How Shifts Work

Modified on Fri, 28 Oct 2022 at 12:59 PM

You can use shift working for staff that are paid for the "time" they spend at work rather than "by the service".

Shifts help staff to easily record time periods during which all activity is payable and exclude periods of time that are unpaid, such as lunchtimes or extended breaks in between visits, which could include any non-work related appointments.

This may also include travel time, and usually means calculating how many hours the staff member has been at work, how much time has been spent traveling to and from services, and then exporting this data for Payroll.

Pet Sitter Plus enables you to automate this process so you have all the analysis you need to pay your staff accurately for the work that they do.

What is Shift Working?

The purpose of shifts is to help staff to easily record the time they spend at work which you are paying them for:

Time associated with work and travel outside of any shift is not recorded and is not payable.
Time associated with work and travel inside of any shift is recorded and is payable.

Example Shift from a standard working day:

When enabled, Staff can "start shift" and "end shift" as many times as needed. For example, your working day might look like this:

9:00am - start shift
9:00am - check in to 1st visit
9:30am - check out of 1st visit
9:30am - travel to 2nd visit
9:45am - check in to 2nd visit
10:15am - check out of 2nd visit
10:15am - end shift
11:00am - Grocery shopping
Lunch
1:00pm - start shift
1:00pm - check in to 3rd visit
1:30pm - check out of 3rd visit
1:30pm - travel to 3rd visit
1:45pm - check in to 4th visit
2:15pm - check out of 4th visit
2:15pm - end shift
2:15pm - travel to hair salon

Note: None of the shift working functions will work unless this setting is enabled.

How Time and Travel Recording Works

If your staff use GPS check-in / check-out at the beginning and the end of each visit, then for each visit a “start time” and an “end time” is recorded. Pet Sitter Plus uses this information to generate a timecard for each sitter.
You can now define a standard amount of travelling time for each staff member which the system uses to calculate the total traveling time. (You can also exclude the travel time to and from the first and last service if you need to.)

The method of using shifts to record hours that a staff member has worked is:

They need to start and end shifts on their mobile phone at the beginning and end of the shift, eg. in the morning and evening, or around lunchtimes.
They can check in and out of services plus send clients visit reports in the usual way.

What Happens if Staff are Paid by the Hour AND Paid Per Service?

In many businesses, staff are paid either by the hour OR “per service”. However, some businesses have staff who are paid both by the hour AND per service, which means they need to paid by different methods. For example, staff are paid by the hour for some of their time at work and “per service” for other services assigned to them.

In this case, you may need to set Pay Rules for these staff and use a “Staff Type” so that the per service element of their work is calculated correctly. See Adding a Staff Pay Rule for more information.

Example working day where staff are paid by the hour AND per service:

Your staff arrives at work in the morning at 9:00AM and "starts a shift". They work in the daycare centre for the morning and "ends their shift" at lunchtime at 1:00PM. They then drop off some dogs and do a group hike at 2:30PM.

The daycare services are paid by the hour.
For the drop-offs and the group hike, they are paid on a "per service" basis.

Their timecard will show they worked 4 hours in the morning and you pay them for that time at their hourly rate.

You set up a “Staff Type” to ensure that staff pay rules relating to “hourly paid” services are modified for hourly paid staff. In this example, our staff type will be called "Mixed pay."

For any work assigned at the hourly rate, ie. daycare, you set up a Staff Pay Rule that says:

If the Staff Type is "Mixed Pay", then Staff Pay is 0.00. This is because the shift time recording adds the hours worked to the timecard and pay is calculated outside of Pet Sitter Plus. You don't want these services to appear on the Staff Pay Report which shows you how much to pay them "per service" over a given period of time.

For any work assigned on a "per service", ie. the group hike, you add a Staff Pay Rule that says:

If the Staff Type is "Mixed Pay", then Staff Pay is 12.00. This means that their "per service" work will appear on the Staff Pay Report so you know how much to pay them.

Options for Admin with Shift Working

Navigate to Scheduler > GPS Monitor > Staff Activity

On the Staff Activity report, you can then view the shifts for each member of staff who is hourly paid.
Any adjustments that are needed to the shift start and end times can be made to ensure the hours worked are correct.
The Timecard can be exported and a summary of the hours worked can be used to accurately calculate Payroll.

Timecard export for hourly paid staff in dog boarding software