Why did my worker's assignment end on its own?
Last updated: September 4, 2026
Applies to: staffing Partners managing assignments in the Ascen platform.
Summary: An assignment that goes long enough with no time submitted against it is ended automatically by the platform, and a warning goes out before that happens. It is not a cancellation and nothing is lost — you can bring the assignment straight back yourself with Actions → Restart. The inactivity window is a platform setting and cannot be switched off for an individual assignment, so if a worker's billing or shift pattern leaves long gaps, expect it to recur and plan for the restart.
What actually happened
Assignments are meant to reflect live work. When no time is submitted against an assignment for an extended period, the platform treats it as finished and ends it, so that assignment lists, reports and invoicing don't carry engagements that stopped months ago. Two settings drive this on your account: how many days of inactivity trigger a warning, and how many trigger the automatic end. The warning fires first, so an assignment that ends this way has usually been flagged beforehand.
This catches out engagements with an unusual rhythm — monthly billing cycles, on-call or intermittent workers, or a worker who is between projects at the same client. The work is real; the platform just hasn't seen a timesheet.
Bringing the assignment back
You can do this yourself, and it takes a few seconds:
Open Assignments from the left-hand menu and click the assignment.
Click View more to open the full assignment.
Click Actions (upper right), then Restart.
Full steps and the caveats are in How do I reactivate assignments?. Once it is active again the worker can log time against it as before, though depending on how long it was ended they may be asked to re-confirm a detail or two first.
Can you turn the automatic end off?
Not for a single assignment, and not on request — the inactivity window is a platform-level setting rather than something we can waive case by case. If it is firing repeatedly on the same engagement, the practical answers are:
Submit time on the normal cycle. Any approved time resets the clock, so partners who email hours in monthly are the most exposed — sending them promptly at the end of each cycle is the simplest fix.
Restart it when work resumes. For genuinely intermittent work, treat the restart as a routine step rather than an escalation.
Talk to your Customer Success Manager if the pattern is structural for a whole client — there may be a better way to model the engagement.
If the worker has hours for the period it was ended
Hours are not lost. The worker may see the assignment as closed and be unable to submit — that symptom is covered in Unable to Submit Timesheet: Assignment Appears Closed or Ended, and late hours can be sent in as described in How to Submit a Timesheet After Missing the Deadline. Restart the assignment first, then have the time entered; if the week has already closed, email support@ascen.com with the worker's name, the dates and the hours and we will key them in.