Contract Options

This article will review the various options you are able to adjust when editing and creating a contract. 

Contract Options: Details

Each contract has a collection of options that will restrict an employee's working hours, allocate them holidays, and change the reports that can be seen.

Contract Details

• Contract Title - The name of the contract.
• Description - Short description of the contract for managers.
• Contract Type - This groups different contracts together and can change the language used for a contract. For example, freelancers sign an agreement, volunteers sign terms & conditions, and employees sign an employment contract.

Contract Documents

• Default Contract Document - This is a digital document that the staff member is required to sign online*. Setting up a default digital contract enables the online signing of employment contracts.
  
  *To have document options appear under this option, you must create a contract document for the contract, which can be copied and pasted from Word. Once created, you can use the same Contract Document on multiple contracts. This will force staff to sign a digital copy of the contract document if they’ve not yet signed one or the previous document has expired.

Contract Hours

• Period - The time over which the following hour limits should be applied.
• Start Date - This is when the period starts. The system will automatically calculate periods before and after this date. It’s designed to roll each year.
• Expected Minimum Hours - For permanent & contracted staff, this will be the number of hours you expect them to complete each contracted period. The TOIL settings then allow reporting on rolled hours month to month. For casual staff, this is purely advisory and allows a report to be shown on how many hours each employee has completed during this period.
• Expected Minimum Hours: Exclude Dates - This allows you to tell the system not to apply the expected minimum hours for these staff members during the dates listed in the Exception Dates. It’s perfect for staff who only work hours during specific terms or periods.
• Swapping Shifts - This setting instructs the system on what to do if the staff member tries to reduce their hours below their contracted minimum expected hours.

Different Hours for Contract Date Sets

This option allows you to set up a minimum number of hours based on the holiday set you are working on. This means you can have more control over hours for different blocks in the year and have three levels of contracted hours based on date ranges.

Date Set One
Special Hours: Date Set One - This allows you to set different expected hours during certain date periods. Create / Edit the dates using Contract Date Sets.

Date Set Two
Special Hours: Date Set Two - This allows you to set different expected hours during certain date periods. Create / Edit the dates using Contract Date Sets.

Contract Options: Working Pattern

The working pattern tab allows you to specify exactly what times of day a staff member works and the days of the week. This is particularly useful for part-time or staff members working unusual shift patterns. This means that the system is not looking at hours per period; instead, it is based on their scheduled shifts.

Absences will only be deducted on working days and if they have a shift scheduled. Based on your working pattern, the system will automatically know which days you are eligible for sick pay. 

If you have staff working compressed hours, you can specify here what your full-time contract would look like under standard working days.

• Standard Working Days
  These are the regular working days staff members will be expected to work under this contract. You can now specify whether this will include morning and evening or both.
• Normal Hours per full day
  This option allows you to choose how many hours are in a standard working day, excluding breaks. This is used in various parts of the system. If shifts can vary greatly, try to provide an average.
• Normal Hours per half-day
  This option allows you to choose how many hours are in a half day, excluding breaks. This might be different from half of the full working day if you exclude longer breaks that are not included.
• Normal Day Start Time
  This is the default start time for the first half of a working day; this is used to help calculate regular working hours and requests that fall outside of a normal working day.

Compressed Hours

There is also built-in support for staff members who want to work compressed hours. What this means is that a staff member would be able to work a ‘full week’ in fewer days by working more hours each day that they are working.

To use this feature, you must first ensure that you have set up the ‘normal’ or default hours for full-time workers in your contract. To do this, you will first need to go to edit the contract that will be used, and under the working pattern, select the number of days and hours that would be considered ‘full time’, i.e. Monday to Friday, 7 hours a day.
When doing this, ensure that you are working on the correct contract and that the staff member you want to implement compressed hours for has been assigned to this contract.

Then, to set up compressed hours for a particular staff member, you must go into ‘manage contract’, which can be found under a staff member’s profile. Then go to 'edit the contract', and select their standard working days (i.e. Monday & Tuesday).

The key point here is to ensure that under the ‘Less than Full Time?’ option, you have selected the ‘as per their contracted hours’ option, as this means they will not be miscalculated as part-time workers.


Once this is input, this will then automatically flag the staff member as working compressed hours, as can be seen when viewing their contract details on their profile, or going to manage a staff member’s contract.

