Count the work that still needs attention
Use the number of items that need a review or next action during the cover period, not every card in the project. Estimate minutes per item from the team’s own experience when available. If tasks vary widely, calculate separate groups. A rough aggregate is a planning aid, not a staffing decision or a measure of a person’s productivity.
Keep available time realistic
Available hours should exclude other responsibilities already committed. Do not treat an eight-hour day as eight hours free for this handover. Include time to read context, ask questions and handle uncertainty. The calculator takes entered assumptions at face value; it cannot know someone’s schedule or certify that the work is feasible.
A fictional gap
Twenty-four reviews at ten minutes each require 240 minutes. Two cover people with one available hour each supply 120 minutes. The gap is 120 minutes. That could mean reducing scope, moving a review with permission or arranging more cover. It does not prove that software will remove the gap, and it does not authorize assigning extra work.
Use a range and make a decision
Repeat the calculation with a slower plausible review time. If the plan works only with the most optimistic input, record the risk and discuss the scope. Do not hide the difference by rounding down the item count. Keep the agreed action beside the handover record so the next person can see how the workload was actually addressed.
Separate unlike work
Ten quick record checks and two complex reviews should not automatically share one average. Calculate the groups separately, then compare their combined requirement with available time. Preserve the assumptions so a changed scope can be recalculated. If the cover role also handles interruptions, model a smaller available-time scenario. Do not turn the apparent spare minutes into a promise to absorb all unexpected work; the worksheet contains no information about task difficulty or concurrent commitments.
Sources used for this page
These records support the facts and comparisons above. Merchant-controlled records are labelled so you can separate product claims from independent evidence.
- Nifty recurring tasks — Merchant documentation · help.niftypm.com · Merchant-controlled · checked 2026-10-01