Nov 10, 2024

The Benefits of Having Rota Planning and Payroll Integrated

The options available to workers are much greater than they used to be, and this means that employers have to adapt to best serve their employees, as well as their business. This is especially important when it comes to keeping track of employee time and payment. With so many businesses (small businesses especially) maintaining a workforce of part-time and variable workers, it is important that you can manage these sometimes-hectic schedules and correctly distribute payment without delay or disruption.

The traditional way businesses might approach this is by keeping extensive spreadsheets with all their employees and their available times spread throughout. This may be feasible with very small staff numbers and very consistent work hours, but the modern business landscape does not support this approach very well. Instead, businesses should look for seamless solutions that conveniently organise all their employee data into one platform, allowing for easy analysis and usability.

By combining Rota planning and payroll systems, businesses can avoid the hassle of cross-references that can be littered with errors and misunderstandings. Instead, under one cohesive system, you can conveniently track all employee schedules with convenient software that makes analysing availability a breeze, and when it’s time to pay, your responsibilities will be clear as well. There are actually many more clear benefits of integrating Rota planning and payroll, so read on as we go more in-depth with the benefits of this system.

Reduce Human Error

This is the most basic benefit you can expect from any software system, but it is perhaps even more important regarding rota planning and payroll duties. These two responsibilities will be the backbone of your business, and if you cannot successfully schedule employees or if you cannot reliably pay them what they are due, you can very quickly experience severe disruption to your business operations. Let’s use the example of a bakery (in fact, Moonworkers helped one Bakery, Maison Puget, streamline its operations while still retaining 90% of its staff.

A bakery and other food establishments can present a unique case for worker and shift distribution. In the case of a bakery, you may have bakers and waiters, with bakers managing early morning or late-night shifts while waiters cover the daytime operations. If a business wants to manage this by hand, they run into the trouble of accidentally overlapping or forgetting shifts, workers dishonestly reporting hours (as no one is there to verify their clocking in or out), and just the overall logistical difficulty that comes with micromanaging an expanded staff. However, with the help of HR software that integrates Rota planning and payroll, you can avoid these concerns.

With reliable HR software, like the kind we provide at Moonworkers, workers will clock in, and their time will automatically be logged. You can also quickly and conveniently browse all your staff and clearly see schedules and conflicts to avoid such hassles.

In the case of the Bakery we assisted, Maison Puget, they greatly appreciated the assistance with their HR software. Now, they can focus more on the parts of business operations they enjoy and worry less about the particulars of payroll and Rota management.

Keep better track of employee attendance

Our previous example touched briefly on the topic of tracking employee attendance, but this is one of the most important features of rota planning and payroll integration, so we want to expand upon it.

In a perfect world, with the ideal workplace setting, hours scheduled will always add up to hours worked and always for the right employees. But business is never so clear-cut, and these discrepancies can make keeping track of payroll incredibly frustrating. Employees may get sick or have to call out early for several reasons, and on an individual basis, this may not be too difficult to keep track of and account for. But when it comes to a business with 10s if not more staff, then keeping track of all employee times scheduled versus their time worked while accounting for minor variations can result in errors that have people being under or over-compensated. This problem is only exacerbated in companies relying on a paper system as well.

However, you can avoid these risks by utilising rota and payroll integration software and confidently account for any discrepancies. Employees can clock in and out within the software, log their time off, and even track location with Google Maps if you are a business with workers travelling or distributed. You don’t have to rely on formulas in spreadsheets or worry about carrying the right numbers over by hand. Everything will automatically be calculated for you within the software.

Create your rota straight from your payroll app

Our intuitive and easy-to-use rota builder makes creating your rotas a breeze. Add, edit and publish shifts when you are ready to notify your staff. Single shifts or entire weeks can be copied and pasted saving hours of tedious planning. Synced with payroll.

Manage Scheduling

So, with the ease with which employees can track their time and request time off, the next question becomes, “How would such a software manage employee scheduling?”. Sure, managing pay is important, and ensuring everyone’s hours are accounted for is necessary for the business, but when someone requests time off or is sick, how can this software help you respond with scheduling? Thankfully, with the capabilities of rota planning software, you can easily keep track of all of your staff’s availability and confidently plan shifts without worrying about overlap or missing workers.

One big benefit of a package that includes rota planning software, like what we offer at Moonworkers, is that employees can even request their time off directly through the app. This allows a convenient interface for you to approve time-off, which will immediately be factored into your overall staff’s availability. Visualising your staff’s availability is important, so there is also a calendar-view feature that more clearly illustrates gaps in time for your workers.

This is incredibly beneficial for businesses who are looking to scale as well since when employees increase, you will want to have the solutions in place to swiftly accommodate them. Never fret about manually sifting through extensive spreadsheets looking for the perfect match for a missing time slot. Utilise the convenience of rota planning and payroll integration software and use your time for other important endeavours.

Automatically calculate pay based on time worked

Another issue with Rota planning and payroll is that odds are your staff will not all work consistent hours and have the same pay rates. Most likely, you will be dealing with variable rates and hours, on top of having to give out unique bonuses and rewards to employees. Tracking all of this manually can quickly become tedious, if not completely frustrating, and this is yet another area of HR where you don’t want to slip up. Pay might be the most important thing you need to get right for employees and your business, so having a system in place to automatically and precisely calculate this is a great help.

Previously, you may have sat down with your timesheets and then another stack of papers featuring your pay rates and employee reviews. Going back and forth between these, matching everything up, and making sure everything is correct could take up lots of time. Therefore, when your rota planning and payroll are merged, you get to avoid this task and worry solely about simple inputs and worry less about the necessary calculations.

Another benefit is when it comes to bonuses and rewards, as we briefly mentioned before. This is yet another thing to keep track of and account for on top of everything you will already be addressing regarding payments. But, with software like that provided by Moonworkers, you can comment directly on employees within the app, very conveniently track all your performance considerations and quickly distribute the rewards you feel are earned.

Save Money!

The most significant motivation for any business decision? Making or saving money. With the help of rota planning and payroll software, your business can greatly benefit and even save money in your operations. This is possible for a few different reasons:

Merging Software - While Moonworkers offers Rota planning and payroll features in one convenient software package, you may find other examples of just one or the other. Having to pay for two software suites is wasteful when you can rely on one service that provides the power of both.
Corrected Errors – Mistakes made in manual calculations for payments can lead to drastic errors, including overpaying or underpaying employees. You might think that underpaying an employee would actually save you money, but with the high likelihood of turnover, the business disruption could very easily lead to a large loss in funds.
Time Saved – Time is Money is a very classic phrase and still rings true to this day. The amount of time you will spend manually managing rota planning and payroll presents a significant amount of labour. There are many other important business operations, and you should always look to improve efficiency where you can.

With this last point, it’s perhaps important to touch back on the example of Maison Puget we used earlier. These founders were not incredibly tech-savvy but were incredibly passionate about their business. The traditional rota planning and payroll methods were just more natural for them, even if they were more frustrating. But, with the help of a simple and powerful Rota planning and payroll software solution, they were able to successfully manage the needs of their business without needing an extensive tech background. This meant they could focus more on the areas of the business they loved while being more confident in their HR capabilities.