Access Control Schedules and Card Groups: A Practical Guide

An access control schedule is a rule that says which group of cards may pass through which gates, on which days, during which hours, and on holidays. The best way to design one is to group cards by role and attendance pattern first, then give each group its time windows, and finally decide how the system behaves on holidays, rather than configuring cards one by one.

Plenty of access control systems end up doing just one simple thing after installation: a valid card opens the door, an unknown card doesn’t. The real value of access control appears when you also control when. Office staff shouldn’t be at the door at 2 am, contractors shouldn’t walk onto the site on a day off, and over a long holiday the car park might be open to residents only. This guide shows how to design groups and access hours, gives a complete sample table and covers mistakes that come up again and again. The examples are hypothetical and apply to any access control software.

What are access hours, and why tie them to groups?

You could write a time rule on every individual card, but in practice that gets out of hand fast. Imagine a building with 400 cards where one tenant company moves its closing time back by half an hour. If the rules sit on the cards, you have dozens of cards to edit one at a time. If the rule sits on the group, one change does it.

So the sound logic is: a card belongs to a person, a person belongs to a group, and the rule belongs to the group. When someone’s role changes, you just move them to another group and every relevant rule follows automatically.

How to set up access groups in an access control system, step by step

1. List attendance patterns. Not a list of people, but “who comes and goes, when, and through which doors”. For example: day-shift office staff, night shift, early-morning cleaners, permanent residents.
2. Merge patterns that match. If two categories use exactly the same doors at the same times, one group is enough.
3. Assign permitted gates to each group. Access hours mean nothing until the doors are defined.
4. Write the weekday windows. For each day of the week, a permitted start and end time.
5. Define holiday behaviour. Is this group allowed in on a public holiday? If so, during which window?
6. Create a small “unrestricted” group. For management and maintenance staff who may be needed at any time, but keep its membership to a minimum.
7. Test before going live. Try a few sample cards from each group at the edges of their windows and confirm the door opens or stays shut as intended.

Hypothetical example: groups and hours for a mixed office and retail building

Take a hypothetical building with retail on the ground floor, four office floors and a car park. It has three gates: the lobby door, the car park gate and the plant room door.

A few things to notice: the cleaning group has two separate windows a day; retail staff are allowed in for a limited window on holidays because the shops are open; and only two small groups can reach the plant room. Finalise a table like this on paper and get it signed off by the board or building manager before entering anything into the software.

Setting holidays in access control: the details people forget

Public holidays move from year to year, so the list is never fixed. Some practical advice:

• Enter the holiday list at the start of each year and make one person responsible for keeping it current.
• Plan for unexpected closures. A closure announced at the last minute, for instance because of weather, needs a quick decision: do you mark that day as a holiday or not?
• Treat long holiday periods separately. Over an extended break you may want the building to behave differently from an ordinary weekend.
• Write each group’s holiday behaviour explicitly. “Not permitted” or a specific window, never left for the system to guess.

Grouping cards in access control software: how many groups is enough?

The rule of thumb is to keep the number of groups as low as possible, as long as no group gets more access than it needs. In most mid-sized buildings and complexes, somewhere between five and fifteen groups covers it. When the count keeps climbing, it usually means groups are being created for individual exceptions.

Handle exceptions with a temporary group that has a review date. Say three people are working late on a project this month: they join a “project overtime” group and return to their normal group at month end. You’ll find practical uses of this pattern in factory staff access control and office building access control.

Common mistakes when setting access hours

• Starting the window exactly at start time: if work begins at 8:00 and the window opens at 8:00, whoever arrives at 7:55 is stuck outside. Leave a few minutes’ margin.
• Forgetting the way out: if a gate also controls exits, someone still inside after the window closes must not be trapped. Check which rule the exit gate follows, and keep emergency exit routes open at all times.
• Shifts that cross midnight: a window like 22:00 to 06:00 has to be split into two windows across two days in some systems. Test how your software handles it.
• Overlapping groups: when one person genuinely needs the access of two groups, create a third group with the right combination instead of improvising workarounds.
• Leaving open entry switched on: this mode lets cards registered in the software through a gate and is handy for events. Whether access hours and group limits still apply in this mode is set by the administrator; if it is set to bypass them and nobody switches the mode off after the event, that gate’s time rules are not enforced. Decide the setting in advance and switch the mode off afterwards.
• No documentation: if nobody knows why a group exists, a few months later nobody dares change or delete it. Write one line of explanation for each group.

Access hours alongside open entry and manual door release

Time rules are for ordinary days; there are two other tools for exceptions. Manual door release from the software covers one-off cases, such as a visitor without a card or an employee arriving out of hours by arrangement. Open entry mode on a single gate suits events where a crowd passes in a short time. Using all three correctly keeps your time rules strict without locking the building down in special situations.

Periodic review checklist for access control rules

1. Every three months, review the group list and remove empty or obsolete groups.
2. Check temporary groups against their end dates.
3. Enter next year’s holidays before the current year ends.
4. Look at frequently denied passes; sometimes they reveal a rule that doesn’t match how people actually work.
5. Reconfirm the members of the “unrestricted” group.

Setting access hours and groups in Nooradio

In Nooradio, P-Soft’s access control system that works with smart cards and tags, card grouping, bulk card entry, per-group access hours for weekdays and holidays, open entry mode and setting entry or exit for each gate are available from the Pro plan upwards. The Start plan suits buildings that only need people and cards, instant activation and deactivation, and live monitoring, without time rules. Manual door release from the software and separate manager and operator roles are in every plan. Note that Nooradio controls passage through gates; it does not do attendance tracking or calculate hours worked. The software interface is in Persian.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should access hours be set per card or per group?

Per group. One change then updates the rule for every member, and card management stays simple.

How do I set holidays in an access control system?

Enter the public holiday list at the start of the year and state each group’s holiday behaviour explicitly.

How many groups does a building need?

Most mid-sized buildings manage with five to fifteen. A very high number usually means groups are being made for exceptions.

How does a visitor get in outside permitted hours?

After checking, the door is released manually from the software, and the group rules stay untouched.

Which Nooradio plan includes access hours?

Access hours, card grouping and open entry are available from the Pro plan upwards.

To see how your building’s groups and access hours would work in Nooradio, request a demo on the access control software page.

Further reading

• Vehicle Access Control Software: Card & Tag Guide and Use Cases
• Vehicle Access Control: LPR vs RFID vs Remote, Which to Choose?
• Benefits of Parking Management and Vehicle Access Control Software

Complete guide: access control system