---
title: "Shift, task, and assignment: the difference"
description: "Three words that are easy to confuse: a shift is a plan of availability, a task is a unit of work, and an assignment is the link between them."
canonical: "https://atqar.com/en/guides/duty-task-assignment/"
locale: en
language: en-GB
audience: everyone
published: 2026-08-27
updated: 2026-09-03
source: "https://atqar.com"
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---

Three ideas that sound alike in a group chat and mean different things here.

A **shift** is a plan of availability. It answers which employees are scheduled
for a particular day, property and time. It says nothing about work and counts
no hours worked: it is not a timesheet.

A **task** is a unit of work: a cleaning, a repair, an inspection, a
replenishment. It has a kind, a state and, where one exists, a deadline.

An **assignment** is the link between them: who carries this task out. For a
cleaning the assignment is inseparable from an exact hour inside the assignee's
shift — the person and the hour are written together, in one action.

From this comes the rule that holds the cleaning schedule up: a cleaning
cannot be placed outside the assignee's shift — not by the planner and not by
hand. A person and an hour can be named only inside the shift; if the hour that
is needed does not exist, the roster changes first. Every other kind of work —
repair, inspection, replenishment, general — carries no such restriction and
can be assigned to any active employee on any day.

There is no shared queue that people take work from.

More: [Employee shifts](https://atqar.com/en/docs/duty-roster/).