# Company settings overview

> A walkthrough of every option on the Settings page — grace period, timezone, validation modes, dual approval, and the Daily Report Subscribers picker.

The Settings page (sidebar → **Settings**) is where an owner or manager-owner configures how Timed behaves for their company. Only users with the **Manage Settings** permission can open it.

Every change is saved on **Save Settings** at the bottom of the page. There's no per-section save — one click writes everything at once.

## Basics

| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Name** | The company name shown in the top nav, on email reports, and in the company switcher. |
| **Timezone** | The wall-clock time every report, schedule, and "today" cut-off uses. Defaults to `Africa/Johannesburg`. If your branches span timezones, pick the head-office one. |
| **Grace period (minutes)** | How late an employee can clock in without being flagged. A 10-minute grace means a 09:05 clock-in for an 09:00 shift is **not** counted late. Range 0–120. Used by late-clock-in alerts, the daily shift report, and auto clock-out deadlines. |
| **Month start / end day** | The calendar window that defines a "month" for pay-period purposes. Defaults to 1–31 (a normal calendar month). Set to e.g. 26–25 if your payroll month runs 26th → 25th. |

## Clock-in behaviour

| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Auto clock-out** | When ticked, Timed checks every 15 minutes and clocks out anyone who has been clocked in for more than 11 hours, or who is past their shift end + grace period. See [Auto Clock-Out](https://timed.co.za/docs/auto-clock-out). |
| **Auto approvals** | Skip the human variance review — every clock record is approved automatically as soon as it saves. Useful for low-risk admin staff; risky for sites where shift compliance matters. |
| **Require dual approval** | When ticked, variances need both a supervisor sign-off AND a manager sign-off before they roll into payroll. When unticked, either is enough. See [Approving variances](https://timed.co.za/docs/variance-approval). |
| **Enforce shift start** | If ticked, employees can't clock in before their scheduled shift start time. Most companies leave this off. |
| **Approval deadline (hours)** | If set, variances older than this many hours are highlighted in the queue. Doesn't auto-reject — purely informational. |
| **Public holiday hours** | The default hours credited to a public holiday clock-in. Used by the payroll export. |
| **Is weekly component** | Affects how the payroll export rolls hours up into weekly totals. Leave unticked unless your payroll vendor has asked for this. |

## Validation modes

These control whether GPS and facial validation run inline with the clock-in or asynchronously afterwards. Both produce the same Pass / Fail / N/A badge on the Attendance Report — only the timing differs.

| Mode | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| **Realtime** | The check runs while the clock-in is being submitted. The employee sees the result immediately. Adds 0.5–2 seconds to every clock-in. |
| **Delayed** (default) | The clock-in saves instantly and the validation runs in the background. Result lands on the record a few seconds later. Faster for the employee. |

You can mix and match — e.g. realtime GPS, delayed facial. See [Why facial or GPS validation failed](https://timed.co.za/docs/validation-failures) for what the badges mean.

## AI

| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| **WhatsApp AI Copilot enabled** | When ticked, employees and managers can text the company WhatsApp number and the AI assistant will answer attendance questions. When unticked, inbound WhatsApp messages are still received and stored but the AI does not reply. See [WhatsApp AI Copilot](https://timed.co.za/docs/whatsapp-ai-copilot). |

The **Attendance Copilot** (in the sidebar) is always available to anyone with the **View Employees** permission. There's no on/off setting for it.

## Notifications — Daily Report Subscribers

This is the picker for who receives the [Daily Shift Report](https://timed.co.za/docs/daily-shift-report). By default the report goes to:

- Every **owner** and **manager-owner** (company-wide view, every location)
- Every user assigned as a manager to a location under that location's **Managers** tab (their assigned locations only)
- Every **field-manager** assigned to a location the same way (their assigned locations only)

You can add extra recipients here without changing anyone's role. Pick any user in your company and they'll get the full company-wide report as if they were an owner. The role-filter dropdown at the top of the list narrows the picker to one role at a time so you can find the right person quickly.

**Daily report time** sets the wall-clock time (in your company's timezone) when the report is sent. Defaults to `23:59`. Common alternatives: `06:00` (next-morning summary), `17:00` (end-of-day before staff leave).

## Saving and applying changes

Most settings take effect immediately on the next clock-in or next scheduled job. The exceptions:

- **Timezone changes** affect new reports immediately but historical exports are still in their original timezone.
- **Auto clock-out** waits up to 15 minutes for the next scheduled run after you tick it.

If you change a setting and nothing happens, double-check you clicked **Save Settings** at the bottom — the form does not auto-save on tab change.

If something looks wrong after a save and you can't put it back yourself, contact Timed support and we'll help restore your previous settings.