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The problem they solve

Payroll systems such as Xero and MYOB do not work out penalty rates or overtime themselves. They expect to receive hours already split by pay category: 6 hours ordinary, 2 hours evening, 4 hours Sunday. Without Pay Rules, RosterMates exports plain hours (plus public holiday hours in New Zealand) and the split has to be done by hand. With Pay Rules, every approved day carries its own pay lines and the exports, the Summary page and RosterMatePay all use them.

Where the split appears

Pay lines are generated the moment a day is approved on the Timesheets page. Each row gets a layered "pay lines" button next to the allowance button; hovering shows the split (for example "Ordinary 6h · Evening 2h · Overtime 1h") and clicking opens the day's lines. The Summary page prices days from their pay lines, the earnings breakdown on payslips lists each category, and the Xero, KeyPay and CSV exports send one line per category.

Pay Rules are not compliance advice

The starter templates are starting points only. Award multipliers, thresholds and loadings change at every annual wage review, and your award or agreement may differ from the template. You are responsible for entering the rates that apply to your staff and for keeping them current.

Start from a template

Open Settings → Pay Rules and pick a template: Hospitality (AU), Retail (AU), Overtime + public holidays (NZ), or a blank set. The template creates the pay categories it needs and a rule set that becomes the location default. Australian companies are also offered the hospitality and retail starting points in the first-login setup wizard.

Pay categories

A pay category is a rate: a multiplier against the employee's base hourly rate plus an optional flat loading per hour. Sunday at 1.50× on a $30 base pays $45 an hour; Night at 1.00× plus $3.75 pays $33.75. Each category also carries the code the payroll system knows it by — a Xero earnings rate, a KeyPay pay category id, or a code for the CSV export. The Ordinary category can never be deleted. A category that has already been used on a timesheet is deactivated rather than deleted so history stays intact.

Rule sets

A rule set holds the terms of one award or agreement. Day rates give the category for each day of the week and for public holidays. Time-of-day loadings are windows such as 7pm–midnight (evening) or midnight–7am (night) that pay a different category on the days you choose; they normally apply only on ordinary days, with a switch to apply them on weekends and public holidays too. Overtime has daily and weekly thresholds, first-band hours (for example the first 2 hours at time-and-a-half, then double time), whether casuals earn overtime, and whether overtime replaces the weekend or holiday rate. Casual loading is percentage points added to the multiplier for casual employees — Sunday 150% plus 25% loading pays 175%, the way Australian awards express it; employees are casual when their contract type in Manage is set to Casual. Minimum engagement tops shorter shifts up to the minimum in the day's base category. Breaks set the unpaid break used when estimating rostered cost and an optional no-break penalty category for hours worked beyond a threshold without a recorded break.

Who a rule set applies to

The default set applies to everyone. Give a position its own set on the Pay Rules page (kitchen and front of house on different terms) or give an employee their own set in Manage → employee → Employment → Pay Rules. The engine resolves the employee's set first, then the position's, then the location default. The Employment tab also has Award / Agreement and Classification labels, which are display and payroll-matching fields only.

Test a shift

The Test a shift panel runs a hypothetical shift — date, start, end, break, base rate, casual, public holiday, hours already worked that week — through a rule set and shows the split with rates and amounts. Use it to check a template against your award before it reaches a real timesheet.

Approval generates the lines

Pay lines are worked out from the worked start and end times behind the approved hours (clock times when Actual Hours is chosen, otherwise the rostered shift) and the paid hours after breaks and adjustments. Approving from the mobile app carries the same times. Unapproving a day removes its lines; re-approving regenerates them. Weekly overtime counts across the pay week, so approving a later day can add overtime to that day.

