Locking and Publishing the Rota

This article explains how publishing and locking the rota works in S4labour, and what checks the system carries out at each stage.

Overview

In S4labour, there are two key stages when finalising a rota:

• Publishing the rota — shares upcoming shifts with employees
• Locking the rota — confirms the rota is final for payroll

Publishing the Rota (Planning Stage)

The rota begins as a forecast, which acts as a planning tool while you build out shifts for the upcoming week.

Once you’re happy with the schedule, you can publish the rota. This makes shifts visible to employees so they know when they are due to work.

At this stage, the system carries out some important checks to ensure everything is set up correctly. For example, it checks that salaried employees have the correct number of days recorded across the week. These could include:

• Working days
• Holiday
• Sickness
• Unpaid leave

This ensures their contracted time is being recorded properly and helps avoid payroll issues later on.

You should aim to publish the rota before the week starts, so employees have full visibility of their shifts in advance.

Locking the Rota (Payroll Stage)

After the week has taken place, the rota becomes your actual rota, reflecting what was worked.

Before locking, it’s important to make any final updates, such as:

• Shift changes
• Absences
• Holiday entries

Once everything is correct, locking the rota finalises it for payroll. This triggers several updates in the system, including:

• Payroll data preparation
• Report updates
• Allocation of items such as tronc and salary supplements

System Checks When Locking the Rota

When locking the rota, S4labour performs several checks to help prevent payroll errors. Some are informational, while others must be resolved before you can continue.

These checks include:

• Holiday entitlement: Flags if an employee has taken more holiday than they are entitled to. You may need to adjust this or record it as unpaid leave instead.
• Holiday vs contract: Ensures salaried employees do not receive holiday pay on top of their contracted pay.
• Holiday accrual: Highlights if an employee has taken more leave than they have accrued, allowing you to review or adjust.
• Minimum wage check: Reviews salaried employees’ effective hourly rate based on their rota hours and flags if it falls below National Minimum Wage.
• Contracted days: Confirms that salaried employees’ working patterns are recorded correctly across the week.

These checks are there to support you in producing accurate payroll data and reducing errors.

A Note on System Behaviour

There are a couple of things to be aware of when using publishing and locking:

• Employees on zero-hour contracts who have not been given shifts will no longer appear on the rota once it has been published 
• Some warnings can be overridden depending on user permission levels

Best Practice

To keep things running smoothly, we recommend following a simple weekly process:

1. Build and review your rota in advance
2. Publish the rota before the week starts
3. Make updates during the week as needed
4. Lock the rota after the week ends

Following this approach helps ensure accurate pay, clear communication, and fewer last-minute changes.