This guide details each of the organization settings located under the 'Settings' menu in Workforce.com.

Use the links below if you would like to skip to a section of this guide:

How to edit your organization settings:

To access General Settings navigate to Settings > General

Public Holiday Region

Select which country / state your business is located in to pre-fill State and Federal public holiday dates into your account.

Public Holiday Dates

Enter the dates of any local public holidays not contained in the State or Federal public holiday templates - usually this is your local show day.

Note: If your organization operates across multiple public holiday regions, you can select the holiday region for each location under Workforce > Teams > Edit Location > Show advanced options

There are two options for how you would prefer to distribute the cost of salaried employees.

Expected hours in pay period

When using the 'split by hourly rate' method of salary costing, the salary is split by the expected hours in pay period - if the scheduled hours for a salaried employee exceed this number, the scheduled hours is then used in the calculation of the effective hourly rate in that period.

Show weekends on timesheets and schedules

If enabled, weekends will be shown on timesheets and schedules. If disabled, Saturdays and Sundays will not show up when viewing schedules or timesheets unless someone has clocked in on that day. This makes it easier to navigate Workforce.com if your business only operates on weekdays.

The permissions settings are a way to further customize staff permissions.

Receive Qualification alerts and expiries determines which permission level you want to receive an alert of an impending qualification expiry.

Allow team managers to see costs This setting controls whether team managers can see staff costs on schedules, staff profiles and timesheets. They will only be able to see costs for staff they manage.

If you want to only allow certain managers to see staff costs, turn this setting off and use the individual 'Can see staff costs' setting on staff profiles, as pictured below:

Protect manager wages (salaries or hourly rates) hides managers wages from other managers even if they can view them on the schedule. Managers can still view employee wages and general managers can still see team managers wages.

Allow team managers to edit/approve their own timesheets when this is unticked, Managers can still view their Timesheet, but won't be able to edit any times or approve their own timesheet.

Employees can add times to their own Timesheets allows employees to log into Workforce.com and fill in empty time entries. Employees won't be able to edit existing times, so this can be used as a way for employees to enter any times they forgot to clock at the Time Clock.

Employees can make changes to all timesheet fields allows employees to add allowances to their timesheet as well as add/change the earnings tags on the timesheet. These will still need to be approved by a manager. This is useful if you require further information from employees. For example, if you want employees to enter their own travel allowance, so they can enter the miles traveled.

Employees can view their Timesheet Export Summary allows staff to see the Timesheet Export Summary on their timesheets. The timesheet export summary shows a visual breakdown of how the gross pay was calculated for a timesheet. The main benefit of displaying the timesheet export summary is that employees can see when certain pay rates applied and why.

Allow employees to clock breaks enables a break button on the time clock or mobile app. This allows employees to record break times during shifts.

Allow employees to view their estimated wages when this is ticked, staff will view estimated gross wages for scheduled shifts in their app. These wages are clearly marked as estimated based on the schedule to ensure staff understand these might not accurately reflect what they will earn, especially if they work different hours to what they were originally scheduled.

Allow employees to view the full schedule allows staff to view the full schedule. You can select if you would like them to see the full schedule for the teams they work in or the entire location they work at.

Allow employees to view the full leave calendar this allows staff to view the full time off calendar for either the teams they work in or the entire location they work at. This only works with My Workforce.com and won't show staff the full calendar in their mobile app, they must have Workforce.com desktop login access enabled and they must access the calendar via the desktop site.

Allow Employees to enter leave requests allows employees to enter their own Leave requests on the Employee App and Workforce.com. When it's unticked, they won't see the Leave option. Click here for more information on employee unavailability and leave.

Employees can enter unavailability allows employees to enter their own unavailability on the Employee App and Workforce.com. When it's unticked, they won't see the unavailability option on either of these modes.

Allow staff to update qualifications if enabled, employees can update expiry dates, effective dates, and documents for any qualification that applies to them. Submissions require manager approval

You can set the default passcode length that is used when clocking in via a time clock here. This is useful for large organizations who will exhaust all possible 4 digit combinations, or if your organization already has a numerical code that employees need to remember of a different length

Schedule validations are colored flags that appear on shifts on the schedule to alert managers that a schedule rule or limit has been broken:

You can create rules that apply to all staff or create a custom rule for specific employees or groups of staff (filtered by tags, locations, ages, etc) as well as a specific date range or days of the week.

You can also block schedule publishing by ticking the "Yes, these validations should block schedule publishing" toggle which will give the following warning on the schedule:

Schedule start on changes the start day of your schedule. Note that this change will take some time to process, so we recommend making the change at the end of your day.

