Your Rota Software Must Have These Features
If you are managing a large staffing agency, a mid-size organisation or a smaller business looking to scale and expand, rota scheduling software can be the central tool for streamlining your staff management. A cloud-based platform for smart rota planning will help you schedule efficiently and reduce administrative costs compared to legacy systems that require significant manual work.
But as digital transformation is constantly filling the market with new options with different features, it can be challenging to pinpoint what the most necessary ones are. In this blog article, we will guide you through the most important features you should look for when choosing the best rota software solution for your company.
1. Unlimited Staff Database
When choosing your staff rota software provider, an extensive staff database should be considered if your business is planning to scale. This is especially important for staffing agencies and companies that require a large pool of temporary workforce. Most staff scheduling software platforms use some subscription-based pricing model based on usage. Most often, the usage is tied to the number of users, and the price is based on how many employees are in the system.
This will not be a problem for small businesses working with a limited number of permanent employees. But if you are managing a staffing agency operating with a temporary workforce, it can hinder your company's growth or expose you to financial risks as you face the decision: do you play it safe and restrict staffing levels, or do you add extra workforce to your database based on forecasted demand?
This dilemma can be avoided if the pricing is tied to employee schedules instead of employees themselves. This will provide a risk-free way for HR management to operate with an extensive staff database cost-effectively, as billing is based on scheduled hours, making sure that your software costs increase only when your business grows. Additionally, it can make shift swapping much more effortless. When someone calls in sick, a more extensive staff database will mean better staff availability.
2. Employee Scheduling Software
A scheduling tool is at the core of planning rotas. This will be used to assign shifts or create open shifts and manage complex shift patterns. Employee scheduling software usually features drag-and-drop functionality to build schedules.
Auto-Scheduling
Auto-scheduling saves significant time and effort for managers, as they don't have to create schedules manually. It optimises staff allocation, ensures appropriate coverage, and minimises scheduling conflicts for quickly creating the perfect rota. PARiM Rota Scheduling Software utilises an intelligent scheduling process to automatically build rotas based on predefined rules, employee availability, and shift requirements. This makes it easy to manage multiple teams efficiently.
Open Shifts
Another way to create rotas is by publishing available shifts. PARiM provides Open Shift Notifications for scheduling employees this way. Eligible team members will be notified about all upcoming shifts, filled on a first-come-first-serve basis. This will help fill shifts quickly, reduce the number of empty shifts to provide adequate staffing levels and will streamline admin time management.
Shift Patterns
Complex shift patterns are crucial for operations that require non-regular working hours. This is an inseparable part of 24-hour coverage in industries such as healthcare or security. Creating shift patterns manually can be massively inefficient, which makes it an important aspect to consider when choosing scheduling software. PARiM provides an endless array of complex patterns that can be based on weekdays, ON/OFF or a specific day of the month. Managers only need to add start and end dates, and schedules will be created automatically to save time.
3. GPS Time Clock
Attendance clocking is essential for accurate employee hours on timesheets. For staffing agencies, it's essential to ensure that employees are at the right job sites at the right time to avoid any future disputes with clients. PARiM GPS Time Clock lets staff members clock in using their mobile devices. Managers can switch on the geofencing feature to ensure that clocking in is done at the right location and monitor time and attendance in real time.
4. Absence Management
Rota software will only provide half the benefits without a comprehensive absence management system. PARiM offers robust features for managing staff availability and time-off requests. Employees can input their availability, preferred working hours, and time-off requests directly into the system. Managers can then take this information into account when generating schedules, ensuring that shifts are assigned to available and suitable employees.
Requests and Approvals on Mobile App
PARiM provides employees with the option to set their availabilities and request time off from their mobile apps. Managers instantly receive requests which they can choose to approve or reject. This will reduce unnecessary communication and ensure that managers can swap shifts quickly and efficiently.
Automated Holiday Pay
Holiday pay calculations are prone to human errors, which can cause disputes and compliance risks. This can be avoided when your rota software provider has features for calculating holiday pay. PARiM lets you set the pay rates, and the rest will be done automatically.
Absence Reporting
PARiM provides reporting and analytics capabilities related to employee absences. Managers can generate reports on individual or team absences, including the number of days taken, types of leave, and patterns over time. These insights allow for better resource planning, identifying any absent trends, and addressing potential issues.
5. Pay Tracking and Automated Timesheets
When your rota software operates only as scheduling software without the features to track wage costs, it offers you only half the efficiency it should. PARiM lets you set up customisable hourly rates with multipliers and added holiday rates to have an overview of shift costs. This seamlessly integrates pay rates into the employee scheduling process for managing labour costs.
After you schedule shifts and employees, have done their attendance clocking, timesheets will be automatically created. This will reduce time spent on manual work and avoid human errors and possible wage disputes. Timesheets can be easily exported to your payroll systems for efficient payroll integration.
6. Charge Rates and Automated Invoicing
When it comes to staffing agencies, in addition to labour costs, they also need to charge their clients the correct rates for services to remain profitable. Similarly to pay rates, PARiM provides the tools to create customisable hourly charge rates. This ensures that wage costs and revenue streams will result in healthy profits. Again, manual errors will be avoided, as invoices are calculated automatically.
7. Compliance Features
All employment processes pose compliance risks. A good rota software provider will help ensure working time regulations, leave entitlements and data security.
Working Time Regulations
PARiM allows you to set up and enforce working time regulations to ensure compliance with labour laws and regulations specific to your jurisdiction. You can define rules for maximum working hours, rest breaks, and other requirements, and the system can help monitor and enforce these regulations when generating schedules.
Leave Entitlements
PARiM facilitates accurate tracking and management of employee leave entitlements, such as vacation days, sick leave, and other types of time off. You can set up policies and rules within the system to ensure that employees are granted the appropriate amount of leave based on their tenure, employment status, or other criteria.
Data Security and Privacy
PARiM implements measures to ensure data security and privacy compliance. This includes SSL data encryption, user access controls, and adherence to data protection regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union.
8. Client Portal
Staffing agencies that aim to provide the most efficient and transparent service should look for rota software that features direct access for clients. PARiM Employee Scheduling Software lets you create profiles for different clients and provide them access from desktop and mobile devices. Clients can see staffing levels, shift swaps and shift changes in real-time and approve timesheets. This reduces unnecessary touchpoints and provides clients with peace of mind.
Get Started with PARiM Rota Scheduling Software
Create a free account and get started with PARiM Free Trial. You don't need a credit card for this. The free trial includes all of PARiM's features.
Book a demo and let our experts guide you through the system to get you accommodated.
Start building your employee database. Build it from scratch or export it from your other databases.
Provide your employees and clients with the PARiM app from Google Play or App Store.
Create schedules and track time.
Reduce workload with automated timesheets and invoices.
