When you activate the Attendance Management feature and assign a weekly work schedule to a person, their attendance calendar starts populating from that day onwards with the shifts defined by the schedule. However, previous days remain empty: the calendar didn't exist before (or at most contains clock-in records, if the company was already using the Clock-in clock-out feature) and those days show as Rest, meaning no work shift is assigned.
If you are still exploring Fluida and are not yet fully operational (for example, you want to use the current month as a "test" and then go fully live from the next month), there is no need to backfill past days: those days don't represent real data and can be ignored.
If instead you'd like to populate the calendar for past days with shifts and events — so that you have complete data for attendance review or monthly payroll processing — Fluida offers several tools to do so. This guide covers the most common scenarios to help you identify the best solution.
The days to backfill are few or for just a few people
When you activate Attendance Management and assign a weekly working schedule to a person mid-week or mid-month, the days before the attendance calendar was generated are empty and shown as Rest. If the days to recover are relatively few and the shift the person worked was the same every day, it is recommended to use the Shift Change feature, which allows you to select a range of days on a user's calendar and assign the shift that was actually worked.
Example
You assigned a weekly schedule (9:00 AM > 1:00 PM | 2:00 PM > 6:00 PM Monday to Friday, day off on Saturday and Sunday) to a team member starting Friday, June 12. The days from June 1 to 11 show as Rest.
You'd like to start tracking that person's attendance from the Monday of the current week — Monday, June 8. To backfill the calendar for the missing days, an Administrator or Power User must:
Activate the Shift Change feature.
💡 If the company has the Shift Planning feature enabled, you can also backfill past days using the Visual Planning tool. This is particularly convenient when the shifts to insert vary from day to day, or you need to update the calendar of multiple people at once.
Apply the shift change by selecting the relevant period (Monday 8 to Thursday 11 June) and specifying the shift to assign (e.g. 9:00 AM > 1:00 PM | 2:00 PM > 6:00 PM).
💡 A shift change applies the same shift to all days in the selected period: if the admin wanted to assign shifts for the previous week as well by selecting June 1–11, the 9:00 AM > 1:00 PM | 2:00 PM > 6:00 PM shift would also be applied to Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 June, which should instead be days off. To correct this, an additional shift change would be needed on the weekend days, assigning the Day off shift. Read more here.
Once the shift change is applied, the calendar updates for the selected days with the same shift, and the person is notified of the change via a notification.
The days to backfill are many, with varying shifts or for multiple people
When you activate Attendance Management and assign a weekly schedule to the people on your team, their attendance calendar is generated from that day onwards, while previous days are empty and shown as Rest.
If the days to fill are many (e.g. the feature was activated mid-month), the shifts vary, or the people involved are more than one, it is recommended to use the Visual Planning tool, which allows you to assign different shifts, for entire weeks and to multiple people simultaneously in just a few clicks.
Example
You activated Attendance Management on Friday, June 19 and assigned working schedules to 15 people on your team. The calendar was therefore generated only for the last days of the month starting from the 19th, leaving nearly three weeks empty for all users.
Moreover, the shifts to apply also vary from day to day: some people alternate morning (6:00 AM–2:00 PM) and afternoon (2:00 PM–10:00 PM) Monday to Friday, while others have a full-time schedule (9:00 AM–1:00 PM | 2:00 PM–6:00 PM Mon–Fri). In a situation like this, Visual Planning allows you to fill the missing days more quickly, assigning the correct shifts to multiple people and multiple days at once.
To backfill the calendar for the missing days, an Administrator or Power User must:
Access Visual Planning and populate the days from the 1st to the 18th for the users — first selecting all the days when people worked the morning shift, then doing the same for the afternoon shift. Finally, select the weeks for the people who worked the 9:00 AM–1:00 PM | 2:00 PM–6:00 PM schedule and assign them the corresponding weekly schedule.
Once the planning is saved, the calendar automatically updates in the past for all people and days involved.
Frequently asked questions
How can I backfill multiple days that include non-working periods if I don't have the Shift Planning feature enabled?
The Shift Change feature applies the same shift to all days in the selected period, without distinguishing between working days and days off. This means that if the period includes a weekend, for example, the work shift will also be assigned to Saturday and Sunday.
There are two approaches to handle this:
Correct afterwards — Assign the shift across the entire period and then perform a second shift change on the days off only (e.g. Saturday and Sunday), selecting the Day off shift.
Split the shift changes — Create separate shift changes only for the working days, excluding days off from the start. For example, instead of selecting Monday–Sunday, create one shift change for Monday–Friday of the first week, and another for Monday–Friday of the following week.
How can I backfill days with different shifts if I don't have the Shift Planning feature enabled?
The Shift Change feature applies the same shift to all days in the selected period. So, if the days to backfill require different shifts, you need to perform a separate shift change for each group of days with the same shift.
For example, if Monday and Tuesday require the 6:00 AM > 2:00 PM shift while Wednesday to Friday require the 9:00 AM > 6:00 PM shift, two separate shift changes are needed.
For simpler and more precise management of variable shifts, it is recommended to activate Shift Planning and use the Visual Planning tool.