My employee's Work Pattern has changed. Where do I update this?

Keeping employee work patterns accurate in the payroll system is vital to providing the correct entitlements and thus staying compliant. This article investigates managing work pattern changes.

Updated: October 2024

The employee's work pattern tells the system what a week looks like for this employee, and also the size of each work day. Here is a useful article explaining more about the employee work pattern.

An employee's work pattern can change in three ways:

The size of their work week can change (e.g. going from a 5-day to a 4-day week) - which directly impacts their week-based calculations such as allocated annual leave.
The size of individual days can change (e.g. going from 4 hours to 8 hours on a day) - which directly impacts day-based calculations such as sick leave, but could also impact accrued leave if the total number of hours per week changes.
The otherwise working days can change (e.g. dropping a Monday, or taking up a Saturday) - which impacts entitlements such as Public Holiday entitlements.

Each of these changes will impact the employee's timesheet calculations in different ways, which is why you are in the right place to raise your awareness of things to look out for and what to communicate with your employee when planning a work pattern change.

Key things to be aware of:

When work pattern changes occur, the impact is from that point forward.
The employee should understand that their annual leave entitlement remains at 4 weeks, but will look different when their working week changes, eg. 5-day work week previously (20 days) to 3-day work week, will mean 12 days being 4 weeks.
If reducing hours, the employee should take their leave before, or as close to the reduction in hours to receive the full value of what their leave was worth before the work pattern change.
- The longer they wait, the more the value of the day will reduce to reflect the new work pattern and pay rate. Annual Leave is paid at the greater of AWE or OWP.

If you are using the Payroll Portal and have to update an employee's work pattern, this work pattern is updated in Thankyou Payroll.
*Please contact our Customer Team to make sure the updates pull through to the Portal correctly.

In this article:

Updating work pattern changes in the system:
What calculations are impacted by work pattern changes?

Let's get started.

Updating Work Pattern Changes in the Thankyou Payroll System

Remember that the system uses the latest settings. If you have timesheets already loaded on the dashboard, open them and change the 'Standard Pay (-1)' to 'Standard Pay' for the required weeks, to ensure the timesheet is updated with the latest Employee Settings.

ALWAYS check the Timesheet Costing Screen after making changes to Employee Settings to ensure that the update is applied correctly.

Employee on an Hourly Rate - Example:

There are TWO places work pattern changes must be monitored and updated in the Employee Profile. They are:

The Standard Pay Tab AND	The Leave Settings Tab

If the employee's work week size or individual day size has changed, update and check the following:
In the Standard Pay Tab: Update the default entries for the standard pay row (DW) to reflect the new work-week days. Save your changes.	In the Leave Tab: Check that the 'same as Default Week' button is selected (dark green). Selecting this will bring up the next two blocks. Check that the number of days in the week (1L) has been updated to the new setting (DW). The system does this automatically. Check that the hours in a typical week (2L) have updated to the new hours (DW) if this has changed. The system calculates this automatically. Note that this number is in hours/minutes, so 37.5 will show as 37:30 Save your changes.
If the employee's Otherwise Working Days have changed, update and check the following:
In the Standard Pay Tab: Update the default entries for the standard pay row (DW) to reflect the new work week. (Delete the entry from the day that is dropped to leave an open block.) Save your changes.	In the Leave Tab: Check that the 'same as Default Week' button is selected (dark green). Selecting this will bring up the next two blocks. Check that the number of days in the week has been updated to the new setting if needed. The system does this automatically. Note that the number of days to complete a week may remain the same if days were swapped out. Save your changes.

Employee on a Salary Example:

If a salaried employee changes their day size to variable hours, the system-recommended setting is to move them to an hourly rate so their timesheet will calculate correctly.

If the salaried employee is simply adding/removing a day to their work week, make that adjustment in the Default Week settings as below. There is no need to change their salary setting as each day will have the same size and value.

