Main Guide to Contracts

A contract in StaffSavvy is a set of rules to govern the employment of a staff member. A contract can include online signature of a contract document or it can simply be used to match a physical contract handled offline.

Contracts can be assigned to cover just specific roles on an employee or cover all roles. This allows a staff member to be contracted for specific hours on some roles and also be a casual staff member for other roles.

You can find a contract by searching the contract title.

Creating a Contract

To create a Contract you first need to go to go to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts.

Then at the top right of the page in the Actions Bar you will see there is an Add Contract button. Click through to this and you will be taken to a new page to begin creating a contract. 

This next section will discuss the options you have regarding specific details in your new contract. 

 

Contract Types

Contract types allow you to group different contracts together for reporting purposes. They also allow you to change how the system refers to a contract for those staff members on the contract.

For example, employees will see it called a Contract. Volunteers might have it called terms and conditions etc.

On the Manage Contracts Page, you can use the Edit Contract types option in the actions menu to edit, add and remove contract types.

Contract Types: Additional emails notes

Additional email notes can now be added to all shift emails automatically based on contract types. So freelancers can receive Terms and Conditions directly in their email notifications automatically.

This can be done when creating a contract type by going to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts. From here go to ‘Manage Contract Types’ from the actions menu. From here there is the option to ‘Add a New Contract Type’ from the action menu.

From here you can add any notes specific to contract types or attach a form. This is useful for freelance contracts where there may be forms that need to be added automatically .

Contract Options: Details

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

Contract Details

• Contract Title - The name of the contract.
• Contract Type - This groups different types of contract together and can change the language used about a contract, so freelancers sign an agreement, volunteers sign terms & conditions and employees sign an employment contract.

Contract Documents

• Contract Document - This feature enables online signing of employment contracts. You will need to Create a Contract Document to be used for the contract and this can be a copy and paste 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.

*In the latest update Documents will no longer be automatically assigned by the system. 
However, the default contract document for that contract will be pre-selected when assigning a new contract to a staff member so that this signing request will be added.

This allows the documents to be requested but only when desired by the manager assigning the contract. This is a slight change in the process and will help reduce incorrectly issued contract documents.

Contract Hours

• Period - The length of 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 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.

Contract Options: Breaks, Rests & 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 working too many hours in a given time period. Exactly what happens once the limit is reached is controlled by the Overage Rule.
• General Limit: Overage Rule This setting decides what should be done once the employee reaches the max hours per period.
  • Never allow staff to be scheduled or paid in excess of these hoursUse this option for staff who have legal limits on hours they can work (Tier 2 and Tier 4 visas for example). They will never be allowed to be scheduled for more than the max hours and wage sheets will be blocked if the hours are exceeded until the issue is resolved.
  • Allow additional hours and either pay staff or allow TOILThis means the max hours will be used for advisory reports only.
  • In general, do not allow staff to be assigned additional hours but allow managers to override via assign shift onlyThis will prevent the hours being breached by additional shifts or covershifts. 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 normalThis will prevent a staff member from being assigned any additional hours but if they are clocked in for longer then 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 who are allowed to work longer hours outside of term dates or particular periods.
• Enforced Rest These settings will enforce a break between shifts once they reach a certain length. If a shift is X hours long then it will not allow a shift before or after this shift for the number of hours specified.
• Overnight Enforced Rest This enforces the specified period if the shift passes over midnight; it means that 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 is working under this contract.
• Additional Restrictions 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.

Contract Options : Holiday

• 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.

• Holiday Entitlement These settings will only appear for permanent or contracted staff. For casual staff, you can set up automatic holiday payments in pay elements.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.
• 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 any unused/owed allowances can be rolled into the following year. You can also set a limit of how much can be rolled.Managers will still be able to review and approve the rolling of hours but these settings mean they will automatically be capped to save time.

• Warnings and Request Blocking These options allow the exclusion of certain dates as options to be booked off for Holidays. Alternatively, you can choose to set up a warning message if certain dates are requested.

Contract Options: Time Off / Time Owed In Lieu Settings

• TOIL Mode Allows you to enable/disable TOIL tracking
  • Automatic TOIL CalculationThis 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 make requests for 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 in the same way.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 over the expected hours the staff member has performed. Roll time owned in blocks ofThis allows you to only roll hours in specific lengths.
• Limit on Rolled Hours This allows you to limit how many hours can be rolled from a given period. This prevents too many hours being rolled forward or back.

