WFM Release Note: Automatic Closure of Rotas and Tronc Funds

What’s Changing?

Open rotas and tronc funds for the period of closure during the Covid-19 pandemic will be automatically completed.

Proposed release date: as per below schedule.

Reason for the Change

Due to the staggered opening up of the UK hospitality industry, there will be many customers with rota and tronc periods that will need to be moved to the current date, without payments feeding through to payroll, or the requirement to complete each day individually.

Customers Affected

All HR & Payroll customers with rotas and tronc periods open due to being closed following the recent lockdown and tier restrictions.

Information

Fourth can run a script on customer portals to automatically change the submission status of both rotas and tronc funds to ‘submitted’ without sending data into the Payroll module.

To have the rotas and Tronc funds automatically submitted, please visit our Customer Success Portal and submit a request, detailing the following information:

• The date you wish the script to be run (these can be any Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday)
• The Week Commencing dates of all rotas or tronc funds that need to be included
  • We can only close periods where the week-end date is in the past
• The Locations that need to be included (if all Locations, please specify 'all')
  • If there have been locations operating for the past few months, and rotas/troncs have been closed as normal, they will not be included in any script that is run
• The portal name

Fourth will endeavour to run the script on your selected date.

Release Notes

There are several different scenarios in relation to how the auto-close will work depending on the modules used by each customer.

This release note will explain each scenario separately.

Rota-Only Customers

What Fourth Will Do

For any open rotas that exist for the specified date range, Fourth will set the days completed for all Divisions and change the status to ‘Submitted’.

The status in the system database will simply be changed to ‘Submitted’, without pushing any payments through to the Payroll module.

Why is Fourth Doing This?

There is no impact to the system if rotas remain in an open state. However, if they are submitted to payroll at a later date, all payments will be pushed through to payroll, which may cause overpayments to employees.

What Logic is Being Used?

• The rotas must already exist in the Rota module

Fourth will only close these rotas if:

• The Location has submitted rotas in February 2020 – this is to indicate that the Location was open and trading in February
• The portal does not use dynamic rotas – e. the portal is set up so that rotas need to be submitted in order to push worked hours into the payroll module

Rotas with all 7 rota days completed will not be set to ‘Submitted’ to ensure rotas for weeks in the current pay period are not set to ‘Submitted’ when they should actually be paid.

Labour Productivity & Advanced Schedules Customers

What Fourth Will Do

Create any missing schedules which do not currently exist within the specified date range. Then Fourth will set the days to ‘Actual’ for all Divisions and change the status to ‘Submitted’.  

The status in the system database will simply be changed to ‘Submitted’, without pushing any payments through to the Payroll module.

Why is Fourth Doing This?

When accessing a schedule in Labour Productivity/Advanced Schedules, if the week does not exist in the Rota module, the system will automatically create a rota for that Location and week. Although there is no impact to the system if rotas remain in an open state, if they are submitted to payroll at a later date, any payments will be pushed through to payroll which may cause overpayments to employees.

What Logic is Being Used?

• The rotas must already exist in the Rota module

Fourth will only close these rotas if:

• The Location has submitted rotas in February 2020 – this is to indicate that the Location was open and trading in February
• The portal does not use dynamic rotas – e. the portal is set up so that rotas need to be submitted in order to push worked hours into the payroll module

Rotas with all 7 rota days completed will not be set to submitted in order to ensure rotas for weeks in the current pay period are not set to submitted when they should actually be paid.

Customers who use Tronc or Tronc2

What Fourth Will Do

Submit any open tronc funds that already exist for the specified date range without pushing payments through to payroll. Any remaining balance will be carried forward.

Fourth will then create any missing rotas that do not currently exist between the specified date range, and change their status to ‘Submitted’ (please see the Rota only customers or Labour Productivity/Advanced Schedule Customer sections for more information).

Fourth will then create tronc periods/funds for all rotas that have been created and submitted, and close all open periods with a zero fund, ensuring to carry forward any previous remaining balances.

Why is Fourth Doing This?

A tronc fund can only be created once the corresponding rota has been submitted to payroll. They also need to be submitted sequentially for the next fund to be created.  Therefore, for the latest fund to be available when Locations reopen, Fourth needs to create and submit all rota weeks and tronc periods during this time.

What Logic is Being Used?

• A tronc fund needs to have been submitted during late February/early march - this is to indicate that the Location is currently using tronc
• Any missing tronc funds for the rota weeks created by Fourth will be created
• If the end date of the current tronc fund is after the date of the last rota Fourth submitted, it will not be closed

Frequently Asked Questions

What if periods are closed that shouldn’t be?

Rota weeks and tronc funds can be reopened from the portal quite easily. However, it is important to understand that if any reopened rotas or tronc funds are reclosed, any payments will feed through to the current payroll and will be paid to employees if they are not removed manually.

If you have any concerns please submit a request at help.fourth.com and the support team will be happy to answer your query.

What if we have already completed and submitted rotas?

If rotas have been submitted to payroll, the process will recognise this and the rota will not be recreated.

We use Tronc2 and have completed rotas, but not the tronc because we can’t access the correct week yet.  What will happen to that tronc fund?

The process being used for Tronc2 is separate to that of the rotas. The rota process will recognise that rotas are closed. The tronc process will assume that no tronc is due for these closed rota weeks and will submit them up to the week up to the end of the specified date range

We pay our rotas in arrears, so they are often closed at Location, awaiting submission. Will these be submitted via this process?

No, the process will see that all the days in the week are completed and will skip the auto submission. The rota can then be submitted as and when required.