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. Switching off is a deliberate step. The information itself always remains visible in the app — only the message about it is switched off.

The four switches

Clicking the message takes you to the right place: approvals to Absences, shifts to the shift plan, corrections 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.

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 → 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.

Setting quiet hours

1. Open Notifications.
2. Switch on Use quiet hours. The suggestion is 20:00 to 7:00.
3. 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.
4. 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, mini-job: 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. They only apply to this device and do not replace the server page: if you switch everything off there, the app unregisters the device from push messages entirely. For quiet hours and switching off individual 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.