Work patterns: who works which week, and how it pays

One pattern per person sets their working days, standard hours, overtime, day rate and the days that pay more.

A work pattern is somebody's working week and the rules their time is counted by. "Everyone works a pattern. Everybody works one, and it is the only thing that sets their hours." The timesheet reads it to split regular time from overtime, leave reads it to work out a part-timer's allowance, and pay runs read it to price the time.

Patterns live at the bottom of Timesheets › Policies, under Work patterns. You need the Manage time clock permission.

Timesheets › Policies › Work patterns: Standard (Default), a Subcontractor day rate pattern and Nights & weekends with Sat and Sun enhanced

The patterns table

Each row shows:

Pattern — its name, with a Default badge on the one new starters get and a Subcontractors badge on subcontractor patterns.
Working days — for example Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri.
Hours — the standard day and week: 8h / day, 40h / week.
Overtime — the tiers, Daily 8h ×1.5 and Weekly 40h ×1.5, or Day rate, with any enhanced days and shifts underneath (Sat ×1.5 · Night ×1.25).
Assigned — how many people are on it (2 workers).

The icons on each row choose who is on it, edit it or delete it.

Creating or editing a pattern

Add pattern opens New pattern; the pencil opens Edit pattern.

Pattern name — what people will recognise: Standard, Four-day week, Nights & weekends.
Working days — tick the days. At least one must stay on.
Week starts on — the day this pattern's week, and its weekly overtime, is counted from.
Standard day (hours) and Standard week (hours).
Who this is for — Employees or Subcontractors. "Nobody on this pattern accrues paid leave. Assigning someone here changes their employment status." Choosing people for a pattern sets their worker type to match it, and changing a pattern's type changes everyone on it.
Paid in — Hours or Days. On a day rate, "A day worked bills a day. Over three quarters of a standard day counts as a full day, over a quarter as a half." Overtime doesn't apply to a day rate, so its fields disappear.
Daily OT threshold (hours) and Weekly OT threshold (hours), each with a Daily multiplier and Weekly multiplier (1.5 unless you change them). "Empty disables" — leave a threshold empty to switch that tier off.
Days that pay more — tick Saturday, Sunday or Bank holidays (the public holidays on your leave calendar) and give each a Rate. "The whole day is paid at this rate instead of overtime, never on top. Where two rules match a date, the higher one wins."
Usual shift — the shift time its people normally work. A new shift booked for one of them starts on those hours. It shows when your workspace has shift times.
Shifts that pay more — on a pattern paid in hours, tick a shift time and give it a Rate (×1.25 to start). "Hours worked inside the shift's times are paid at this rate. Where they are also overtime, the higher rate wins, never both." See below.
Default for new workers — see below.

Edit pattern for Nights & weekends: Paid in Hours, overtime at ×1.5, Saturday ×1.5, Sunday ×2 and Bank holidays ×2, and 2 people work this pattern

Choosing who is on a pattern

In the pattern dialog, Choose people shows who is on it ("3 people work this pattern"). From the table, the people icon — Choose who is on this pattern — does the same without opening the rest. Tick people to put them on it; each name says where they are now (On Standard, On this pattern, Workspace week). Ticking someone moves them off their previous pattern.

You can also set it one person at a time: Users › Edit has a Work pattern field. Add user starts new people on the default.

Anyone you take off a pattern goes back to the workspace week — the default pattern's working days and hours, with overtime after 8 hours a day and 40 a week at ×1.5 and no enhanced days. That is not necessarily the default pattern's own overtime and pay settings, so if you've changed those, put people on the default pattern by name rather than leaving them on Workspace default. Taking someone off a subcontractor pattern doesn't change their worker type back; move them onto an employee pattern, or check the type on their record.

Leave already booked

Leave is counted in the working days and hours of each person's pattern. When you save a pattern, or move people on or off it, leave they have booked that hasn't started yet is counted again at the new hours, and Maliru says how many bookings changed: "2 bookings of leave still to come now count at these hours." Leave that has started, or sits in a locked timesheet period, is left as it was.

