Setting your company's Work Package defaults

When to look at Work Package settings

These settings sit at the company level and decide how Work Packages behave by default for everyone. You'll come back to them whenever:

• You're setting Project Commander up for the first time and want sensible defaults
• Your company has changed its working hours and the schedule needs to reflect it
• You start working Saturdays for a busy period and need them to count as working days
• The Gantt is feeling cluttered and you want to hide weekends to clean it up
• You're tweaking how many hours are pre-filled when allocating operatives

To find them, open the main sidebar and go to Settings > Labour > Work Packages.

What these settings control

Three things, in plain English:

• How many hours per day are assumed when allocating operatives to sub-packages
• Which days of the week count as working days for scheduling and the Gantt
• Whether weekends are hidden by default on Gantt and timeline views

We'll walk through each one in turn.

Working hours

Three fields control the default working day:

• Default Start Time — the assumed start of the working day, for example 07:30
• Default End Time — the assumed end of the working day, for example 16:30
• Default Allocation Hours — how many hours per day get pre-filled when you allocate an operative. Half-hour increments are accepted, all the way down to zero

The start and end times feed into how sub-packages are laid out across the working day. The default allocation hours pre-populate the Hours field on the operative allocation form, so you don't have to type the same number every time you assign someone.

Working days

A row of checkboxes lets you tick which days of the week your company actually works.

• Monday to Friday — the standard UK construction pattern
• Include Saturday — tick it if your teams routinely work Saturdays
• Include Sunday — tick only if Sunday work is a regular thing

Any day you leave unticked is treated as a non-working day for scheduling purposes. Whether you also see those columns on the Gantt and timeline depends on the next setting.

Hide weekends by default

The Hide Weekends by Default toggle decides whether Saturday and Sunday columns are hidden on Gantt and timeline views by default.

• On (recommended) — weekend columns are collapsed when the page first loads, giving you a tidier weekday-only calendar
• Off — weekend columns are always shown, even when they're set as non-working days

This is just a default — individual users can still show or hide weekends themselves on a per-session basis from the view toggle if they need a different view.

Saving your changes

1. 1

   Adjust the fields you want to change.

2. 2

   Click Save Settings.

3. 3

   The new defaults take effect straight away.

The changes apply to:

• New allocations (the default allocation hours show up on the form)
• New Work Packages (the working days are applied to scheduling)
• All users on their next page refresh (the Hide Weekends default)

Existing Work Packages and existing allocations are not retroactively changed — the new settings only apply going forward. If you need to update anything that already exists, you'll have to edit it directly.

Real-world examples

• A new starter joining the office — set the default allocation hours to 8 so the team don't have to type it every time they allocate someone
• Going onto a six-day week — tick Include Saturday for the duration of the busy period, then untick it again when you go back to a five-day week
• Cleaning up the Gantt — turn Hide Weekends by Default on to give everyone a tidier view by default

Next steps

• Allocating operatives — to see how the default allocation hours are used on the form.
• Scheduling and rescheduling — for how working days and hours feed into scheduling.
• Work Package Settings (Settings reference) — for the same content from the Settings nav.