Contract Options: 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.
Note: We do not recommend that you rush to change all of your contracts to FTE versions. We recommend this is tested on some dummy accounts first or applied to new starters first rather than changing existing configuration that is working well for you.
This option can also be used to change the working days of a staff member if they are different 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 only work certain days, rather than a full working week. Once chosen, you will be able to choose which days of the week they will be working. This is completed in morning and afternoon sections so you can add half days.
The system will calculate a 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 in 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 who have complex working patterns that are 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, it will calculate the average week 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 to the contract settings then you can set this on the contract settings too. Just uncheck Default Contract days.

 

Multiple Contracts Holiday/Vacation

The system handles multiple holiday/vacation entitlements to be tracked and claimed based on the staff member’s multiple contracts. This means that staff can earn additional holiday under a secondary contract and claim these hours or days when requesting holiday/vacations.

Profile pages will display each holiday entitlement for each of their contracts.

When requesting time off, the system will display all of the valid entitlements and allow the staff member to choose which entitlements to put the request against.

Each of the entitlements will contain a full breakdown and have the normal holiday report to be able to report and carefully manage the holiday entitlement usage.

 

Multiple Contracts Weekly Availability 

You can now allow staff to provide different availability for each of their contracts. This is useful if you have staff working in different roles and need to specify their availability per contract.To use: The setting applies to all staff and is under Global Settings > Configuration tab > Contracts section
Note: Staff will need to review their availability once you make this change to ensure it is correct.

Absences

• Policy Set - The absence policy determines any pay entitlements for absences such as sickness. You can have different absence policies for different staff and choose the correct absence policy to be in place for each contract.
• Absence Policy Eligible Days - This allows you to set which days the policy can apply. For staff who work certain days, this should be marked as just those days.For staff who work shifts that change week to week, the policy can be set to use their scheduled shifts and the eligible days should all be selected on this screen.

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 be manually assigned 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 amount of time even if they were clocked in for much less. It will not affect working restrictions so staff can be paid the minimum amount for showing up to 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 here 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 rate of pay and simply 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 at the figure provided. Note: working just a few mins 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 full day based on the hours in a day set on the previous pages. This is then budgeted at the figure provided. Note: working just 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 roles covered by this contract to use their default role rate. Alternatively, you can allow each role to have a different rate of pay.
  • Override Pay Element - If you have contracted or permanent staff who are paid a fixed salary for their hours and are paid separately for any additional hours then use this setting. 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 be 0 per hour.Once the employee has worked their maximum number of hours then any additional hours in the month will be paid as per the normal rates on the skills/roles for that employee.

Assigning a Contract

You can assign a contract when an employee registers for the site, within their profile under Relationship Settings > Edit Details or via the Assign Contracts report. The date that the contract is assigned becomes the contract start date.

Detailed contract management is available via their profile. Under the actions menu, choose Edit Details > Manage Contracts.

From here, you are able to edit start and end dates for the contract, which roles it should cover and view past contracts.

You can set the system to block staff working without an active contract under the Staff Settings section of Configuration in ‘Manage Global Settings’.

If the contract type is enabled for a salaried staff, a salary box will be displayed to allow this information to be entered.

Uploading / Overriding Contract Documents

Under each contract within the ‘manage contract’ entries, you can manage the paperwork associated with the contract. This allows you to upload a pre-signed contract (e.g. a scan of a paper copy) or disable digital signatures completely.

You also have the option to assign a contract document that has previously been uploaded to it that is associated with that contract entry.

Contract Document Approval

By default, contract documents do not need approval. This allows for rapid assigning of documents. You can enable an approval process for contract documents within the Global Settings under Configuration.

There are two options: general approval and third-party approval. The general approval means someone with permission to edit contracts must approve a contract before it can be signed. This allows the contract document to be reviewed with the staff members details (and using the edit option detailed below, adjusted) before the staff member can see the document.

The third-party approval option extends the requirement so the approval must be made by a different manager to the one who assigned the document. For example Jane assigns a contract to Alice. Jack must now approve the contract document; Jane cannot approve the contract themselves. This provides a third-party check of the contract document.

Contract Document Customisation

If you have a contract document assigned to the contract, you’ll be able to preview the contract as the staff member will see it. On this preview, you also have the option to customise the contract to edit any of the content. Once saved, this document will be presented to the staff member to sign.

This option, combined with the approval process for contract documents allows you to review and adjust contract documents before the staff member is able to view them.