Contract Options: Breaks, Rests & Limits

Basic Limits

• Schedule Limit: Maximum Hours - This limit is used by the intelligent schedule creation tool when assigning shifts. It will never assign more hours than this setting within a given contract period. Staff can still be manually assigned or take additional shifts above these hours.
• General Limit: Maximum Hours - This hard limit is designed to prevent staff from working too many hours in a given time period. The 'Overtime Rule' controls what happens once the limit is reached.
• General Limit: Overtime Rule - This setting decides what should be done once the employee reaches the maximum hours per period. The options include:
  
  
  • Never allow staff to be scheduled or paid in excess of these hours - This option is for staff with legal limits on their work hours (Tier 2 and Tier 4 visas, for example). They will never be allowed to be scheduled for more than the maximum hours, and wage sheets will be blocked if the hours are exceeded until the issue is resolved.
    
    
  • Allow additional hours and pay staff or allow TOIL - The max hours will be used only for advisory reports.
    
    
  • In general, do not allow staff to be assigned additional hours; allow managers to override via assigned shift only - This will prevent the hours from being breached by additional shifts or cover shifts. Managers can override this by assigning a shift via the shift grid only. All other ways of assigning a shift or extending hours on a shift will be blocked.
    
    
  • Never allow staff to be assigned additional hours but pay or allow TOIL for any overtime as normal - This will prevent a staff member from being assigned any additional hours. Still, if they are clocked in for longer, this will not block a wage sheet and will allow the payment.
    
    
• General Limits: Exclude Dates - This allows you to tell the system not to apply the general limit hours for these staff members during the dates listed in the Exception Dates. It’s perfect for staff working longer hours outside of term dates or particular periods.

Basic Enforced Rest

• Enforced Rest - These settings will enforce a break between shifts once they reach a certain length. If a shift is X hours long, it will not allow a shift before or after this shift for the number of hours specified.

Basic Overnight Enforced Rest

• Overnight Enforced Rest - This enforces the specified period if the shift passes over midnight; rest periods can be enforced for short shifts if they are worked late at night.
• Breaks - Here, you can select the break policy you want to use when the staff member works under this contract.

Additional Restrictions (Including WTD)

Here, you can choose which contract restrictions should be enforced on this contract. You can create your own contract restrictions under Pay > Contracts > Restriction Rules.

Breaks Policy 

Here, you can choose which set of break rules should apply to this contract. To create a break policy under System > Absence and Breaks > Break Policies. 

You can configure a default break policy to add more break policies and assign them to different contracts. This means staff can be entitled to different breaks depending on their contract (and with multiple contracts, they can use different break policies for different skills).

Contract Options: Holiday

• • Earning Holiday - How should staff earn holiday hours within this contract? 
    This can be fixed entitlements, pay-as-they-earn claims and more.
    By default, the earn and claim holiday is paid out at the hourly rate of pay for the hours earned. Alternatively, you can choose to have an hourly rate change. Since the holiday pay was earned, then the rate will be the previous rate of pay.
  • Calculation Method
    This allows you to choose whether to calculate holiday based on actual shifts scheduled or simply allow full and half days to be booked. There is also the option here for complex calculation, which allows for holiday requests to include partial hours. However, this requires both shifts and time entries. If you choose the complex calculation, holiday allowances will be based on the actual shifts scheduled, which requires you to input shifts and time entries manually to be effective.
  • Show Entitlement As
    This allows you to show your holiday entitlement as raw hours or days.
  • Holiday Entitlement
    These settings will only appear for permanent or contracted staff. You can set up automatic holiday payments in pay elements for casual staff.
    The entitlement is a starting point for holiday allowances over the course of the business year. The year start date can be set under System > Configuration >  Global Settings. See Holiday for more information on how holidays work in StaffSavvy.
  • Maximum Days per week
    Decide whether there will be a limit on how many days are deducted during the week. Maximum of 7 days per week to be deducted.
  • Existing Shifts
    This option decides whether you want holiday days to be deducted from a staff member’s working pattern exclusively or to only deduct days within their working pattern when they also have shifts booked. 
  • Partial Day Breaks
    This option means that you are able to choose whether to ignore or include breaks as a part of pay calculations when factoring in partial days. You can choose whether to calculate their breaks or simply deduct the exact hours requested.
  • Add Holiday Time Entries
    This allows you to auto-add holiday time entries for approved or unapproved holidays. Recommended if using TOIL.
    • Earning Holiday
      How should staff earn holiday hours within this contract? 

