Setting up your business

Every Shiftly account starts with a business. This guide walks through creating one — a short two-step wizard that captures your business details and the award that covers your staff.

Who this is for

Owners and managers setting up on the Shiftly web platform.

Before you start

• You'll need your business address (with a street number) and the award that covers your team.
• Business creation starts from the business selector — the screen you land on after logging in, also reachable from Account management.

Create a business

Supported vs unsupported awards

The award you choose decides whether Shiftly can interpret pay for you:

• Supported awards (the five cards above) — pay rates, penalties, overtime, and allowances are calculated automatically as you roster and approve timesheets.
• Any other award (chosen via search) — Shiftly does not calculate pay automatically. You are responsible for configuring and maintaining compliant pay rates in line with the Fair Work requirements for that award.

You can change the award later — see Editing business details.

What happens next

When you select Complete, Shiftly creates the business and its first location automatically (using the address and timezone you entered), then takes you to the roster so you can start adding positions and staff. You can add more locations at any time from Business settings.

One business or several? Businesses vs locations

If you run more than one venue, you'll need to decide whether to add them as locations under one business or set up separate businesses. For most operators the answer is locations — here's how to choose.

What a business is

A business is the top-level account. It holds the things that apply to your whole operation:

• The award your staff are employed under — and the classifications that come from it.
• Your Xero connection, if you use one.

So everything under one business shares one award and one Xero organisation.

What a location is

A location is a place your team works, inside a business. Each location carries its own:

• Address and timezone.
• Clock-in boundary (the area staff can clock in and out from).
• Default shift times and opening days.
• Public holidays (based on its state).
• Employee-app settings — pay visibility, break tracking, and shift swapping.

Staff are added to a location, shifts are rostered at a location, and positions belong to a location.

Which should you use?

Add venues as separate locations under one business when they:

• Are covered by the same award.
• Should share one Xero connection.
• Share staff, or you simply want to manage them together.

This fits most multi-venue operators — a second café, a new store, or another site running under the same award.

Set up a separate business only when a venue genuinely needs:

• A different award — awards are set per business, so two venues on different awards can't sit under one business.
• A separate Xero account, or a separate legal entity.

A note on positions

Positions live at the location level, not the business. When you add a role such as Barista, you add it to the location that needs it — and you can set the same role up at each location. The classification each position maps to comes from the business's award, so positions across all your locations stay consistent with one award framework. Splitting venues into separate businesses means rebuilding positions (and re-onboarding staff) in each one.

How it fits together

• Business — award · Xero. One per award boundary.
• Location — address · timezone · clock-in boundary · shift defaults · public holidays · employee-app settings. One per physical venue.
• Position — a role you roster, created at a location and mapped to the business's award.

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