Available for the following Payroll plan: Premium
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 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
- Click the Roster menu.
- Click the Roster Actions button.
- Click the Budget button.
- Click the Edit Budget tab.
-
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 payroll platform calculates the budget figure for each date by applying the wages percentage to the recorded sales number for that day.
- Click the Save button.
- Click the Roster menu.
- Click the Roster Actions button.
- Click the Budget button.
- Click the Edit Budget tab.
- Select the budget location from the Select a Location drop-down.
- Click the Settings button.
- Click the Copy Budgets from Last Week button.
Maintain
Important
Only when you enable the Pay Condition Rule Set for an employee will the payroll 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.
- Click the Roster menu.
- Click on the employee shift cost that needs viewing.
-
Click the Cost Breakdown tab.
Helpful Hint
You will now see the employees' cost breakdown for the selected shift on your screen
Once you have set the budgets for a roster, you can view the shift cost summary broken down by location and compared to the budget by following these steps
- Once you have set your budget you can view the shift costs vs budget by clicking on the header of any location
- 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
- 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.
- You can also expand any individual location to see the day by day cost break down for each location
- Based on these values, you will notice in the roster 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 roster shows that the budget warning has been exceeded on Thursday, Friday is over budget, and Saturday is within budget.
- Click the Roster menu.
- Click the Roster Actions button.
- Click the Recalculate Shift Costs button.
- Click the Roster menu.
- Click the Roster Actions button.
- Click the Budget button.
- Click the Edit Budget tab.
- Select the budget location from the Select a Location drop-down.
- Make the required changes and click the Save button.
- Click the Roster menu.
- Click the Roster Actions button.
- Click the Budget button.
- Click the Edit Budget tab.
- Select the budget location from the Select a Location drop-down.
- Click the Settings button.
- Click the Clear Budgets button.
- Click the Clear button.
Further information
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 employee's hourly pay rate. If the employee is on an annual rate, we use an estimated calculation:
(Annual Salary / 52.17 / Weekly Working Hours) x Shift Duration.HR + Employment Hero Payroll: All costing data is synced directly from the Employment Hero Payroll (Keypay) costing engine for high accuracy.
How Shift Costs Are Determined Shift costs are based on the specific pay settings assigned to each employee. The system looks at the following to find the right rate:
Pay Templates: Usually, the cost is pulled from the Pay Rate Template listed in the employee's "Pay Run Defaults."
Manual Rates: If a pay rate was entered by hand (manually), the system will use that rate instead.
Work Rules: If an employee has a "Pay Condition Rule Set," the system will automatically add any extra costs or entitlements (like overtime or special rates) defined by those rules.
In short: the system automatically combines the employee's base rate with any special rules or manual overrides to figure out the total cost for that shift.
Understanding Allowances and Viewing Costs
Once the system identifies the correct pay rate, it also checks for any extra benefits the employee should receive, such as a Clothing Allowance.
To see exactly how a shift was priced:
Click on the shift in the schedule.
Select "Cost Breakdown" from the menu that appears.
This will show you a clear list of the specific pay rates and allowances used to calculate the total cost for that shift.
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:
- Go to the "Employee Schedule" page
- From the actions bar, click the "Recalculate shift costs" button
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.
Explore related content:
- How do I enable shift notifications for an employee | Payroll FAQ This FAQ answers a common user question we receive around how do I enable shift notifications.
- Setup and manage rostering roles | Payroll Web Platform This feature allows you to create a roster group such as front of house serving staff that you can then assign to your employees when entering their shift details.