Use Case 1: Clock Lunch Break & Show Unpaid Breaks

Many customers want their employees to clock their lunch break, but would prefer to simply show records on the timesheet for shorter paid rest breaks.

In our example the system is set up for one unclocked paid break after 4 hours. A clocked unpaid break after 5, and second unclocked paid break after 7 hours of work.

Employees can still clock in and out the paid break if they want. The system will match the rule if they do.

Note: If you have automatic breaks turned on and the employee clocks a break, any unpaid automatic breaks will no longer apply to the time sheet.

Use Case 2: Clock all breaks paid and unpaid

Compliance focused customers sometimes prefer to have employees clock all breaks paid and unpaid. This provides strong evidence that the break was taken if there is ever a dispute. The downside is the additional time taken to review the additional punches.

To set this up, simply select the clock-in required flag on each break rule. This will stop the break from appearing on the time sheet unless it's physically clocked.

Use Case 3: Employee's don't clock any breaks

The final category of clients don't require their employees to clock in and out for any break. In this case, they can simply ensure they have not selected the 'clock in required' box and Workforce.com will automatically apply the break rule to the timesheet.

If everyone at your company has the same rules for breaks, then you can simply adjust the default break rules to suit your requirements.

Regulations will often define how long an employee can work before becoming entitled to a break. You can add each break that your employees are entitled to by creating or editing a break rule for each one.

Below Default, you can click on + New to add a custom rule set. This can be used for staff who have particular breaks apply that are different to the default:

1 - Apply to staff:

Click to select who you want to apply the automatic break to. This could be a particular age, or using any tag such as Casuals, Full Time or Level 2 staff. This can either relate to the Earnings Rules in your account or you can create Tags to group these staff together. For these staff, the default rule set will no longer apply.

Create the tag here in your account in Workforce.com.

2 - Enter Settings:

Enter the time, break length, and whether the break is paid, then click Create

You can also create multiple rules under the one rule set, when different break lengths apply to different shift lengths. It's important to remember that only one unpaid break will apply, but that all relevant paid breaks will apply.

See the below example, where the break lengths increase as the shift length increases. In this example, for an 8 hour shift the employee will receive one unpaid 30 minute break and two 10 minute paid breaks (for a total of 20 minutes paid breaks):

You can check that you have set the Automatic Breaks correctly by checking Timesheets for relevant staff to see this reflected:

Schedule

On schedules unpaid breaks will be automatically added. Currently, paid breaks are not displayed.

Breaks are enabled by default in your account, to turn it off just click the tick:

By default employee's are able to clock breaks using the time clock even if there are no breaks configured in the account. If you never want your employees to clock a paid or unpaid break, you can disable the permission under Custom Permission > Employee. Once the permission is turned off, any time an employee tries to clock a break, the system will instead create a second shift for the day.

This setting determines whether or not staff can clock-in via the mobile app. As per the options below, there are 3 configuration settings to choose from. If enabled for specific teams, a dropdown will appear which allows you to specify the desired teams. Once complete, be sure to update.

Time Clock rounding is used to automatically adjust times recorded on the Time Clock or Mobile App to factor time which was not worked time.

Why use Time Clock rounding?

When staff enter the workplace before their shift commences, you might still want them to clock-in even though it is before their shift start time. This means you have a record of who is in the workplace at that time, while ensuring that the times recorded in timesheets match the worked hours.

Timesheet rounding is optional. To apply no rounding to timesheets, leave these fields blank.

To understand the impacts of your changes - as you edit each setting, example scenarios are displayed in the blue box to the right of the rounding settings:

Smart rounding

Smart rounding sets the direction of rounding to be one-way, rounding time towards the shift. For example if an employee clocked in prior to their scheduled start time, smart rounding would round the time to the scheduled start time, however if the employee clocked in after the scheduled start time, the time would not round.

Rounding of times (minutes)

This specifies the time in which you wish to round times. This can represent increments to round to, or a time frame if used in combination with one or both of the following settings. You are also able to set different clock in and clock out rounding times.

Note:

If two clock-ins come through that are more than Maximum Shift Length hours apart, they will be put onto different shifts.

This is useful if someone clocks in at 11am, forgets to clock out, then clocks in again at 6am the next day. If the setting was a large number of hours, we could consider the second clock-in to be a break on the first shift, and put them on the same shift.

The minimum duration between shifts is a subsequent check on the one above. If a clock-in comes through, and the current "open" shift we have is clocked out, we use this setting to determine if this is part of a break, or a new shift. This setting only applies to shifts that span overnight.

