Set work patterns

A household where one adult works nights and the other is home at four is not unfair when the evening chores land unevenly — it is just a Tuesday. Work Patterns let the engine know that.

1. More → Work Patterns.
2. Pick a person and set the hours they work each day.

What it changes

The Fairness Score expects less of someone during the hours they are working. It does not excuse them entirely, and it does not shuffle work automatically — it stops the score treating a full shift as idleness.

Why it is per-day, not a single number

“Works full time” hides the thing that actually matters: when. Two adults on forty hours each can have completely different evenings, and the evening is where most household work lives.

If your weeks are not all the same

A fixed week has no answer for shift work: four-on-four-off has no “Tuesday”, because it depends which Tuesday. So under a person’s weekly schedule there is Weeks not all the same?, which opens a rota you set by real dates.

A date you set there wins over the usual week. A date you leave blank still follows it — so you only ever have to enter the days you actually know.

Night shifts and split days

A shift that runs past midnight — 22:00 to 06:00, say — is entered exactly like that: pick the finish time as it is, and an end earlier than the start runs into the next morning. The editor says so as you go (“Finishes (next day)”, and how long the shift is). It sits on the day it starts, and the morning after counts against the following day.

Nights also count the sleep after them: the seven hours after a night shift finishes are treated as unavailable too. Somebody who finishes at 07:00 is not expected to do much before about two in the afternoon — without this, a night shift would have reduced nothing at all, because it falls outside the hours the score looks at.

The rota grid shows both halves: the day it starts carries “22:00”, and the day it ends carries “–06:00”. On a run of nights each day reads “–06:00” then “22:00” — last night ending, tonight starting. The family calendar draws it the same way, as one block from 22:00 to midnight and another “until 06:00” the next morning. To change or clear a night shift, open the day it started on.

A day with two blocks — mornings and evenings — is entered as two blocks: tap the day, then Add another block. A day can have up to four, and only the last can run past midnight. Each block counts, and the gap between them does not.

Marking a day off is not the same as leaving it blank

This is the part worth reading twice.

• Blank — follow the usual weekly schedule.
• Off — do not work this day, whatever the usual week says.

“I normally work Mondays, but not this one” is only sayable with Off. Clearing the day instead sends you straight back to the usual week, and back to work.

Saved shifts: Early, Late, Nights

Most rotas are the same few shifts on different days. Save each one once, then put it on every day it falls on:

1. On the rota, under Put a shift on several days, tap New shift and give it a name and hours — “Late”, 14:00 to 22:00.
2. Tap Late, then tap each day it falls on. You can move between months while you pick.
3. Tap Put on at the bottom.

Off and Clear work the same way, for marking several days off or sending them back to the usual week in one go.

You can also start from a day you have already set: open it and tap Save and copy to other days, then pick the days. Give a day a name and you will be offered Save as a shift for next time.

Changing or deleting a saved shift only changes what it puts on from then on. Days already set keep their hours, because some of them will have been adjusted by hand since.

Filling in a year without typing it

Nobody keeps a rota up to date one day at a time, so there are four ways in:

• From a photo — photograph the printed rota and we read the shifts off it. Nothing is saved until you have checked the list; anything we were unsure of is left out rather than guessed at.
• Days on and days off — four on, four off, or any continuous pattern from a start date.
• Repeat a block of weeks — build one or two weeks by hand, then run that cycle forward.
• Copy a week — duplicate one week onto another, for the rota no pattern quite fits.

From version 1.16.0 of the app, A work rota under Bric can read… on the Bric tab does the same from there. It asks Whose rota?, because each grown-up’s rota is read on its own, then opens that person’s rota and the camera.

A pattern never overwrites a day you typed by hand, so a correction survives the next time you extend it.

Shifts you enter also show on the family calendar, so everyone can see who is at work.

When the rota runs out

Rotas are published a few weeks at a time, and Equal House quietly falls back to your usual week once yours is used up — which is the sort of wrong nobody notices. So the app tells you before that happens, and the rota screen shows the date it runs to.

Whose business it is

Any adult in the household can see these, in the same way they can see the calendar — it is a shared picture or it is not much use. You can set your own; the family’s owner or an admin can set anyone’s, which is how one partner keeps the other’s rota up to date.

If it looks wrong

Check the capacity share on the person too — that is the blunter setting, applied all the time, and the two work together. Someone with both a low capacity share and a full schedule is being discounted twice.

Routines that follow your work

A routine can run When I work — packing a lunch, the breakfast-club drop-off — and it follows these same hours and your rota. See Build a routine.