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When one worker on the shift is paid differently to the rest
Once rates are set up properly, most shifts price themselves. A day shift for a given client and role pays and bills the same whoever works it, and nights and weekends carry their own rates. Then there's the leading hand who is paid more than the people beside them. Or the fitter who has been with you long enough to keep an older rate. Most crews have one or two of these, and they're where the costing mistakes creep in.
Layered rates cover the ordinary shifts
The sensible way to hold rates is in layers. Set a default for the whole organisation, then override it where something is genuinely different: a client that pays more, a role that attracts a higher rate, night work, weekend work. The most specific rate that applies to a shift wins, and anything you haven't set falls back to the layer above.
Set up this way, most rates get entered once and only revisited when a contract or agreement changes. A rate someone types in by hand for each shift will eventually be typed wrong.
Mustr's optional rates work like this. They're switched on per organisation, and per-day bill and pay rates can be set at organisation, client, role, day or night, and weekday or weekend level, with the most specific winning.
Where the exceptions come from
Exceptions usually have a sound reason. A leading hand takes responsibility for the crew on site and is paid for it. A long-serving worker was on a better rate before an agreement changed, and you kept it to keep them. A specialist is scarce enough that the client agreed to pay a premium for that person in particular.
The trouble is where these exceptions live. Often it's a note in a spreadsheet or the memory of whoever did the costing before the current person. When that knowledge isn't to hand, the shift gets costed at the site rate. Either the leading hand is underpaid or the client is underbilled, and nobody notices until the worker or the client does.
Before you lock in any individual rate, check that it and your standard rates meet the award or agreement that applies. The Fair Work Ombudsman is the place to start, and your accountant or an industrial relations adviser can help with the detail.
Put the exception on the person
An exception that belongs to a person should be recorded against that person, not typed onto every shift they happen to work. Then it follows them from site to site and nobody has to remember to apply it.
In Mustr, per-employee pay and bill rates override the site or role rate. Set the leading hand's rate once and it applies wherever they're booked. Think about both sides when you do. A higher pay rate with no change to the bill rate means you're absorbing the difference. That may be exactly right for a worker you want to keep, but it should be something you chose.
Admins see bill, pay and margin on the shift. That puts a thin shift in front of you while you're still building the crew, instead of weeks later when someone reconciles an invoice. Mustr doesn't do timesheets, pay runs or exports yet. Those are on the roadmap, so for now the rates are there to show what a shift is worth while you roster it.
Who sees the numbers
Rates are sensitive in both directions. Crew compare pay, and one worker finding out a colleague earns more for the same shift can cause a week of trouble even when the reason is sound. A client seeing your pay rates next to their bill rate starts a margin conversation you'd rather have on your own terms, if at all.
Mustr keeps dollar figures away from both. Workers and clients never see them. The figures sit with admins, so be deliberate about who in your office is an admin.
Look over your individual rates every so often, too. A grandfathered rate nobody can explain any more, or a leading hand rate for someone who stopped running a crew a while back, costs you on every shift it touches. The post on where margins leak covers the wider picture.
There's more on building shifts on the rostering page, or book a demo and we'll show you rates on a real shift in the roster.