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Setting up Alternate Rates for Team-Based Pay

Pay employees different hourly rates depending on which team they work in.

This article explains how to enable and configure Alternate Rates for employees, and how they apply when staff work shifts in different teams.

Alternate Rates are useful when employees perform different roles across teams or departments that pay different hourly rates. For example, an employee may work as a Supervisor in one team and a Team Member in another, with different pay rates applying depending on where the shift was worked.

In this article

What Alternate Rates do

Every employee has a base hourly rate configured in their Employment Conditions.

Alternate Rates allow you to override that base rate for specific teams. When an employee works a shift in a team with an Alternate Rate configured, they will be paid that rate instead of their default base rate.

When the employee works in any other team, their normal base rate applies.

This is useful when:

  • An employee performs different roles across teams

  • Staff cover shifts in departments with different pay rates

  • You need team-specific pay rates without creating multiple employee profiles

Note: Alternate Rates may also be referred to as:

  • Additional Rates (in Settings)

  • Team based alternate rates (on employee profiles)

These all refer to the same feature.

Before you start

To configure Alternate Rates, you will need:

  • Administrator access to enable the feature in organisation settings

  • The Edit Wages permission for the employees you want to update

  • Employees assigned to the relevant teams

Teams will only appear in the dropdown if the employee is already assigned to them or has previously worked shifts in them.

How to set up Alternate Rates

Step 1: Enable Alternate Rates for your organisation

Alternate Rates are disabled by default and must first be enabled in Feature Management.

  1. Go to Settings > Feature Management

  2. Locate Allow Additional Rates

  3. Toggle the setting On

Once enabled, the Team based alternate rates section will appear in employee Employment Conditions.

Step 2: Add Alternate Rates to an employee

  1. Open the employee’s Staff Profile

  2. Navigate to Pay Conditions

  3. Select Edit these Conditions

  4. Locate Team based alternate rates

  5. From the Team dropdown, select the team you want to configure

  6. Enter the hourly rate in the Rate field

  7. Repeat for additional teams if required

  8. Save the Employment Conditions

Each rate is saved against a specific team. You can configure as many Alternate Rates as needed.

Editing or removing Alternate Rates

To edit an Alternate Rate

Update the value in the Rate field and save the Employment Conditions.

To remove an Alternate Rate

Click the trash icon beside the team row, then save.

To remove all Alternate Rates

Delete each configured row and save, or disable Allow Additional Rates in Feature Management.

Disabling the feature hides the section but does not permanently remove the saved Alternate Rates.

If an Alternate Rate is removed for a team, future shifts worked in that team will revert to the employee’s base hourly rate.

FAQ

I enabled the setting but the “Team based alternate rates” section doesn’t appear

The employee’s Employment Conditions must be saved at least once before the section becomes available.

If you are creating new Employment Conditions:

  1. Save the conditions first

  2. Re-open the Employment Conditions

  3. Edit the record again

A team I want to configure is missing from the dropdown

The employee must already be assigned to that team or have previous work history in it.

To resolve this:

  1. Assign the employee to the team

  2. Return to Employment Conditions

  3. Re-open the Alternate Rates section

How do Alternate Rates interact with overtime and penalties?

The Alternate Rate replaces the employee’s base hourly rate for shifts worked in that team.

Overtime, penalties, and other pay multipliers are then calculated using the Alternate Rate, exactly the same way they would be calculated using the base rate.

No separate overtime configuration is required.

Does disabling “Allow Additional Rates” delete configured rates?

No.

Disabling the feature:

  • Hides the Alternate Rates section

  • Stops Alternate Rates from applying during payroll calculations

However, all configured values are preserved and will reappear if the setting is enabled again.

Can I bulk configure Alternate Rates for multiple employees?

Not through the UI.

Alternate Rates must currently be configured individually on each employee profile.

For integrations or scripted updates, the REST API supports:

  • GET

  • PUT

  • DELETE

via:

/users/{id}/alternate_rates

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