For some employees, setting up the hours they work is straightforward — they work the same hours each week and you can enter them directly. For others, like salaried staff with set contracted hours or casual employees with no fixed pattern, the setup is a bit different. This article covers both.
If you need to set up hours for rostered employees who follow a days on/days off pattern, check out this article too:
Where your employee's hours are set in PaySauce
If your employee has fixed hours, the hours sit in three places, each driving something different:
Standard hours and days per pay period (in leave settings) — drives leave calculations like accrual
Payment hours (on the primary payment) — how many hours are paid when the payment runs, for example 40 hours per week on an hourly rate or the period hours for a salary
Work pattern (on the primary payment) — used for leave entries. The hours entered for each day of the week tell PaySauce which days the employee would normally work, and how many hours they'd be paid for a leave or public holiday taken on that day
If your employee's hours are regular, all three need to line up. If they don't, you'll get incorrect leave accrual, incorrect pay, or incorrect leave entries.
Leave settings
In the leave settings an employee can be set to standard hours, varied hours, or casual.
To view your employee's leave settings:
Go to the Employees section
Click on your employee's name
Select the 'Settings' tab
Select 'Leave' from the menu
Standard hours
If your employee is set to 'standard hours', PaySauce requires both the hours per pay period and the days per pay period to be set here.
These standard hours drive your employee's leave entitlement calculations. They're usually the contracted hours your employee is expected to work, even if they occasionally work slightly more or less.
The hours and days are specified per pay period, not weekly. If your employee changes pay frequency you'll need to update them. And if your employee starts regularly working a different number of hours or days per period, update this here so leave accrual stays accurate.
Varied hours
If your employee's hours are too variable to set a standard number, set them to 'varied hours' in their leave settings.
You'll then see a field for 'days paid'. If you have a set number of days the employee is likely to work each period you can enter it here, or you can set it to 0. You'll enter the days paid at pay time.
Payment hours
When you set up a payment for an employee you'll specify how many hours it relates to. This is what drives the payment itself when the pay runs.
For an hourly rate with regular hours, this might be 40 hours per week or 80 hours per fortnight. For a salary, it's the period hours covered by the salary. If the hours are to be specified every pay rather than fixed, set this to 0 and the hours will be entered at pay time.
Go to the 'Payments' tab for the employee
Click on the primary payment for the employee — usually their salary or main hourly rate
Update the hours (for hourly rates) or period hours (for salaries)
Work pattern
The work pattern sits at the bottom of the primary payment details. There are fields for each day of the week (Monday to Sunday) to specify the number of hours the employee would normally work on that day.
The work pattern drives leave entries. When an employee takes a day's leave, PaySauce looks at the work pattern to work out how many hours to pay them for that day. The presence of hours on a given day also tells PaySauce that the employee would normally work that day, which affects public holiday treatment.
If you can't see the work pattern fields, check that the payment is the 'primary' payment. On the list of the employee's payments, there's a checkbox in a column on the left under 'P' for primary. Only one payment can be the primary payment, and the work pattern only exists on the primary payment.
Changing an employee's working hours
When an employee's working hours change — whether they've moved to a new roster, shifted from full-time to part-time, changed their daily hours, or moved between salaried and hourly — make sure you update all of the following places. Each one drives something different, and missing one means something will be wrong.
1. Standard hours and days per pay period (leave settings)
This drives leave calculations including accrual. If this is out of date, your employee's leave entitlement will accrue at the wrong rate.
Go to Employees and select the employee.
Go to the Settings tab then select Leave.
2. Payment hours (on the primary payment)
This is how many hours are paid when the payment runs each period. For hourly rates with fixed hours or for salaries, this needs to match the new working hours. If hours are entered every pay rather than fixed, this stays at 0.
Go to Employees and select the employee.
Go to the Payments tab then click on the primary payment (salary or hourly).
3. Payment rate (if salaried, and the pay amount is changing)
If the employee is salaried and their pay is changing along with their hours, update the salary amount on their primary payment.
Go to Employees and select the employee.
Go to the Payments tab then click on the primary payment to make changes.
4. Work pattern
This drives leave entries — how many hours get paid when leave is taken on a given day, and whether a day counts as one the employee would normally work. Update the hours for each day of the week to reflect the new pattern.
Go to Employees and select the employee.
Go to the Payments tab then click on the primary payment (salary or hourly).
Review the work pattern section at the bottom and make the required changes.
A quick checklist before you save
Before finalising any change to working hours, ask yourself:
Have I updated the leave settings (standard hours and days per pay period)?
Have I updated the payment hours on the primary payment?
If they're salaried and the pay is changing, have I updated the salary amount?
Have I updated the work pattern?