Settings

General First time setup Cover rules Budget rules
Settings
Site profile, opening times, holiday and pay defaults.
First time setup Checking
Checking setup status and saved operating assumptions.
Open setup Cover rules Budget rules
Assistive Mode
Read-only setup checks for opening times, rota areas, labour targets, and venue type.
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Site profile
Drag the pin to set centre. Drag the small ring handle to resize radius.
State-school calendar is off. Bank holidays still apply automatically.
When enabled, postcode resolves the local authority, term dates are fetched from official sources, and the next 6 weeks of half-term / school-holiday periods must be approved here before they affect rota, sales, and forecasting.
Used on the home page and user-facing headings. Postcode is used to fetch rota weather. Geofence can block off-site clock-in, while clock-out can be allowed and flagged for manager review. Gross sales mode removes the VAT rate entered here when budgets are calculated.
Config JSON
Site areas
Advanced backup for rota areas. Day-to-day area creation should happen directly on the rota.
Advanced role order
Optional ranking within areas. Rota areas are the schedulable sections; this only controls sort suggestions.
Opening times
FOH and BOH defaults share one section for easier setup.
Used for BOH staffing demand and suggested shifts.
Default non-productive slots applied to new sales weeks.
Break defaults
Used by automatic rota breaks and shift sign-off when no clocked break has been recorded. Managers can still amend the break on sign-off.
UK adult statutory minimum is 20 minutes when working more than 6 hours. The hospitality preset is a payroll default: 20m from 6h, 30m from 8h, 45m from 9h, 60m from 10h.
Setup / pack-down buffers (minutes)
Adds staff demand before opening and after closing.
Holiday settings
Used for holiday accrual calculations.
Next calculation date: —
Next pay date: —
Pay-period dates support holiday, payroll and compliance-support calculations plus future export workflows.
Employment policies
These settings feed the server compliance engine used by Time Off, Shift sign-off, Payroll and Reports.
Payroll note: Use these as saved workplace policies. Final statutory or payroll treatment should still be checked with your payroll provider or adviser.
How RotaSmart uses these settings
Set up once: Staff profiles say what kind of worker someone is. Employment policies say how this workplace treats holiday, sickness, tips/tronc and payroll separation.
Then calculate automatically: Managers still use Time Off, Shift Sign-Off and Payroll as normal. RotaSmart uses those actions to create server-side absence days, holiday/SSP snapshots, audit rows and payroll line items.
For irregular workers: RotaSmart uses the worker type, pay history, pay rate, holiday method, SSP qualifying-day method and tips/tronc treatment to decide the calculation route. The manager should not calculate SSP or holiday manually each time.
Defaults are starting points: RotaSmart can prefill current rule defaults where the server has rule metadata, but the employer still needs to confirm that those defaults match the contract, worker category and payroll practice. Defaults are not legal sign-off.
Blockers are setup gaps: A blocker means RotaSmart is missing a fact it should not guess, such as worker type, pay rate, qualifying-day setup or tip treatment. Fix the Staff or Settings value, then rerun the preview or dry-run. Do not treat a blocker as zero pay.
Payroll remains the final checkpoint: Payroll preview and export should use server package values, but the employer/payroll provider still checks tax, pension, deductions and submission treatment.
Holiday
Sickness
Tips & tronc
Payroll export treatment
Backfill & Reconciliation
Dry-run historical Time Off, payroll and tips/tronc data before writing normalized compliance records.
Compliance note: RotaSmart calculates workforce cost, holiday and sickness values based on your configured employment policies and current rule settings. Employers remain responsible for checking payroll, tax, pension and legal compliance before submission.
Write-mode warning: Do not write backfill data until a database backup has been taken and this dry-run has been reviewed. Dry-run requires admin permission. Write mode requires explicit compliance backfill write permission, the confirmation phrase, and an idempotency key.
Data retention
Write-mode audit records are retained indefinitely by default. Dry-run detail rows can be archived or cleaned after review.
Protected write mode
Requires explicit compliance backfill write permission. Run and review a dry-run first. Unresolved blockers are skipped.
Backup reminder: take a database backup before writing.
Run history
Time off pay rules
Defines paid hours for each time off type. Holiday is based on contract hours or days. Sick pay follows the current UK SSP defaults and flags when settings need review.
Compliance note: RotaSmart calculates workforce cost, holiday and sickness values based on your configured employment policies and current rule settings. Employers remain responsible for checking payroll, tax, pension and legal compliance before submission.
Compliance notifications
Sends a weekly compliance review digest to an owner or GM the first time the dashboard is opened on the chosen day, and lets you test the mailbox from inside the app.
Digest not configured.