Frequently asked questions

Yes, if you have entered an hourly rate for the staff member you can pay staff overtime by entering a pay rate multiplier beneath the shift hours that you want to pay in addition to their salary. If you only want to pay their normal hourly (in addition to their salary) rate then your pay rate multiplier with be "x1".

Sometimes certain days, duties or shifts can attract different pay rates. All these pay rate exceptions can now be calculated automatically by Findmyshift once entered in to the system. These entries are called rate exceptions and can be added individually to specific staff members or added to all staff (globally). Global rate exceptions become particularly useful when it's required to pay all staff double time on Sundays, or time and a half on after 7pm. Specific staff entries can be configured in the same way, but only apply to the one staff member.

Both types of rates exceptions are added in a similar fashion however the global rate exceptions are from beneath the rota settings, whilst the staff specific rate exceptions are added on a staff's profile.

Once you've clicked on "Exception" from either screen, you can then begin by clicking on "Add a new exception". You will then be prompted to enter in details about this exception, including a description, the rate amount, when and where it should apply. When it comes to entering in the new rate this can be done in a number of ways. You can use a multiplier for situations like double time, or you can enter a fixed monetary value, for example to double your staff's standard rate, you would enter "x2" as the rate. To enter a fixed rate of £12.90, simply enter 12.90. Once you've entered your exceptions click save to continue.

You can, however because time off entries are stored as a date range and don't store the start/finish time, you can't specify that it's a morning or afternoon. You can however add "Morning off" or "Afternoon off" in the notes of the time off entry so it is shown on the rota.

You can also set the allowance deduction to 0.5 days if you're tracking time off in the reports.

If you want to be able to schedule people on the same day as one of their half days off, you'll need to make sure that under the settings of your rota you have "Allow staff shifts to overlap their time off", otherwise the system won't let you save your changes.

Yes, rate exceptions will affect day rates in the same way they affect hourly rates. Time-off pay rate multipliers will also affect day rates.

If you're tracking staff costs or generating payroll reports you may find the need to deduct unpaid breaks from staff shifts. Rather than splitting the shift into two parts, you an simply add an unpaid break beneath the shift. An unpaid break is just a comment in the format "1 hour break" or "30 minutes break". It can be any amount of time you like, eg. "1.5 hours break" or "90 minutes break".

Unpaid breaks can also be used in combination with overtime rates. So if you've already added an overtime rate beneath your shift, you're free to place the unpaid break above or below the overtime rate.

If your staff's holiday allowances reset at different times of the year you will need to run the time off report multiple times, once for each staff member.

When calculating holiday, Findmyshift does not automatically reset the allowances on any specific date of the year. Instead, each time you run a report your staff allowances begin at zero, and for each day of the report the allowance will increase. As an example, if you run a report for a six month period and your staff have a 20 day allowance over the year, the report will show an allowance of 10 days, regardless of the date range.

Please note that the holiday start date option on the settings screen does not impact the time off report in any way, other than acting as a short-cut by selecting the default date range when you first open the report. Staff allowances are not reset on this date.

If you need your staff allowances to roll-over from one year to the next, you would need to start the time off report when their first holiday allowance began. If your report spans multiple years the holiday allowances will accumulate as there is no automatic allowance reset.

Day rates allow you to pay your staff a fixed amount for any shifts they work starting on any one day. Day rates can be configured to only be paid after a certain amount of hours are worked. Day rates will override any hourly rates paid and will appear in the reports as "Day rate" and can be used in conjunction with rate exceptions, as hourly rates can be.

Depending on your time zone you may have shifts that overlap the end of daylight savings time. If a shift overlaps the end of daylight savings time you may notice an hour is added to the total hours.

Yes, when setting up your day rates you can set the minimum hours required for the day rate to be payable. If this minimum hours is not met then your staff will be paid their hourly rate instead of a day rate. Alternatively, for one of occassions where you won't pay a shift you can enter a "x0" pay rate multiplier below the unpaid shift.

Yes, you can pay staff by the hour even if they have day rates set. To pay staff by the hour you need to enter a pay rate multiplier beneath the shift you want to pay by the hour.

Yes, you can enter both salaries and day rates for staff. Day rates will only be used on weekends or if you apply a rate multiplier to the shift.

Depending on your time zone you may have shifts that overlap the start of daylight savings time. If a shift overlaps the start of daylight savings time you may notice an hour is missing from the total hours.

If your staff are normally paid by the day but have worked some extra payable hours, you can pay both a day rate and an hourly rate on the same day by using a pay rate multiplier on the extra hours.

Salaries can be calculated in one of two ways, depending on whether "Paid monthly" is selected.

When "Paid monthly" is selected it is assumed that staff will be paid the same amount each month (regardless of the amount of days) and that salaries should only be associated with working days (weekdays) of the month. Based on this we take the yearly salary and divide it by 12 to get the fixed monthly salary. Then for each month of the year we establish a day rate by dividing the fixed monthly salary by the amount of working days (weekdays) in that particular month. This method of calculation means that the day rate will change month to month, but will always add up to their yearly salary over 12 months.

When "Paid monthly" is not selected it is assumed that staff will be paid the same amount each working day of the year (weekdays). Based on this we take the yearly salary and divide it by the amount of working days (weekdays) in the year to get the day rate. This method of calculation means that the monthly total will change month to month, but will always add up to their yearly salary over 12 months.

Sick days can be tracked easily by adding them as time off with a type of "Sick leave". When sick leave is added this way, the time off report can tally the amount of sick days taken per staff member. Each employee's sick day allowances can be set on their staff profile.

Hourly rates, day rates and salaries are only ever visible to administrators and report viewers. Managers and staff members will never see these rates but can see pay rate multipliers that are entered on the rota.