Editing a day's lines

Open a row's pay lines button on the Timesheets page before you approve the day. Pick the hours first (Shift hrs or Actual hrs), then add a line for part of them — for example 2 hours of Overtime at × 1.5. Type the multiplier (1.5 = time and a half, 2 = double time), or a $/h rate with the pay-rates permission. A line re-prices only its own hours: on a 10-hour day, a 2-hour overtime line pays those 2 hours at time and a half and the other 8 hours are paid normally (by the rules when the day is approved, or at the ordinary rate). Lines can't add up to more than the hours selected for the employee that day, including any adjustment. Hours on a hand-added line don't count towards weekly overtime, so the same hours are never paid as overtime twice. Once the day is approved its lines are locked; unapprove it to change them. Restore generated lines removes your lines, and "No pay rules today" removes every line for that employee-day and keeps it that way — the hours still go to payroll as plain hours.

Overtime, simply

There are two ways to pay overtime, and you can use either or both.

• By hand, for one day: on the Timesheets page, add a line to the day for the overtime hours and type the multiplier (see Editing a day's lines). Use this when overtime is a one-off or agreed case by case.
• Automatically, by a rule: in the rule set's Overtime section, set "After hours per day" (for example 8 — every paid hour past 8 in a day is overtime) and/or "After hours per week" (for example 40 — every paid hour past 40 in the week is overtime). Pick the category those hours pay in "First band category". To pay time and a half for the first hours and double time after that, set "First band hours" (for example 2) and an "After first band" category.

Overtime is always taken from the end of the day: the last hours worked are the overtime hours. Daily overtime is worked out first; weekly overtime only counts hours that weren't already daily overtime, so no hour is paid as overtime twice. The overtime week starts on Monday and is counted across the employee's approved days, so approving a later day can turn some of that day's hours into overtime. Unticking "Casuals earn overtime" leaves casual employees out. "Overtime replaces weekend / holiday rates" decides what happens when overtime falls on a Sunday or public holiday: ticked, the overtime rate is paid instead; unticked, those hours keep their weekend or holiday rate and only ordinary hours become overtime. If your agreement pays the higher of the two, untick it.

The Test a shift panel shows how a shift splits before it reaches a real timesheet.

Recalculating

When you change the rules of an existing rule set, saving asks for the date the changes apply from. Shifts before that date keep the rules they had. A past date recalculates approved shifts from that date onwards straight away; a future date changes nothing until that date, and the rule set shows the change as scheduled. Nothing further back is ever recalculated automatically. The Recalculate button on the Pay Rules page rebuilds any date range with the rules that applied on each date; lines added by hand and days marked "no pay rules" are kept, and the rules price the rest of those days around them.

Roster and event cost

With the pay-rates permission, the Rosters page shows a labour-cost pill for the selected week and the Events page shows a cost badge on each event, both worked out from the same rules over the rostered shifts. They are estimates: unpaid breaks are the ones set on each shift, unassigned slots and employees without an hourly rate are not costed, and the approved timesheet decides the real split.

Xero

Days with pay lines post one timesheet line per category, mapped to the Xero earnings rate set on the category (Settings → Pay Rules, or the mapping panel in the Xero export). Unmapped categories fall back to the ordinary earnings rate, and the public holiday category to the public holiday rate. Paid leave can be given its own earnings rate in the same panel. Days without pay lines export exactly as before.

KeyPay (Employment Hero Payroll)

Connect KeyPay in Settings → API's with an API key and business id. Each employee's Payroll Employee ID must be their numeric KeyPay employee id and each pay category's Payroll Code its KeyPay pay category id. The Summary export then posts one timesheet line per category. This connection has not yet been verified against a live KeyPay business.

Pay lines CSV

The Pay lines CSV export on the Summary page writes one row per employee, day and category — plus allowances and leave — with payroll codes, hours, rate and amount. It suits MYOB, Reckon and any payroll that imports a CSV. Days without pay lines appear as ordinary hours.

Crystal, iPayroll, Smartly and RosterMatePay

Crystal, iPayroll and Smartly keep exporting hours the way they always have. RosterMatePay and IRD payday filing price days with pay lines from the lines, so gross pay matches the Summary page.