    This can be fixed entitlements, pay as they earn, earn and claim and more.

    • Calculation Method

    This allows you to choose whether to calculate holiday based on actual shifts scheduled or simply allow full and half days to be booked.

  • National/Organisation Holidays
    These options determine if the various types of national holidays are deducted from their holiday entitlement or not. There are also options to auto-book in the days for these holidays. This will automatically add the holiday requests for the staff on this contract and deduct them from their entitlement (if that’s the option above).
  • Length Of Service Additional Entitlements

  This option increases holiday options in correlation with the length of service a Staff Member has given.

  • Rolling Allowance
    These options determine if unused/owed allowances can be rolled into the following year. You can also set a limit on how much can be rolled.
    Managers can still review and approve the rolling hours, but these settings will automatically be capped to save time.
  • Warnings and Request Blocking

  These options allow the exclusion of specific dates as options to be booked off for Holidays. Alternatively, you can set up a warning message if you request specific dates.

• vs

  • NEW: Additional Holiday entitlements
    
    This option is where you can enable alternative holiday pots for a contract.
    Holiday pots are used for cases where you might run out of a holiday in one pot but have other pots. Splitting this up is helpful if you have legal specifications that require you to separate holidays for specific reasons.
    In your holiday settings, your specific holiday pots will be a specific number of hours and will not be affected by earning and claiming holidays. An example might be staff receiving five days of holiday pay per annum.
    
    To set up holiday pots, create an absence type and add a new ‘absence reason’. Go into your Global Settings and Staff and Contracts > Holiday. Here, you can choose to set the amount of available hours.
  
  
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  Contract Options: Time Off / Time Owed In Lieu Settings
  
  

• TOIL Mode

   

  (Allows you to enable/disable TOIL tracking.)

  • Automatic TOIL Calculation - This is an automated management process for flexitime/TOIL. Using expected hours and actual recorded time, the system will report on how a staff member is doing against their expected hours. This can be seen at a glance on their profile and dashboard or managers will see a notification for all their staff who are under/over hours on their dashboard. This is the easiest process but requires staff to report all their hours.
    
    
  • Manual TOIL Requests This process allows staff to request TOIL hours to be added to their account. Managers receive notifications and approve/reject these requests. Staff can then view their approved hours and claim against their TOIL hours, with managers approving these claims similarly. It allows a manual but managed process to track TOIL or flexitime within the system.

• Enabled When

  This decides when we start counting TOIL based on how many hours the staff member has performed over their expected hours. 

• Roll time owned in blocks of:

  This allows you to limit how many hours can be rolled from a given period. This prevents too many hours from being rolled forward or back.

• Allow rolling of hours for:

  This option will specify how long rolled hours will be stored in your account until they can no longer be used. This prevents too many hours from being accrued. Time owed will expire if not used within the specified period.

• Limit on Rolled Hours

  This allows you to limit how many hours can be rolled forward/back. Any hours above this point should be discarded. This prevents too many hours from being accrued.

Contract Options: Absences

• Policy Set
  The absence policy determines any pay entitlements for absences such as sickness. You can have different absence policies for different staff members, so choose the correct absence policy for each contract.
• Sickness Review
  This allows you to choose whether to require all sickness periods to be confirmed by a manager.

Contract Options: Shifts & Time Entries

• Allow Shifts From
  This allows a contract to restrict where the staff member can receive shifts. For example, they might be ‘bank’ staff that can only manually assign shifts by managers rather than being included in schedules by default.
• Shift Confirmation or Acknowledgement
  The ability to require staff on this contract to either acknowledge their shifts (so you can see which have been seen and accepted) or confirm their shifts. Confirming also allows them to reject the shift if they cannot work it.
• Minimum Shift Length
  This is the minimum length of shift you can assign to someone on this contract. 
• Maximum Shift Length
  This is the maximum length of shift you can assign to someone on this contract.
• Minimum Paid Shift Length
  This will ensure all time entries are paid as though the staff member has worked at least this amount of time. Shift budgets, contracted hours and staffing costs will use this minimum length. Staff will be paid as though they have worked this time, even if they were clocked in for much less.
  It will not affect working restrictions, but it is used so staff can be paid the minimum amount for showing up for a short shift and then return to work later in the day.
  Note: Changing this setting will cause shifts and unapproved time entries to be re-calculated. 
• Time Entry confirmation
  By default, managers need to approve each time entry before it will go into a wage sheet.
  This option enables an additional stop where staff must confirm their approved time entries before they will be processed. So managers still approve the time entries, but then staff receive a notification that they can accept or question each approved time entry. Only confirmed time entries will be processed into a wage sheet.