By default the maximum shift length is set to 14 hours while the minimum duration between shifts is 8 hours. Generally, we advise just leaving these settings as is, as they cover the majority of businesses and scenarios.

As with all the Settings, if you make any changes, don't forget to click Update Settings at the bottom to save.

An email is received daily at 8am with any new or updated unavailability entries.

You can also specify the minimum number of days notice required for unavailability. This means that staff will not be able to enter availability within x days of the current date. By default this is set to 4 but can be changed by entering a new number in the field and clicking Update Settings

When an employee applies for leave the request will be sent to the manager, from there they will be able to either accept or decline the request. This will then notify the employee and action the request in Workforce.com (both App and my.workforce.com)

By default, Workforce.com assumes that staff generally only take leave on weekdays. If your business runs 7 days a week, you’ll need to enable this option so the leave is calculated and exported if it's on a weekend.

When a leave application is being entered into Workforce.com, you'll notice the total hours auto-populates. This information is pulled from the setting Default leave request length (hours).

By default, this is set as 7.6 hours as this is generally what most businesses use for a standard day. To update this just enter the new number in the field. This will then update the total hours field when staff or Managers record leave.

As with all the Settings, if you make any changes, don't forget to click Update Settings at the bottom to save.

Here you can set the setting for time off notifications. Note this also includes time off reports. You can choose between Admin, Manager of the Team and Admin and Manager to receive the notifications.

Here you're able to create autofill leave strategies in how different employee's leave cost breakdown is autofilled. Choose Who it applies to, this is via Earnings Rules Tag and you can create many or just one autofill leave strategy.

Then choose how the leave requests are autofilled. Whether that be due to Regular Hours of Work, Published Scheduled Shifts or Unpublished Scheduled Shifts.

Each field on the reports page can be updated to dictate punctuality lenience. The figures associated with these reports can be found in multiple places. Firstly, it can be found from the employee's profile, under the Attendance heading, and also by heading to Reports > Attendance Reports.

Shift questions can be asked when a certain criteria is met, for example, when clocking in earlier than 10 minutes. The question will be prompted to the employee when clocking a shift start or finish time using either the Time Clock or Mobile apps.

To start using it, go to Settings > All Settings > Shift Questions and enter your first question:

You can also use this feature to tag a shift, calculating pay at an alternative rate, or applying an allowance. For example, a staff member clocking out can enter an amount for allowance purposes, such as kilometers traveled.

Finally, you can use shift questions to prevent early clock-ins. Simply add a question, then toggle the "prevent clock in". This will prevent the user from being able to clock in.

When adding new questions, expect your device to take 10 minutes to sync the new questions. For Time Clocks, you can force sync the change by entering the admin passcode > clicking the 3 lines in the top right hand corner > Settings > Update & Sync > Sync Workforce.com Data.

What is the period of time before a clock-in/out is considered early/late?

10 minutes either side of when scheduled is the base set up, however you can now edit the time frame to your needs by adjusting the lenience.

Is there an option to include a free text field for the employee to type an answer?

Yes. Simply leave section 2. 'Add answer options' blank and ensure that 'Add a timesheet comment' is selected.

How can I view answers to shift questions?

Answers to shift questions are accessible on an employee's timesheet. To view all timesheet comments for a given period, you can also export the timesheet to excel, and it will contain a column featuring all timesheet comments.

In what order are shift questions asked if there are multiple?

Shift questions will be asked in alphabetical order. Therefore to change the order questions are asked, just add a number in-front of each.

If you want to view on-costs such as payroll tax and superannuation in your schedule cost, you can do this by configuring on costs.

Go to the Settings drop down in the top right hand corner and navigate to the tab titled On-cost Config.

Once there, name the configuration. This is important if you want to set up multiple on costs for different costs, and possibly different rates for different locations such as payroll tax.

Select the staff that the on-cost applies to, including those classifications which include on-costs, and removing those who may not have on-costs applied.

Select the locations that the cost applies to. This is particularly useful for payroll tax where businesses are setting different rates for operations in different states.

Enter the percentage rate that applies. If you were looking to apply 14.25%, you would enter 14.25

Viewing on the Schedule

To view the total cost of your schedule including on costs, navigate to Schedule across the top toolbar.

The stats you're currently displaying are shown on the left-hand menu, where clicking the arrow in the stats display will give further options to select which stats you want displayed.

From here you can choose any combination of three stats to display, where the changes above will affect any statistics which mention on-costs.