Customise your pay rules
Tune the rates, penalties, overtime, breaks, and allowances Shiftly uses for an award — and preview the effect before you save.
Shiftly starts from the official award baseline for every award you use. Pay rules let you adjust that baseline for your business — rate multipliers, penalties, overtime, breaks, and allowances — and preview the result before it applies to future shifts.
Who this is for
Owners and managers using the Shiftly web platform. Pay rules are set per award, for the whole business. Every figure is an estimate — verify pay with your payroll provider.
Before you start
- Your business is on at least one supported award.
- Open Business Settings → Pay Rules.
Pick an award
Open Pay Rules
Each award your business uses shows as a card. A card reads Using default rules until you change something, then Customised. Select a card (or Configure) to open its rule set.
The configuration has five tabs. Changes aren't live until you save — an unsaved changes bar appears as soon as you edit something, with a dot marking each tab you've touched. Saving asks you to confirm; changes apply to future shifts only — existing shifts and timesheets are untouched.
Rates & penalties
The Rate Multipliers table sets the multiplier for each employment basis (full-time/part-time, casual) against each day type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, public holiday) — click a cell to edit. Below it, Penalties lists the award penalties (for example, late-night and early-morning loadings); select a row to configure it, or Add Custom Penalty to build your own with its own time window and day conditions.
Overtime
Set the daily and weekly thresholds at which overtime starts — leave them blank to use the award default — and the overtime multipliers for each day type and tier (for example, the first two hours versus after two hours).
Breaks
Break rules are organised into shift-length tiers — each tier defines the breaks for shifts within its duration range. Within a tier, add a break and mark it paid or unpaid. Add Shift Duration Tier adds a new range.
Allowances
Each award allowance can be turned on or off, and its amount and maximum edited inline (click a value to change it). The Apply to … employees at … condition sets who the allowance applies to. Add Allowance creates a custom allowance for the business, and Reset returns the tab to the award baseline.
If you tighten a custom allowance's eligibility, Shiftly warns you when employees would lose that allowance and lists who, before you save.
Preview the effect
The Preview tab runs a sample shift through your rules. Set a classification, basis, base rate, date, and times, and Shiftly shows a side-by-side Baseline vs Custom breakdown — duration, rate, subtotal, super, and total — so you can see exactly what your changes do before they apply.
How the layers fit together
- Award baseline → the official starting point for the award.
- Pay rules (this screen) → your business-wide adjustments on top of the baseline.
- Per-employee rate overrides → the final, person-specific layer — see Adjust an employee's pay rate. An employee's override fields fall back to your pay rules (shown as from rule set), then to the award.
Leave types (beta) have their own pay-rate history timeline under Business Settings → Leave Types — that's separate from award pay rules.
Related
Payroll & awards
Get pay right before it reaches your payroll provider — classify staff under their award, customise pay rules, override rates, and set public holidays so Shiftly's estimate is accurate.
Adjust an employee's pay rate
Pay an employee above the award — with a percentage uplift, a fixed rate, or per-category rate overrides — and understand how allowances fit in.