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Create rostering shift costs and budgets

Updated

Available for the following plans: Lite, Plus, Unlimited
Time & Attendance Add-on
Available for the following HR classic plan: Platinum
Available for the following user access levels: Manager, Admin

As an organisation, you may base your staffing hours on a rostering platform whereby you allocate employees' certain hours they need to work per week based on workload demands. By using rostering software, you can take the heavy administration out of this process for your managers, freeing up their time to work on more important areas such as managing and supporting their employees.

The Rostering module within the payroll classic platform has a Budgeting feature that allows you to create a budget that you can use to manage shift costs within your organisation. You can also use this feature to edit the costing information if they change and delete a record if it is no longer required.

Getting Started

Creating a budget
  1. Click the Rota menu.
  2. Click the Rota Actions button.
  3. Click the Budget button.
    Budget_1.jpg
  4. Click the Edit Budget tab.

  5. From the budget panel, you will be required to enter the following details to set your budget

    • Location sets its own budget: Use this setting when you want the budget to only apply to the selected location
    • Location shares budget across sub-locations: Use this setting when you want to set a budget at the parent location and have it shared with all the sub-locations of that location
       

    Important

    If you select the Location shares budget across sub-locations option, you will not be able to set individual budgets for child locations:

    • Location:  This is the location that the budget will apply to
    • Week: The week that the budget applies to

    Once you​ have selected your budget settings, you can set your budget and sales figures for each day in the specified period

    Helpful Hint

    The Blue Arrow button will copy the entered data into the fields below it. The platform calculates the budget figure for each date by applying the wages percentage to the recorded sales number for that day.

  6. Click the Save button.Budget__UK__1.jpg
Copying a budget
  1. Click the Rota menu.
  2. Click the Rota Actions button.
  3. Click the Budget button.
    Budget_1.jpg
  4. Click the Edit Budget tab.
  5. Select the budget location from the Select a Location drop-down.
  6. Click the Settings button.
  7. Click the Copy Budgets from Last Week button.
    Budget__UK__2.jpg

Daily activities

Viewing the cost of a shift

Important

Only when you enable the Pay Condition Rule Set for an employee will the platform display an individual's shift cost. You can also use the Show Costs toggle switch to turn on or off the display of shift costs in your rostering view. 

  1. Click the Rota menu.
  2. Click on the employee shift cost that needs viewing.
    Budget_4.jpg

  3. Click the Cost Breakdown tab.

    Helpful Hint

    You will now see the employees' cost breakdown for the selected shift on your screen

    Budget__UK__3.jpg

Viewing shift cost summary

Once you have set the budgets for a rota, you can view the shift cost summary broken down by location and compared to the budget by following these steps

  1. Once you have set your budget you can view the shift costs vs budget by clicking on the header of any location

    Screenshot of rota with company name highlighted
  2. In the budget overview screen, you can see a day-by-day breakdown of the budget and the costs of the shifts for each day
  3. In addition, if the budget is shared across locations, you can see the total costs compared to the budget in the totals section as well as see a costs break down for each individual location.
     
  4. You can also expand any individual location to see the day by day cost break down for each location
     
  5. Based on these values, you will notice in the rota that ORANGE means "the shifts have exceeded the budget warning level", and RED means "over budget" (provided that you have the 'show costs' button on). E.g. the below rota shows that the budget warning has been exceeded on Thursday, Friday is over budget, and Saturday is within budget.
    Budget overview page
Recalculate shift costs
  1. Click the Rota menu.
  2. Click the Rota Actions button.
  3. Click the Recalculate Shift Costs button.
    Budget_6.jpg
Editing a budget
  1. Click the Rota menu.
  2. Click the Rota Actions button.
  3. Click the Budget button.
    Budget_1.jpg
  4. Click the Edit Budget tab.
  5. Select the budget location from the Select a Location drop-down.
  6. Make the required changes and click the Save button.
    Budget__UK__4.jpg
Deleting a budget
  1. Click the Rota menu. 
  2. Click the Rota Actions button.
  3. Click the Budget button.
    Budget_1.jpg
  4. Click the Edit Budget tab.
  5. Select the budget location from the Select a Location drop-down.
  6. Click the Settings button.
  7. Click the Clear Budgets button.
    Budget__UK__5.jpg
  8. Click the Clear button.
    Budget__UK__6.jpg

Further information

How are shift costs calculated?

Shift cost calculations depend on your region and whether your HR platform is connected to Employment Hero Payroll (formerly Keypay).

HR Only + Non-EH Payroll: Costs are based on the hourly pay rate. For salaried employees, an estimate is used: (Annual Salary / 52.17 / Weekly Working Hours) x Shift Duration.

HR + Employment Hero Payroll: We retrieve the base pay from the payroll platform. Total costs also include automated calculations for:

  • National Insurance: Calculated as a percentage of base pay (synced from payroll).

  • Pension Contributions: Calculated as a percentage of base pay (synced from payroll).

  • Holiday Pay Accruals: Synced directly from the payroll platform.

Shift costs are calculated using the rate of pay for the employee assigned to the shift. The rates of pay are calculated based on the employee's Pay Run Defaults. Please note that shift costs will be calculated on the pay rate template (PRT) allocated in the Pay Run Defaults.

If the PRT is manual then the rate of pay entered manually will be used. default pay run settings  Then the shift costing will know the employee pay rate and that they are entitled to an allowance (e.g. Clothing Allowance) for that shift. You can see the rates of pay that were applied by clicking on the shift and selecting "Cost Breakdown" in the window that appears.
Recalculating shift costs

Being able to generate shift costs is great, but there are times where the cost of a shift might change based on the number of hours an employee has worked in a previous pay period.

For example, under some entitlements, if an employee works more than 38 hours in a week, each additional hour is calculated at a different rate. This means that if you have someone covering shifts for a sick employee or working additional overtime, the potential costs of that employee working additional hours can quickly add up.

To assist in being able to compare the potential current cost of a shift to cost of the shift when it was calculated, once the shift is published, the original cost of the shift is stored and displayed against the most recent shift cost calculation.

To recalculate the shift cost, you simply follow these steps:

  1. Go to the "Employee Schedule" page
  2. From the actions bar, click the "Recalculate shift costs" button
    Rota actions with recalculate shift costs highlighted Once the shift cost calculation is complete, then you​ will see the original shift cost in brackets, and the current estimated shift cost next to it. In addition, you can see the current and estimated shift costs for an individual employee as well as for the entire schedule.

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