remains visible in the app — only the message about it is switched off.

The switches

Switch	What is behind it	Who gets the message
Approvals & decisions	Vacation or sick note approved, declined or cancelled; reply to a shift swap request; a time was corrected	the person concerned
Shift plan & shift start	New shift plan published, shift changed, swap request, “Your shift starts soon” and, shortly after the start, “Clocked in yet?”	the scheduled person
Reminders	“Still clocked in?” after 14 hours and the due month-end close	management, and for an open clock-in also the person
Mini-job warning	Early warning before the earnings limit is at risk	only owners and management
New absences in the team	Someone has reported “I'm running late” (see below), or a sick note (including “child sick”) has come in — “New absence: name” with the period, never with the reason. If published shifts of the person fall in that period, the push notification names the first one from today on (“Shift Fri 13/11, 14:00–22:00 is open”, not for half days); in the browser, tapping it opens the rota. Leave requests do not trigger this message; they appear as a task in the bell and only come as a message via “New requests in the team”. For sick notes, at most three push notifications about the same person within 24 hours, further ones only in the bell; “I'm running late” goes out exactly once per shift; a withdrawn sick note disappears from the bell	only owners and management, never the person themselves and never whoever entered the sick note
New requests in the team	A new, still open request: vacation or another absence that needs approval, or a correction request for a working time — “New request: name” with “Absence: period” or “Time correction: date”, never with the type or the reason. Off by default: open requests appear as a task in the bell anyway, and ten messages on a Monday morning would be noise. Only the push notification comes, no second line in the bell. At most three push notifications about the same person within 24 hours	only whoever may decide on the request: owners and management, for a request from a manager only the owner; never the person themselves

Clicking the message takes you to the right place: approvals and new absence requests to Absences, shifts to the shift plan, corrections and new correction requests to the timesheet, the mini-job warning to the mini-job monitor, the month-end close to the month-end close.

Which reminder comes when

Shift start. Every 15 minutes, the server checks which published shifts start in the next 45 minutes and sends exactly one message per shift: “Starting at 14:00 · Late shift (until 22:00)”. Open shifts without a person and deactivated accounts are not reminded.

Clocked in yet? If a shift started 15 to 45 minutes ago and the scheduled person has not clocked in, Zeitflex asks once: “Your shift started at 14:00. If you are already working, please clock in now.” Only people who might really be missing are asked: anyone who has already clocked in — including up to two hours before the shift — or who has an approved absence that day, such as vacation or a sick note, does not get the message. It goes only to the person themselves. Management learns nothing about it: a list of who came late would be monitoring of behaviour (§ 87(1) no. 6 BetrVG) — the question is a help against forgetting to clock in.

Still clocked in? If a clock-in runs for more than 14 hours, it is practically always a mistake. The server checks every hour and reports the entry exactly once — to two recipients with two different texts:

Management gets “Open clock-in — please add a late entry” with the name and the time of clocking in. Only management may correct the time.
The person concerned gets “Still clocked in?” with the request to tell management their actual finishing time. They are explicitly not asked to clock out: that would record 14 hours that were never worked — a false record under § 17 (1) MiLoG (German Minimum Wage Act) and an invented breach of the maximum working time. What happens next is described under Correcting a forgotten clock-in.

Month-end close. On the 3rd of a month, owners and management get the notice “Month-end close is due” if the previous month has not yet been locked or exported — once per business and month.

Mini-job. A daily run checks whether a marginally employed person has reached 80 %, 95 % or 100 % of their annual limit. Each threshold is reported exactly once per person and month — as an email to the owner's address and to managers with a confirmed address (confirm under Settings → My account) and as a push. The temporary worker concerned does not get a warning; their remaining budget is shown in the app. An email “You are at 95 %” to a temporary worker creates pressure where a planning question is meant. The current limit is described under The mini-job limit.

I'm running late. Anyone who knows it will be tight taps I'm running late in the overview card Can't make it today? and chooses 15, 30 or 60 minutes. The button appears from three hours before to two hours after the shift starts — only for a published shift, before clocking in and without an approved absence that day. Exactly one notice goes out per shift. Owners and management get “Name is running late” with the shift start and minutes (switch “New absences in the team”) and see the notice the same day in their overview under Running late, until the person clocks in or at the latest two hours after the announced arrival. Zeitflex does not ask for a reason, and there is no list of who was late how often. The “Clocked in yet?” reminder is skipped after such a notice.

