Rota settings holds the realm-wide defaults for scheduling, payroll and compliance. These seed every new area and drive things like the cost bar, working-time warnings and what staff can request. This page is admins only.
Open it from Settings → Staff Rota → Rota settings. Change what you need, then press Save settings at the bottom.
Scheduling defaults
Week starts on — the first day of your rota week (e.g. Monday).
Default shift start / Default shift end — pre-fill times when building new shifts.
Delay before notifying staff of a published rota (minutes) — a buffer before publish notifications go out.
Costs & payroll
Include salaried staff in the rota cost bar — counts salaried wages towards the live cost figure while building.
Pay frequency — Weekly, Fortnightly, Four-weekly or Monthly.
Leave year starts — the month your holiday-allowance year resets.
Skills & compliance
Require staff to have the matching skill for a shift — the realm default for skill matching (each area can override it).
Require valid certificates before assigning — blocks carers with missing or expired certificates.
Block scheduling a carer who's on approved leave — applies to manager assignment and staff self-claim / cover.
Working time (WTD)
Turn on Warn managers about Working Time Directive breaches to flag rest, weekly-hours and consecutive-day risks. These warnings are non-blocking — they show while building and at publish, but managers can still publish.
Min rest between shifts (hours) — UK default is 11.
Max hours per week — UK default is 48 (averaged). Staff who've signed a 48-hour opt-out on their pay profile are excluded from this check.
Max consecutive days — set 0 to skip this check.
Shift requests (self-service)
Master switches for what staff can request. Turning one off hides it from staff and blocks the request entirely.
Let staff request shift swaps
Let staff drop shifts back to open
Let staff broadcast a shift for cover
Below those, the approval defaults decide whether each request type needs a manager's sign-off: Swaps need manager approval, Drops need manager approval and Cover pickups need manager approval. Each area can override these.
Time & attendance defaults
Defaults for clock-in and timesheet rounding. Each area can override any of these in its own rota settings.
Require a photo at clock-in
Lateness grace (minutes) — how late a clock-in can be before it counts as late.
Earliest clock-in (minutes before start; 0 = no limit)
Round worked time to (minutes; 0 = off) plus a Rounding direction: Nearest, Round up (favours staff) or Round down.
- 1Go to Settings → Staff Rota → Rota settings.
- 2Set your Scheduling defaults — week start, default shift times and the publish notify delay.
- 3Choose your Costs & payroll options — cost-bar salaries, pay frequency and leave-year start.
- 4Set Skills & compliance toggles for skill matching, certificates and leave-blocking.
- 5Turn Working time (WTD) warnings on and adjust the rest, weekly-hours and consecutive-day limits.
- 6Decide what staff can request under Shift requests, and which requests need approval.
- 7Set the Time & attendance defaults for clock-in photos, lateness grace and rounding.
- 8Press Save settings.
- These are defaults — most can be overridden per area in that person's rota settings, so set sensible realm-wide values and tweak the exceptions locally.
- Working-time warnings never block publishing; they're a safety prompt, not a hard stop.