This article is written for Location Managers and System Administrators and will cover:

• What are agreed hours?
• How to create and set up a work period 
• How to assign agreed working hours
• Bulk action agreed hours
• How to keep track of and view agreed hours while scheduling
• How to determine whether your employee will be paid overtime in excess of their agreed hours (AU)
• FAQs

What are agreed hours?

Agreed hours are the total hours (over a specific work period) that you and your employee have agreed upon at the time of employment, or they can also be amended during employment.

An employee with agreed hours would be required or expected to work the specified quantity of hours, depending on the employment contract, whether it's a guideline or a contractual agreement.

Assigning agreed hours in an employee's profile will help managers schedule them to their agreed and/or contracted hours.

Note: if your team member has an agreement to work shifts that occur on specific regular days or times over a specific work period (rather than the agreed total hours over the work period) then please instead read Set a Team member's regular hours.

Creating and setting up a work period

To set agreed working hours, you will first need to select the working period. This will determine which time frame the employee’s agreed hours will be calculated within.

The work period will dictate how you schedule employees and the time frame in which overtime is calculated. It is assigned to a single employee.

Note: Often a work period is the same as your business's pay period, aligning the two will simplify overtime calculations.

Important: when you set up a work period, you only need to do it once and the work period will remain available to be selected for other employees. It is not currently possible to delete any work periods you have previously created but you can create new ones.

To set up and assign a work period:

1. On the People tab, click on a Team member's name to edit their work period.

2. Select Employment from the left-hand side of the screen and click on Edit or Set work period.

3. In the Working hours section, open the Work period dropdown and select Create a new work period.

• Weekly, select which day of the week the period will begin
• 2-weekly, select the start date of the next period
• 4-weekly, select the start date of the next period

4. Once a work period is created, it will be saved as a global option. This means you don’t need to create a different work period for each employee, that work period will be available as an option for other employees.

If you try to create a work period that overlaps with one that already exists, we will automatically assign that employee to the existing work period.

Pro tip: the selected work period will determine the starting work week and how overtime will be calculated for employees.

Setting agreed working hours

To set working hour:

1. On the People tab, click on a Team member's name to edit their agreed working hours.

2. Select Employment from the left-hand side of the screen

3. Check a work period has been assigned to this employee and click on Edit or Set hours per period.

4. Enter the total hours and mins that you have agreed the employee will work in the specified work period then click Save.

Example 1:

Nina's agreed hours are 25 hours per week with a work period starting Monday

You should enter 25 hours in the Total hours per period section and select Weekly, starting Monday for the work period. This means Nina should be scheduled for 25 hours for each period from Monday to Sunday. At the beginning of each new Monday, Nina's hours will reset to 0.

Example 2:

Cam's agreed hours are 48 hours for a 2-week period, starting Thursday.

You should enter 48 hours in the Total hours per period section and select 2-weekly, starting Thursday for the work period. This means Cam should be scheduled for 25 hours for each period from Thursday to the Wednesday in 2 weeks time. Every 2nd Thursday Cam's hours will reset to 0.

In some cases, the hours entered can determine when overtime will be applied.

Bulk actioning agreed hours

Rather than set up agreed hours for each team member one at a time you can bulk action a number of employees at once in the People tab.

1. In the People tab, select all the employees you would like to bulk update agreed hours for.

2. Click on Bulk actions and select Set agreed hours from the drop-down menu.

3. Select the work period you would like to apply to this group of employees and click on Set total hours per period and then enter a value for the number of hours and minutes they have agreed to work in the selected work period.

4. Click Save.

Viewing agreed working hours in the schedule

Your employees' working hours will be visible next to their names in the Schedule tab. An arrow will indicate whether you have over or under-scheduled your employee against their agreed working hours. I can't see the arrow or tick in the schedule.

Simply hover over the employee's name in the schedule list and a tooltip will appear with information about your employee's agreed working hours. 

Example 1:

Emma has been scheduled for 14 hours this week. The down arrow tells us her hours are down on the agreed amount and then when we hover over her name a tooltip tells us she is 10 hours under the agreed hours for the work period Monday 10 Oct - Sunday 16th Oct.

Working hours and overtime

(applies to Part-time Australian industry awards & Hourly 1.5x overtime pay rates)

In Australia, many industry Awards require overtime rates to be applied for any time worked more than an employee’s agreed hours. Here’s an example of where you would use it:

You have hired Isabelle as part-time staff to work 30hrs a week, under the General Retail Industry Award (GRIA). The Award states that “For any time worked in excess of the number of hours agreed under clauses 10.5 or 10.6, the part-time employee must be paid at the overtime rate”. This means that the overtime rate will apply once Isabelle works over 30 hours for the week. The week period is determined by the selected work period.

To ensure overtime is calculated and paid in excess of an employee’s agreed hours, select the checkbox, Pay overtime if they work outside these hours.

Important note: this checkbox is only available when selecting a part-time industry Award, in Australian accounts

You may leave it unchecked for the following reasons:

• under the assigned industry Award, overtime is to be paid following the full-time award rule, which is usually hours worked in excess of 38 or 40hrs. This overtime calculation is already built into the selected award rate OR
• you want to use the agreed hours for scheduling purposes only and want overtime to apply following the full-time award rule.

Hourly 1.5 x overtime

When selecting the pay rate Hourly 1.5 x overtime, you have the option to customise the overtime threshold using the Total hours per period field. By default, overtime will be calculated after 40hrs within the work period.

Example

Cam's agreed hours are 64 hours for a 2-week period, starting Thursday

You should enter 64 hours in the Total hours per period section and select 2-weekly, starting Thursday for the work period. This means if Cam works 70 hours within the 2-week period if he will be paid at the overtime rate ($17.36 x 1.5) for the 6 hours.

Important note: this checkbox is available when selecting the Hourly (1.5 x overtime) pay rate

FAQs

Why can't I see the arrow or the tick against my employee's name in the schedule?

If you've set working hours for your employee but don't see the arrow, you will need to make sure the schedule view is aligned with the starting week of the selected work period for that employee.

Things to check:

• have you selected a schedule view that matches the set work period you've allocated to that employee? eg. if the employee has a 7 day work period then you will need to view the schedule in the Week by Area or Week by Team member view to ensure the arrows and ticks are visible
• does the first day of the week on your schedule match the first day of the employee's specified work period? eg. if the employee's work period begins on a Monday then your Schedule will need to start on a Monday to ensure the arrows and ticks are visible.

What happens if I create a shift that exceeds the agreed hours for that work period?

When adding a new shift, you will be warned if the shift exceeds the agreed hours. However, you will still be able to save and create this shift.

I want to pay my employees overtime in excess of the hours I added in, how do I do that? Why can’t I do this?

At the moment, only Australian customers who have part-time employees on the GRIA & FFIA Award will be able to use the overtime capabilities. We will slowly release it out to other awards - we will let you know once we’ve released it to an Award you are using. Full-time and Casual Awards have the overtime calculation built into the Award already, which is 38-40 hours, depending on the Award.

Do I have to create a work period for each employee? Can I assign a work period to all employees?

Once you have created a work period for an employee, you can assign the same work period to another employee. See Bulk actions.

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