There are a few advanced features of Focus Rota that are very useful in some situations.


These include:

  1. Setting up a default Rota rule that applies when start/finish times are entered manually
  2. Using the Costing/Budgeting feature to keep track of daily/weekly budget targets
  3. Creating a roster from work schedules
  4. Adding absence reasons to the Rota
  5. Multi-manager rostering


1. HOW TO SET UP A DAILY RULE AS THE ROTA TEMPLATE RULE:


If your business (or a few employees, or even just one) uses a lot of different Start and Finish times, it can be time consuming to create a separate Daily Rule for each circumstance.

In that case, you can define a Template Rule that will control how the timesheet calculates and allocates the clocking times regardless of the Start and Finish times.

You can then simply manually type the desired Start/End times into the Rota cell.


  1. The first step is to set up a specific Daily Rule that can be used as the Rota Template Rule.
    (See Focus - Schedules, Daily Rules - Create New Rule )

  2. That Daily Rule now needs to be set as the Rota Template Rule.
    To do that, open an Employee's Detail window and Click on the Rules tab.
    There you will see this -->        
    Click on the Rota Template Rule pull down menu and select the Daily Rule just created.

  3. Click on the save icon.  Now that this has been done, the Rota can now be filled with manual Start/Finish times if desired.

    NOTE: This can also be done for an entire group (or multiple groups) at the same time.

     To set an entire group of employees to a Rota Template Rule, right click the name of the group from the Employee treeview and click on the pop-up.

     Then make the following selections -->  where the New Value is the Daily Rule created as the Rota Template Rule.


    Click on Apply.

  4. Once this is done, you can manually enter Start/End times in Rota, and the Rota Template Rule will be used to calculate the worked hours each day.
    Let's say John Brown has been set up this way -->

    We can open the Rota, select the group he is in (in this case Factory) and simply type in the Start/End times for him by clicking on the appropriate cell and simply start typing.
    NOTE: All times are typed as 4-digit numbers and are in 24-hr time format. E.g. 8am is typed as 0800 and 3pm as 1500.

    When the Start/End times have been entered, the cell will look like this -->

    NOTE: Hovering the mouse over the cell, brings up a little pop-up which tells you how that shift will be calculated -->

  5. The other Rota cells can now be filled in the same way.


2. USING THE COSTING/BUDGETING FEATURE:


Each time a roster is made using Rota, it is possible to track the costs per employee, day and week.

This is a useful feature if you need to keep to a budget for overtime etc.


To use this feature:

  1. Add the pay rates to the Employee Detail window by clicking on the Rules tab at the bottom.
  2. Add the Gross Hourly Pay rate as shown here circled in red -->
    Remember: This is the ORD hourly rate.

  3. Fill in the multiples of the Gross Hourly Pay in the respective overtime fields as highlighted in yellow.
    Remember: These figures will be multiplied by the Gross Hourly Pay figure to calculate these rates of pay.

  4. Click Save  and repeat the process for the other employees.

  5. Once that has been set up for each employee, we need to activate the Costing feature in Rota.
    The Total (time) and Cost (money) check boxes need to be selected in Rota as shown circled in red -->

  6. Now when a roster is created, you will see the time and money totals as highlighted here: 


3. CREATING A ROSTER FROM WORK SCHEDULES:


There are 4 basic ways to create a roster:

  1. Right-clicking a cell and selecting from a pop-up list (See Focus - Schedules, Rota - Set up, Create & Duplicate )
  2. Dragging and dropping Daily Rules from the treelist (See Focus - Schedules, Rota - Set up, Create & Duplicate )
  3. Manual entry (See above 1. HOW TO SET UP A DAILY RULE AS THE ROTA TEMPLATE RULE:)
  4. Creating a roster from Work Schedules

To create a roster from a Work Schedule:

  1. Open Rota and select the group you wish to make a roster for.

  2. Drag the mouse to highlight and select the names and days you wish to create the roster for.
    Right Click on the highlighted area to bring up a menu.
    Select Populate From Work Schedule 

  3. Simply select the desired Work Schedule to populate the roster -->                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
  4. Click OK; then Save

4. HOW TO ADD ABSENCE REASONS TO ROTA:                                               

            

While creating a roster, you will invariably need to include absence reasons - public holidays, annual leave, RDO days etc.

These can be added right within the roster you are creating.


To do this:

  1. Make sure the Rota has been saved and the cell you wish to add the absence reason to is blank.
    Then Right Click the blank cell and select Book/Delete Absence -->

  2. A Book Absences window will pop-up.
    From here you can select the Reason and Hours to be paid -->

  3. You can also add a Comment for Audit/Record purposes -->  

  4. When you click Save, you will see the roster allocate that day as an absence for that employee --> 





  5. This will automatically be allocated to that person's timesheet as well -->


5. MULTI-MANAGER ROSTERING


Occasionally, there may be a need for more than one manager to create a roster for an individual employee or an entire group.


To set this up:

  1. Assign the employee(s) to the appropriate groups ( See Focus - Employees, Groups Tab )

  2. An employee may belong to up to 5 Groups.
    Their roster can be managed by the Manager of any of the Groups to which they are assigned. 


    For that to happen, the Show Other Groups box needs to be checked -->


  3. If Manager A adds a shift to the roster for an Employee, Manager B will be able to see the shift details but not edit them.
    The shift details created by a different manager in those cells will have the colours white-washed -->  

  4. Additional shifts can be added by other managers by Right Clicking the cell and choosing Add Daily Rule.
    If Cost Centre colours have been set up, the shifts from different Cost Centres will be displayed in those colours.
    ( See Focus - System Setup, Cost Centres Tab )
    The shifts added for a different Cost Centre will look like this (red circles) --> 

  5. Hovering the mouse over the shift will show the Cost Centre (black circle) -->








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