FAQ’s

Frequently Asked Questions

The Answers

  • Where can I find help?

    Through your account you have access to help manuals, email, phone, and Skype for support. For non-urgent help or feedback, you can also catch us on Twitter or our feedback forum.

  • How much does it cost?

    Pricing information can be found here. In short, $2 per staff per month. We work out each month’s subscription fee based on the total unique staff you rostered the month before.  If you use SMS (optional) to communicate with your staff, we will charge you as little as 13c each for them. If you do cancel your account as paying member in the future, then you will never be charged again.

  • When do my employees first get contacted by the system?

    The first contact your staff will have by the system is when you publish your first roster. Like all messages to your staff, it will include a link to their login area at the end. You may choose to let your staff know about the system before, using the broadcast message feature. A one page staff manual can be downloaded and printed from the Manage Staff page.

  • What does ‘publishing’ a roster mean?

    When you publish a roster, you are indicating to the system it is ready to ‘pin on the wall’. Depending on your settings, your staff will be contacted with a summary of their shifts, they will be able to start dropping and swapping shifts via their logged in area, and any changes you make to the roster will be communicated to the effected employees. Published rosters also show tools like the fill-in finder.

  • How can I make the system faster?

    Roster Plus uses cutting edge technology to calculate costing and errors as you build your roster. Because of this, the best way to make the system faster is by using a modern browser. Leading the pack is Google Chrome. Following Chrome is Mozilla Firefox. If you have to use Internet Explorer, make sure you are using the latest version, 9.

  • If I send you my roster, how long will it take to build?

    We aim to turn around rosters in 24 hours. If your roster is large or complex, or we have questions about some of the colour coding you may have used we may need up to 72 hours.

  • What do my staff see when they login?

    The best way to test this is by adding yourself as a staff member, sending yourself a message via the system, going to the URL at the bottom of the message and logging in. Staff NEVER see the pay rates of others.

  • Can I print my roster?

    Yes. In staff or role view of the roster builder, click the green PRINT / EXPORT button. There are several options you can set to get your roster to fit on one page. We also highly recommend reading the printing page of the user manual as some printers and browsers have weird settings.

  • Who uses your software?

    At last count, over 280 managers and business owners are actively using the Roster Plus system each week. They come from sectors like hospitality, retail, health, charity, education and more. They range from 5 staff to 500 and the only thing they all have had in common was a problem with their rostering. Head to our client page to view some of the companies and read testimonials.

  • Does Roster Plus integrate with Payroll (Myob, Paycycle, Quickbooks, etc)?

    When we launch our time & attendance module and award interpretation module we will have several integrations with online Payroll providers. We will also have several data exports, to make import into offline payroll packages like Myob and Quickbooks easier.

  • How much does it cost if I use SMS to contact my staff?

    SMS credits can be purchased in advance, in blocks of 100 to 20,000. 500 SMS cost $100 (20c each), 5,000 SMS cost $750 (15c each). The more you buy at once, the cheaper they get. Some notifications cost more than one credit; this is because they are longer than 160 characters. Notifications that end up more than one credit are rare!

  • What should I put in the ‘shift name’ field?

    It is a good idea to name the shifts their start and end time, like ’5am – 8am’. This ensures the shift times are in all print views, and are distributed when you publish a roster. It also means the system will guess the actual start and end times more accurately. We have the shift name in different fields to the start / end time so you can call your shift something like ’9pm – close’, or communicate extra details like ’5am – 4pm & 123 Fake Street, Fakeville’.

  • Do you offer award interpretation?

    We are almost there with an award interpretation engine to handle MOST award conditions and alerts as you roster. It should go live late April.

  • Is my data safe and how frequently is it backed up?

    We take the security of your data seriously. Your data is securely stored on dedicated servers hosted at the world class Equinix data-centre in Sydney. Hourly, Daily and Weekly backups are pushed to local and offsite servers while a transaction by transaction mirrored server sits on standby. Each backup is protected by enterprise-class firewalls and data encryption. We will never share your data with 3rd-parties and to-date, our security has never been compromised.

  • What is the best view to build my roster in?

    We recommend building your roster in ‘role view’, without assigning shifts to staff. This lets you put your business needs first. Once this is done, head over to ‘staff view’ and assign the shifts to your staff. This view will allow you to make sure your shifts are evenly distributed. Once this is done, head over to ‘role coverage view’ for one final check all your bases are covered. Some more great rostering tips can be found here.

  • How can I build my rosters faster?

    There are several handy shortcuts for building your roster. The first way to ‘build your roster from previous’. Many people build based on their last rosters, others create several ‘template’ rosters for loading. You can move shifts easily by clicking and dragging the shift name in either role or staff view. To make a copy of the shift, hold the CTRL key while you do this. You can ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ both shifts and notes.

  • What happens to my data if I close my account?

    Your account data is removed from our servers 4 weeks after your trial completes, your paid subscription expires or you ‘cancel’ your account. If you can have your data removed within 48hours if you email us.

  • Do you have an iPhone app for staff or managers?

    Not yet! This is one of our most requested features and we plan on building it as soon as our time & attendance module and award interpretation module are complete.

  • Do you offer a time and attendance module?

    We have developed a time and attendance module and it should be launched with award interpretation, late April.

  • How do I know you are a ‘real’ company?

    Weary of dealing with online companies without phone numbers listed? So are we. Get to know the team here, or give us a call right now using the number  on our contact page. If you are around the Gold Coast in Queensland, get in touch and we can catch up for a coffee, our shout!

Week after week we have been able to decrease our labour cost just by exclusive use of this software.
Richard Storie - IGA New South Wales