What are coverage targets?

Coverage targets are named, effective-dated staffing expectations for position control coverage. They let your organization compare scheduled position coverage against rules such as minimum staffing, maximum staffing, acceptable bands, or tolerance-based budget alignment.

Coverage targets measure position schedules. They do not schedule employees, track attendance, manage PTO, or publish daily rosters.

Target sets

A target set defines the planning period for a group of coverage rules. Common examples include annual or fiscal-year sets such as FY2027 Nursing Coverage Targets.

Each target set has:

  • Name: A label users can recognize in coverage views and reports.
  • Effective start and end: The dates when the set is used for compliance.
  • Status: Draft, Active, or Archived.
  • Rules: The department, job code, day, cycle week, time window, metric, and comparator definitions inside the set.

Only active target sets are used for compliance. Draft target sets can be validated and revised before they go live. While a target set is in Draft status, users can add, edit, delete, import, and replace target rules. Archived sets are kept for history but are not used for current compliance.

Compliance rules

A target rule defines what compliant means for a department, job code, and time window. Rules can be scoped to a department and optionally inherited by child departments. They can also be scoped to a job code and optionally include child job codes.

Coverage target rules are easiest to maintain when the organization uses one root department and one root job-code family. Then an organization-wide target or default can be placed at the root and more specific department or job-code rules can override it only where needed. Multiple top-level roots can still work, but they usually require more duplicated rules and more careful validation.

Supported compliance types include:

  • At least: Scheduled coverage must be greater than or equal to the target.
  • At most: Scheduled coverage must be less than or equal to the target.
  • Between: Scheduled coverage must stay inside a minimum and maximum band.
  • Exact: Scheduled coverage must match the target, with optional tolerance.
  • Within tolerance: Scheduled coverage must stay within a configured amount above or below the target.

This supports both kinds of compliance: a department may need to stay under a staffing cap, and another department may need to maintain a minimum staffing level.

Operating Budget and scenarios

The target is the expectation. Operating Budget and scenarios are measured sources.

Coverage views and reports can show:

  • Target rule.
  • Operating Budget scheduled coverage.
  • Operating Budget compliance status and variance.
  • Selected scenario scheduled coverage.
  • Scenario compliance status and variance.

Operating Budget does not equal the target. It is compared against the target so users can see whether the plan meets, exceeds, or falls short of the staffing rule.

Batch loading targets

Use batch import to load a target set for a new fiscal year or planning cycle. Target rules can be imported from CSV or XLSX files and exported in either format for review or controlled updates. A target rule file can include department, job code, metric, comparator, target values, cycle week, day of week, time window, and inheritance flags.

Use validation before activation to find missing departments, invalid job codes, malformed time windows, or conflicting rules. Once the set validates, activate it for the effective period.

Schedules, cycles, and timezones

Coverage targets use the same position schedules and schedule entry types that drive schedule coverage. Only entry types marked Counts toward coverage are included in target compliance. Paid breaks are paid time, but they do not count toward coverage by default unless your organization changes that entry type.

Multi-week schedules use the inherited department cycle start date to determine which week in the rotation applies. Department administrators can manage the effective-dated cycle start date and coverage timezone from the department's Coverage setup page. Child departments inherit those values unless they have a more specific effective-dated value.

For organizations operating in multiple timezones, coverage is evaluated in the local coverage timezone for the department. Reports include local date, local time, timezone, and cycle week so the result can be audited.

FTE adjustments are not included

Coverage target compliance is based on scheduled position coverage at a time slot. FTE adjustments can affect calculated FTE and cost reports, but they are not included in time-slot coverage counts or target compliance. This keeps coverage tied to scheduled work time rather than pay or calculation adjustments.