I'm sick. The same card has I'm sick: step by step, choose who is sick (me or my child) and for how long (today only, today and tomorrow, or longer with a date), photograph the sick note if you like, and send. It is the same sick notice as under Absences — it applies immediately, and owners and management get a message (switch “New absences in the team”). Zeitflex never asks for a diagnosis.

Setting quiet hours

Open Notifications.
Switch on Use quiet hours. The suggestion is 20:00 to 7:00.
Choose the start and end in whole hours. Both refer to the clock on the wall of your business (German time), not to server time. A window across midnight is allowed — 22:00 to 6:00 means: the hours 22, 23 and 0 to 5 are quiet.
Click Save settings. Only then does the change take effect.

Start and end must not be the same — that would be a 24-hour window and thus “never notify”; that is what the switches are for. Reset to default only fills in the form; you still have to save afterwards.

What quiet hours do to a message

Precision pays off here, because the answer differs by type:

Approvals, shift plan changes, shift start, “Clocked in yet?”, mini-job, new absences and new requests in the team: a message that falls within your quiet hours is suppressed and not delivered later. A “Your shift starts soon” at 7:00 for yesterday's night shift helps nobody. The decision or plan change itself is in the app.
“Still clocked in?” and month-end close: these two are retried every hour. If the attempt falls within quiet hours for all recipients, the notice is not considered done, and the next run tries again — so the message arrives in the morning. As soon as at least one person has been reached, the notice is done.
Switch off, on the other hand, is a permanent decision: the notice is considered done and is not repeated.

The team chat: fixed night-time quiet period

For the team chat, a fixed night-time quiet period from 21:00 to 6:00 is set in the code; it cannot be switched off and takes effect before your personal quiet hours. The reason: in practice, work instructions go through this channel, and the eleven-hour rest period under § 5 ArbZG (German Working Hours Act) is not up to the sender. Writing is allowed at any time — the message is then in the app in the morning. Your personal quiet hours apply on top: anyone who has set 20:00 to 8:00 also gets them for the chat.

To be honest, this also belongs here: as far as we know, the team chat currently sends no push messages, and there is no switch for it on the Notifications page either. The night-time quiet rule is already in place so that it applies as soon as the chat sends messages. More on the chat under Team chat.

What cannot be switched off

Four messages bypass switches and quiet hours:

The test message from the Notifications page — anyone who presses the button wants to see now whether it works. At most five in ten minutes.
Replies to your feedback to the Zeitflex team.
The notice “Data access report created” when your business has generated a report on the data stored about you.
The tax adviser's reminder about the month-end close (“Month-end close … is waiting for the close”). It goes to all owners of the business, only to the mobile app, and bypasses switches and quiet hours — in addition, it arrives as an email.

Mobile app and browser

Browser: On the Notifications page, under This browser, you switch on push messages for exactly this device — the browser then asks for permission in turn. On iPhone and iPad this only works once Zeitflex has been installed via “Share → Add to Home Screen” (iOS 16.4 or later); how to do that is described under Getting Zeitflex on your phone. At the bottom you can see how many browsers and app devices are registered.

Mobile app: Under More → Notification settings there are separate switches, and they come in two kinds:

Shift start, “Still clocked in?” and Mini-job limit are scheduled by the app itself on the device. These switches only apply to this device.
Decisions on my requests, New requests in the team and New absences in the team (the last two for owners and management only) are the same switches as in the browser — changing them in one place applies to both. They appear in the app as soon as it has loaded your settings from the server.

If all switches in the app that come via the server are off, it unregisters the device from push messages entirely — then shift plan and chat messages no longer arrive there either. For quiet hours and the other types, the page in the browser is the one source of truth.

Push is never critical in Zeitflex: if a message does not arrive, nothing is lost — every piece of information is in the app.

Need more help?

If nothing arrives even though permission has been granted, first send yourself a test message; if that does not help, contact support. What to do after a forgotten clock-in is described under Correcting a forgotten clock-in; how shifts are published, under Planning shifts.

Last checked on 13/11/2026. We check every article against the application — if something no longer matches, that is a bug and not a difference of opinion.

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