Docs › Scheduler › On-call allowances

Switching it on

On-call allowances are off unless they have been switched on for your company. It is not yet a setting you can change on the Settings screen. Until it is on, the screens, menu items and icons on this page do not appear. Switching it off later stops new allowance lines being added. Lines already added stay where they are.

Setting up an allowance

Admins set allowances up from the hamburger menu, under Company, on On Call Allowances. Click Add allowance for a new card. Each allowance has:

Tick Applied to Timeframe, Applied to Jobs or both. An allowance with both ticked pays a standby amount for the weekend and a callout amount for every job on top of it. Timeframe job is required when Applied to Timeframe is ticked, since that line needs a job to sit on.

Two kinds of window

• Day/time range is one window a week, from a day and time to a day and time, such as Friday 17:00 to Monday 07:00. It is paid once for the whole stretch, however many nights it covers.
• Time range on chosen days opens a window on each day you tick. 17:00 to 07:00 on Monday to Friday is five windows a week, each paid on its own.
  • Each window belongs to the day it starts. An end time earlier than the start runs into the next morning, so Friday’s window ends on Saturday, and Saturday has none unless it is ticked.
  • The same start and end time is a whole day, so 00:00 to 00:00 on Saturday and Sunday covers the weekend as two days.

The line under the times says in words what you have set, such as Friday 17:00 → Monday 07:00 (62 hours), every week or Mon–Fri, 17:00 → 07:00 next day (14 hours each). Check it before you save.

So weeknight cover paid per night is one allowance with a time range on Monday to Friday. Paid once for the week, it is a day/time range from Monday 17:00 to Friday 07:00.

Then give each person the allowances they hold, from the On call section of their Edit User form. A person can hold any number of them. See Put someone on call.

Archive stops an allowance adding new lines and keeps the ones it has made. Restore brings it back. The bin button deletes an allowance that has never been paid, and archives one that has.

How allowances are worked out

An allowance is earned only for time the person was on call, inside the allowance’s window. Being on call comes from the on-call roster: switched on and off from the calendar, or booked ahead for a set stretch.

• Timeframe. Any on-call time inside the window earns the allowance once for that window. There is no minimum. The line is booked to the timeframe job, dated the day the person first went on call in that window, and appears once the window has begun.
• Jobs. A job earns the allowance once per window when one of the person’s timesheet entries on it overlaps both their on-call time and the window. Two entries on the same job in one weekend still earn one allowance. An entry that only touches the edge, such as one starting at 07:00 when the window ends at 07:00, does not count.
• Several allowances are worked out separately, so a job attended late on Sunday night can earn both a weekend callout and a Sunday night callout.

Each allowance line is an ordinary timesheet line with a quantity of 1, the allowance’s labour code, no start or stop time, and a description such as Weekend standby 23/10 17:00-26/10 07:00.

Lines follow the roster and the timesheet

Allowance lines are worked out again whenever something that feeds them changes:

• a timesheet entry is saved, moved to another job or deleted;
• someone is put on or off call, or a booking is changed or removed;
• an allowance’s window, job or modes are edited, or a person’s allowances change.

So moving an entry from one job to another moves its callout line with it. Deleting the only entry on a job takes its line away. Nobody edits allowance lines by hand: the Timesheets screen and the phone both show them read-only, with no Edit or Delete.

Allowance lines are left out of hours totals, automatic overtime and lunch breaks. A quantity of 1 is one allowance, not an hour.

On the Timesheets screen

Allowance lines are shaded teal and carry a phone icon. They are submitted with everything else, by Submit All, the nightly batch or automatic submission, so there is nothing extra to do.

Lines already sent to your accounting system

Tradie never changes or removes a line once it has been sent. If a later change means a sent allowance is no longer owed, say an entry is deleted after the line went out, the row turns amber and shows No longer owed. Hover over it for the date the change was found. Reverse that line in your accounting system yourself. The warning comes off again if a later change makes the allowance owed once more.

Good to know

Closed periods

When someone without the Admin role changes the roster, allowance lines dated before the timesheet cutoff are left as they are, the same rule that stops them changing old timesheet entries. Changes made by an admin are not held back.

Editing an allowance

Editing an allowance’s window, job or labour code updates the lines that have not been sent yet. Lines already sent keep what they were sent with.

See also

• Put someone on call - switching people on and off call, booking ahead, and giving them allowances.
• Timesheets - where allowance lines are reviewed and submitted.
• Labour codes - setting up the code an allowance is sent as.