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Wage cost calculations
Wage cost calculations

How Rotaready calculates labour cost in real-time and where it's displayed.

Amelia Andrews avatar
Written by Amelia Andrews
Updated over a year ago

To calculate the total cost of a shift, there are a combination of factors that Rotaready takes into account:

  • Hours worked (accounting for rest breaks where applicable)

  • Sanitisation (if the actual start/finish time is available)

  • Employee's pay record

  • Pay rules (such as applying an overtime rate after a certain time of day)

  • Local taxes (such as national insurance)

  • Holiday pay (either direct or the result of holiday smoothing)

  • Pension contributions (default 3% for UK businesses)

  • Other internal wage uplifts found on pay records (such as additional healthcare benefit costs, if applied)

👀 Learn more in our Spotlight Session 'Wage calculations: what, how & why'

Where to see wage costs

Wage costs are saved at various stages of the lifecycle of a rota (such as when it's published or when sign-off occurs) so they can be referenced later.

  • Rota editor - enabling the Hours/wages tool shows live wage costs per individual and day, derived from the shifts on the rota as it stands. Attendance isn't taken into account here, as the rota editor is designed for forward planning rather than historical analysis.

  • Cost Control - a consolidated view of both forecast and actual wage costs. Learn more about Cost Control to understand how the figures are derived.

  • Labour breakdown report - a view of actual wage costs split per individual per day.

  • Rota progress report - a view of forecast wage costs across multiple sites/departments, taken from a snapshot when the rota is marked for approval or published.

  • Sign-off report - a consolidated view of both forecast and actual wage costs. Forecast is taken from a snapshot when the rota is published. Actual is taken from when sign-off was completed.

  • Payroll export report - a view of hours and wage costs, exclusively using signed-off data.

How wages are calculated

It's best illustrated by walking through an example scenario. This one's based in a pub in the UK:

  • John's basic pay is £8.50 per hour

  • There's a pay rule in place that means he earns a different pay rate, £10.70 per hour, when working in the Kitchen

  • He has a holiday allowance set to accrue based on the hours he works

  • He has a 3% wage uplift (representing other benefits this company happens to apply)

  • The rest break policy grants a 30 min unpaid break for shifts of 8 hours or longer

Here's an example rota, displayed in tabular form:

Let's assume these shifts haven't been worked yet, so there's no clock-ins or clock-outs to worry about.

Basic pay = £327.35

  • Bar - 7.5 + 5 + 6.5 = 19 hours on the bar @ £8.50 per hour = £161.50

  • Kitchen - 8 + 7.5 = 15.5 hours in the kitchen @ £10.70 per hour = £165.85

Holiday pay = £39.51

  • Using the default accrual rate of 12.07%

  • £327.35 x 12.07% = £39.51

Taxes = £26.48

  • Using the UK's employer's national insurance rate of 13.80%, applied to anything above the first £175 in any given week

  • (£327.35 + £39.51 - £175) x 13.80% = £26.48

Pension contribution = £7.41

  • Using the UK's statutory 3% of net pay (basic pay + holiday pay) for weekly earnings between £120 - £967

  • (£327.35 + £39.51 - £120) x 3% = £7.41

Wage uplift = £11.00

  • In this case 3% of net pay (basic pay + holiday pay)

  • (£327.35 + £39.51) x 3% = £11.00

TOTAL= £327.35 + £39.51 + £26.48 + £7.41 + £11.00 = £411.75

If this example was more complicated and attendance events were available, the hours used to calculate net pay in the first step of the process would have been adjusted as per your organisation's sanitisation rules.

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