creating blackout dates for individual reporters

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Understanding Blackout Dates
• Create Blackout Dates for Each Reporter

Understanding Blackout Dates

After you assign a Timesheet Template to a reporter, you’ll have an option of creating personal start and personal end dates as well as additional blackout dates for their service term. Personal start and end dates create automatic blackout periods for your reporter at the beginning and/or end of their service term.

You'll want to update a reporter's personal start, personal end, and blackout dates under the following conditions:

1. If the reporter is beginning to serve after the Start Date of your Template, you'll want to update their Personal Start Date so that the reporter is not prompted to retroactively fill out sheets for the time when they were not in the program.
   
   

2. If the reporter will not be serving with you through your Template’s End Date, you'll want to update their Personal End Date so that the reporter is never prompted to submit sheets after their term of service ends.
   
   

3. If you know the reporter will not be serving for a week or more in the middle of their service term, we also encourage you to create additional blackout dates for that period so that the reporter does not have to submit timesheets unnecessarily.

IMPORTANT: Blackout periods influence when reporters are prompted to submit timesheets.

• If any timesheet period (ex. weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc) from your template has an overlapping blackout date for the entire timesheet period, the reporter at issue will not be prompted to submit a timesheet during that time.
  
  

• If any timesheet period from your template has an overlapping blackout date for part of the timesheet period, the reporter at issue will only be prompted to report time on days from that sheet that have not been blacked out.

Create Blackout Dates for Each Reporter

1. On the left, in your Mission Control, click Reporters, Staff, & Sites.
   
   

2. On the right, click Manage reporter accounts.
   
   

3. Click on the name of the reporter you would like to update.
   
   

4. Find the Timesheets Settings panel like the one in the following image:

5. To make changes to this panel, click the Edit button. In the pop-up window that opens click Edit blackout dates
   
   

   
   
   

6. You'll see the Blackout Dates section displayed, that may look something like this:
   
   

   
   

   1. These are the auto blackout periods created by making adjustments to the reporter's Personal Start and Personal End dates. If you need to make adjustments to these periods, Close this section and make the update to these sections instead:
      
      

      
      

   2. Otherwise, you can select Create Another Period to create a new blackout period.
      
      NOTE: You can enter up to 20 total blackout periods per reporter
      
      
7. Don't forget to click the Update button to save your changes.