Pay rates tell Staff Rota what each person costs. These figures feed the live cost bar on the builder and the Payroll runs. Until you set them, shifts show as unpriced and payroll would pay £0.
The Pay rates page is admin-only. Find it at Settings → Staff Rota → Pay rates. It lists everyone with a search box; select Edit on a person to open their pay panel.
What you can set per person
Employment type — Employed, Bank or Agency.
Pay basis (for employed/bank) — Hourly or Salary. Choose Hourly and enter an Hourly rate (£/hour), or Salary and enter an Annual salary (£/year).
Agency charge (£/hour) — shown instead of wage when the type is Agency. Agency staff always price at this charge.
Contracted hrs/week — used for the weekly overtime threshold (and to convert a salary to an hourly figure for costing).
Overtime (£/hour) — the rate paid for hours above the weekly threshold.
Signed a 48-hour week opt-out — a tick box that suppresses the weekly-hours working-time warning for this person. Daily-rest warnings still apply.
Salaries and the cost bar
A salaried person only shows a cost on the builder if your organisation has turned on including salaries in costs (an organisation-level setting) and they have Contracted hrs/week set. Payroll always prices salaried staff but flags those lines to review.
Per-role default rates
Each role can carry a Default hourly rate, set on the Staff roles tab (Settings → Staff Rota → Staff roles). This is only a fallback band rate: it is used for costing a shift when the assigned person has no explicit wage of their own. It never overrides a set wage, and it never applies to agency staff. Payroll itself does not use role rates — it is always exact, per person.
- 1Go to Settings → Staff Rota → Pay rates
- 2Search for the person and select Edit
- 3Choose the Employment type (Employed, Bank or Agency)
- 4For employed/bank, set Pay basis to Hourly or Salary and enter the rate or annual salary; for agency, enter the Agency charge
- 5Enter Contracted hrs/week and the Overtime rate where relevant
- 6Tick the 48-hour week opt-out only if they have signed one
- 7Select Save
- Agency staff are costed only at their Agency charge — there is no fallback to a wage or role rate, so a missing charge shows as unpriced.
- If a salaried person costs nothing on the cost bar, check they have Contracted hrs/week set and that including salaries in costs is enabled.
- Set a role's Default hourly rate to give a sensible band figure for bank or casual staff who don't have an individual wage yet.