The default pattern

One pattern is always the Default. New starters are put on it, and it sets two things for the whole workspace: the day the timesheet week starts, and the full-time week that part-timers' leave entitlement is measured against. So editing the default's standard week can change the leave figure of every part-timer whose entitlement is kept in step.

The default can't be deleted or switched off — "Make another pattern the default to change this." Deleting any other pattern asks "Delete this pattern? Everyone on it moves to the workspace default."

Night shifts

A shift counts, whole, on the day it was clocked in. A night from 18:00 to 04:00 is all that day's: its hours, its daily overtime, its day score, and whether it falls on a day that pays more. A night that starts on a Saturday is a Saturday shift. Shifts that pay more still pay by the clock: the minutes inside the shift's own hours earn its rate, whichever side of midnight they fall.

Scoring a day

A day rate pays by full and half days, and a salary whose attendance is tracked by the clock counts it by them. On each pattern you can set:

Full day from (hours) — the hours worked at or above which a day counts in full;
Half day from (hours) — the hours at or above which it counts as half. Below that it counts as nothing, and a half day can't need more hours than a full day;
Grace on a late start (min) — minutes somebody may start late against the scheduled start of the work they clocked in to, and still have them counted as worked.

Leave the hours empty to use 75% and 25% of the pattern's standard day.

A day is never scored by a guess. A clock-in with no clock-out, and a working day with nothing on the clock and no leave, are listed on the pay run for somebody to put right.

On a pattern paid in hours, Pay salaries without clocking in decides whether the clock is a salaried person's attendance record. It is on unless you switch it off: salaried people on the pattern are paid their full salary whether or not they clock in, and only approved unpaid leave comes off. Switch it off where the clock should count, such as for salaried site staff: a working day with nothing on the clock and no leave is then an absent day, to confirm or excuse on the pay run. See running pay.

On a pattern paid in hours, Pay salaried people overtime pays salaried people on it for hours in its overtime and premium bands. Their plain time is always the salary. Where a premium falls on one of their own working days — a bank holiday on a weekday they work, say — the salary already pays that day, so only the extra is added: half an hour's pay for each hour at time and a half, shown as (uplift).

Hours says whether the people on the pattern work Regular hours, Irregular hours or Part of the year. It decides which holiday pay they may have. See holiday pay.

Paying more for a shift's hours

Shifts that pay more is how a day worker covering a night is paid more for it, while people who only work nights, whose rate already allows for it, are not: put the day workers' pattern on Night ×1.25 and leave the nights pattern without it.

The minutes clocked inside the shift's hours earn its rate, whatever day they fall on. Somebody who clocks on at 17:30 for an 18:00 night is paid the first half hour as ordinary time.
Those hours still count towards the pattern's daily and weekly overtime, like any hours worked. Where a minute is both, the higher rate wins, never both, so a night premium never pays anybody less than the same hours would have earned without it.
On a day that pays more (a Saturday at ×1.5, say), a night at ×1.25 adds nothing; one at ×2 pays its hours at ×2.
A salaried person on the pattern who covers a night on one of their own working days is paid only the extra, shown as (uplift), as for a bank holiday.
On the pay run it is a line of its own, Night premium ×1.25, never folded into overtime, so it can be mapped to its own pay item in your payroll provider.

This is separate from any out-of-hours uplift your client pays on a measure. That is money in, set on the rate card, and it never changes what anybody is paid.

How patterns reach pay

If you run pay in Maliru, the pay run reads each person's pattern: their day rate or hourly overtime, and the days and shifts that pay more. Maliru works the quantities out from the timesheet; the pay rates themselves are set in Pay. See Setting up pay.

Tip: most workspaces need two or three patterns — the standard week, a subcontractor day rate, and perhaps nights or weekends. If everybody would be on a new pattern, edit the default instead.