• Budgets
  This option allows you to choose how the system budgets for staff on this contract. It allows you to provide different budget figures so that managers using the budget system cannot see their actual salary or rate of pay.
  • Expected/accurate times
    The system will use their expected rate of pay to calculate budgets.
  • Fixed cost per hour
    The system will ignore their expected pay rate and use this hourly rate in all cases.
  • Fixed budget per half-day
    The system will round any shift up to the nearest ½ day based on the hours in a day set on the previous pages. This is then budgeted using the figure provided.
    Note: working a few minutes over the boundary into two half days will be budgeted as a full day.
  • Fixed budget per full day
    The system will round any shift up to the nearest whole day based on the hours in a day set on the previous pages. This is then budgeted using the figure provided.
    Note: working a few minutes will still be budgeted as a full day.
    
    
• Lock Pay Element
  This option locks the staff member's pay elements for all of the skills covered by this contract so they can use their default skill rate. Alternatively, you can allow each skill to have a different pay rate.

• Override Pay Element
  Use this setting if you have contracted or permanent staff who are paid a fixed salary for their hours and are paid separately for any additional hours. When enabled, all hours below the maximum contracted hours in a given month will be set to the chosen pay element. The pay element should be set to 0 per hour.
  Once the employee has worked their maximum number of hours, any additional hours in the month will be paid as per the normal rates for the skills/roles that the employee has.

Full-Time Equivalent Options

This option allows you to customise a staff member’s contract by using a full time equivalent contract. Essentially this allows you to configure a full time contract and then set a staff member’s part time hours on their account alone. This will reduce their holiday, contracted hours and maximum hours accordingly. To use, go to a staff member's profile and under edit details > manage contracts > add a new entry, and a box will appear with options to edit this individual's contract. They will still be using the main contract type, but this option allows you to tailor the contract to an individual.

Note: We do not recommend that you rush to change all your contracts to FTE versions. We recommend this be tested on some dummy accounts first or applied to new starters first rather than changing the existing configuration that is working well for you.
This option can also change a staff member's working days if they differ from the default contract.
The option to reduce their contract is set on their contract when you assign them to the contract.

You can choose three types of less than full-time:

• Part-time (Reduced Days)
  This is used for staff members who work only on certain days rather than a full week. Once chosen, you can choose which days of the week they will be working. This is completed in morning and afternoon sections so that you can add half days.
  The system will calculate an FTE figure by comparing the number of half days selected for this staff member to the contract default.
• Part-time (Reduced Hours)
  This can be used when staff members always work fewer hours each day. For example, if the default contract was 9am - 5pm, these workers might work 9am - 12pm. This is then calculated by percentage, so if a staff member is working 50% of the regular contracted hours, you would put 0.5 into the box. This will reduce their working hours per day by this percentage.
• Part-time (Regular Repeating Shifts)
  This is perfect for staff with complex working patterns set using Regular Repeating Shifts. The system will review their regular repeating shifts, calculate the average number of hours per contract period and set this as their FTE figure. For example, if you have a two-week shift pattern with the first week having 30 hours of shifts and the second week having 0 hours, the average week will be calculated as 15 hours. If the contract is set to be 30 hours a week, the FTE figure will be 0.5 (50%).

This is particularly useful if your company has several staff members with a regular repeating shift pattern, as the system will work out their hours for them. Therefore, managers will not have to manually calculate the hours worked for every single staff member using this type of shift pattern. Holiday allowances will be automatically calculated based on the FTE figure.

Different working days
If your staff member works the contracted hours as per the contract but on different days compared to the contract settings, then you can set this in the contract settings too. Just uncheck Default Contract days.