To record a shift you need three things: a person, a day, and somebody who saw the work. There is no contract to set up, no counterparty to name and no deadline to agree. Open your workforce roster, pick the worker, pick the day, and choose one of five words.
The five things you can record
Credda supplies the exact wording for all five, so what you read on your screen is what the worker reads on theirs.
Worked the shift. They were rostered on and worked it in full. Positive.
Covered a shift for someone else. They picked up and worked a shift that was not theirs. Positive.
Late. They worked the shift but started late. Adverse.
Left early. They worked the shift but left before the end. Adverse.
Did not turn up. They were rostered on and did not work it. Adverse, and the most serious thing you can record about anyone here.
Late and Left early are recorded as a late delivery, not as a broken commitment. Only "Did not turn up" is recorded as a breach. That difference is deliberate. A carer who arrived twenty minutes into a call is not the same as one who never arrived, and the record should not say they are.
The two positive outcomes are free and take one step
Recording that somebody worked, or covered, is free on every plan including the free one. The roster and the confirm action are never behind a plan, so a corner shop owner can close up on Sunday and record the weekend's shifts without paying for anything.
Recording the same shift twice does nothing. Credda keeps one shift outcome per person per day, so re-uploading a rota you have already recorded does not create a second outcome and does not double anything. Both positive words are stored as the same kind of outcome, so recording "worked the shift" and then "covered a shift for someone else" for the same person on the same day leaves one outcome, not two.
Adverse outcomes take two steps, a written reason and a Business plan
Three things change when the outcome is Late, Left early or Did not turn up.
You have to write a reason, and Credda refuses the record without one. This is not a form field to get past. The worker reads your reason next to the report, and your reason is what they answer if they contest it. Write "rostered 07:00 for the Tuesday early, arrived 08:40, no message" rather than "late again".
It takes a deliberate second step. Your first submission is checked and nothing at all is written. You get back a preview of exactly what will be recorded, and you confirm it. The extra click is on purpose, because the thing you are about to do is shown to the person it is about.
It is on the Business plan. Positive outcomes stay free forever and the punitive direction is the part that is paid for. Current prices are on the pricing page.
You cannot record adverse outcomes in bulk. If you upload a batch of shifts and some rows are Late or Did not turn up, those rows are refused and the rest of the batch still records. Read the result row by row. A batch that reports mostly success has not necessarily recorded the row you cared about, and it has certainly not recorded the adverse one.
What the worker sees
They see it immediately, with your reason, in their own account. There is no quiet period and no internal-only state. Nothing you record about somebody is hidden from them, and they can contest it.
What happens if they contest it
A contest is decided by a fixed set of rules on the server. No reviewer reads it, and you are not asked to argue your side, because the engine reads the record rather than opinions. There are three results.
Upheld, because the report was never independent evidence. If your organization has not yet been corroborated as a real employer, everything you record is on the worker's record but does not count as verified evidence, and a contest of it is upheld on that basis alone. This is the most common reason a new organization loses a contest, and it is worth reading why a recorded shift may not count before you rely on anything you have recorded.
Upheld, because no reason was stated. There is nothing for the worker to answer. This should not arise for a shift, since Credda refuses an adverse shift without a written reason.
Unresolved on record. Everything else. The record holds your account and their denial and nothing that separates the two, so Credda records both and decides neither.
There is deliberately no result that says the employer was right. "The record cannot tell" and "you were right" are different sentences, and writing the first as the second would turn a filing into a finding.
Be clear about what a contest does not do. Even an upheld contest does not pull the outcome back out of the worker's wider record. Credda cannot tell you what effect the contest had on their portable score, and it will not print a zero in place of a number it does not have.
Before you record a no-show
The record cannot hold the reason somebody missed a shift. It holds yours. A care coordinator who records a no-show for a carer who was in A and E has recorded something true and useless, and the carer will read it that afternoon.
Checking first costs you a phone call. There is no undo written into this guide because you should treat the second step as the point of no return.
One more thing that is not a mark against anybody: if you ask a client or a colleague to confirm something and they decline, that is not an adverse outcome. A decline records nothing about anyone. It is the absence of a confirmation, not a verdict.