Contract Hours Reports

These reports allow you to see each employee within each contract and the hours they are performing against their min and max hours for any contract period. You can find this under Pay > Contracts > Contract Hours Report.

You can use the previous and next period buttons to jump between contract periods.

You can also view a detailed breakdown of the hours worked per employee. This report will be different depending on if the employee is allowed TOIL or not.

The TOIL report will include information on previous periods and a suggested action at the bottom if the employee owes or is owed hours. The non-TOIL version will simply report the hours compared to the employee’s maximum hours in this contract period.

Staff who are assigned to multiple concurrent contracts will appear in multiple reports.

Quick ‘Increase Salary’ option

The update now allows you to quickly increase a staff member’s salary by simply going to profile pages and Manage Contracts.

You can find this underProfile > Employment Details > Relationships.There you will be allowed to schedule a fixed change in salary or a percentage increase.

This can only be viewed and altered on a staff member with a salaried contract and does not apply to casual staff or freelancers.

Contract Date Sets

Date sets allow you to set date ranges when certain rules, expected hours or limits do not apply. This can be found under Pay > Contracts > Date Sets. It is particularly useful for the education sector, festival organisers or any organisation who have very busy or very quiet periods which affect the working rules.

You can create multiple Date Sets within the system for use by different contracts. These can each then have multiple date ranges contained within them.

For a university example, you might have a set of dates called “Out of term/semester”. This set would list all of the holiday/vacation dates within the university and could be used to remove working visa limits or change the expected weekly hours for affected staff.

You can continuously add dates to each Exception Date set so these can be kept up to date without having to edit every rule or contract that makes use of them.

Automatically block holiday/time off requests during certain periods

This option allows you to display warning messages to staff when they are requesting holiday or time off that cover certain periods of time.

You can also use the same option to block all requests during the dates provided. This is the ultimate option and no requests will be permitted during these dates.

To set up a date set (which can be used to either block or display warnings) go to Pay > Contracts > Date Sets.

Create a new date set or update an existing set. Simply add all of the date ranges you wish to exclude. If it’s a single date, then set the start and end dates the same.

Now, to assign the date sets to a contract. Go to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts. Edit your contract. Under the Holiday tab, find the Warnings and Request Blocking section.

You can choose different date sets for displaying warnings and blocking requests.

Contract Manipulation Rules

The contract manipulation rules are a very powerful set of rules that can be employed to update a staff member’s paid or worked hours based on a range of filters.

Create the rules under Pay > Contracts > Manipulation Rules.When editing or adding a new rule, you will be presented with a series of filters that you can use to tell StaffSavvy when to apply the rule. These can be between specific times, days, national or organisation holidays, when working so many days a week or when working over a number of hours.

Once the rule has been reached, you can tell the system to manipulate the paid hours and/or any hours deducted from the staff members contracted hours. For example, you can configure the rule to automatically pay double time on bank holidays; there are many, many possibilities.

The system will still maintain the actual hours worked and will use these for contract limits and rules; it is simply the hours paid that will be adjusted.

When a rule is in effect, a breakdown of the rules will be shown on both the shift details and the time entry details pages.

Shift budgets will take into account any of the contract rules too so that the predicted cost of a shift will be correct.

 

Manual Contract Documents 

Alternatively, you can manually choose the contract document for an employee rather than automatically assigning it.

This allows greater flexibility for staff on the same contract but to have different wording within their signed agreement. It also allows you to choose when to assign the document to the staff member for signature.

To use this option, disable the automatic contract document under the contract settings. It’s on the first tab within the Document Contract section.

Within a staff member’s profile, go to Edit Details > Manage Contracts. For the required contract, use the Documents button and choose either Choose Contract Document or Change Contract Document. This will allow you to choose the document you wish to assign. You will also then be able to view and edit the document if required.

 

Countersigned Contract Documents

Contract Documents can be set to have a manual countersign signature. Within the contract document, you can choose who should countersign the contract document. The system will notify that staff member once the new staff member has signed. They can then review and countersign the document.

When requiring a counter signature, you can further specify what role or position you want the counter signature to come from i.e. a manager, or someone with a certain access level.

You can then decide what access level, team, role or even specific staff member you want the signature to come from.

To use: Go to Pay > Contracts > Contract Documents and then enable counter signature..

There is also a countersigned report under Reports > Staff Reports > Contract Countersign Report.

This report shows all of the contracts that are awaiting countersignatures across the organisation.