There are TWO places where work pattern changes must be monitored and updated in the Employee Profile. They are:

The Standard Pay Tab AND	The Leave Settings Tab

If the employee's work week size or individual day size has changed, update and check the following:
In the Standard Pay Tab: Update the default entries for the standard pay row (DW) to reflect the new work-week days. Update the 'Days to complete a week' (1) number to be the same as the DW setting Update the Hours to complete a day (2) if the employee is working more/fewer hours during the week. Select "Yes" for the 'Hour Entries Change Amount Paid' to have the hourly rate apply Save your changes.	In the Leave Tab: Check that the 'same as Default Week' button is selected (dark green). Check that the number of days in the week (1L) has been updated to the new setting. The system does this automatically. Check that the hours in a typical week (2L) have updated to the new hours if this has changed. The system calculates this automatically. (It takes the hours to complete a day number (2) multiplied by the number of days in a week (1) to get to this number.) Note that this number is in hours/minutes, so 37.5 will show as 37:30 Save your changes.
If the employee's Otherwise Working Days have changed, update and check the following:
In the Standard Pay Tab: Update the default entries for the standard pay row (DW) to reflect the new work week. (Delete the entry from the day that is dropped to leave an open block.) Note that the number of days to complete a week may remain the same if days were swapped out. Update the 'Days to complete a week' (1) number to be the same as the DW setting if needed. Save your changes.	In the Leave Tab: Check that the 'same as Default Week' button is selected (dark green). Check that the number of days in the week has been updated to the new setting if needed. The system does this automatically. Save your changes.

Employee on a Monthly Salary Example:

If the employee's day size has changed and you want to record hours (where before you used the '1' setting to indicate a day), you can update the employee profile as shown above to calculate based on an hourly rate (day size).

What if the work pattern changes during the month?

The standard pay would be correct. Any leave loaded in the monthly timesheet will be paid at the settings at the time the timesheet was saved. Once you've updated the settings, any leave subsequently added will be paid out at the new settings. Double-check the costing screen to ensure that the amount deducted from their leave balance is correct.

When updating a work pattern within a monthly salary, remember the following order:

Load pay (and leave) on the old setting | Save timesheet | Update Employee Profile to new work pattern | Open timesheet and add the remainder of the month on the new work pattern | Save timesheet.

*What you will see is Standard Pay (-1) for the old work pattern setting and Standard Pay for the new work pattern. The timesheet should calculate leave correctly.

Calculations Impacted by Work Pattern Changes

Impact on Leave Calculations

If the day count changes, the next leave anniversary will see a change in the number of days allocated leave given. The accrued leave balance will remain unchanged at 8% of Gross.
- e.g. if the employee goes from a 5-day to a 4-day work week, the new allocation will be calculated as 4 weeks x days per week (4) = 16 days new allocation (where last allocation was 4 weeks x days per week (5) = 20 days)

Our system allocates annual leave in days, so if the days per week changes, then any unused allocated leave won't reflect the current work week and will require adjusting to reflect the new work week.
Our system does not update the balance retrospectively, you have to do this manually so please contact our Support Team to help with this.

If the number of hours in a workweek changes, the allocated annual leave will remain the same if the number of work days remains constant. But the accrued leave may be impacted either up or down.
Annual Leave is calculated when taken and paid at the greater of AWE or OWP. So the dollar value of the leave will be impacted when taken. This means that the closer the leave is taken to the work pattern change, the closer in dollar value this leave will be to the value before the change.

Changes to Otherwise Working Days

Otherwise Working Days determine the employee's entitlement to a public holiday, an alternative holiday, sick leave, bereavement leave and family violence leave on a given day. Be aware that this entitlement will change if a workday change occurs, e.g. if the employee drops Mondays, any public holiday occurring on a Monday will no longer count as falling on their Otherwise Working Day so entitlements will not apply.

Impact when doing Correction Pays

Please note: Any correction pays done after a change to work patterns would impact the leave settings. As the employee was paid under the old setting, the correction therefore needs to be made under the old setting (entitlement & rates). Correction pays use current settings for calculations, so special care needs to be taken here.

If there is a marked change in the work pattern, please contact our Customer Team before doing the correction pay as the old settings may need to be reinstated for this correction and then updated again afterwards.