Hi there,

It’s time for episode 3 of ’In the spotlight’, and we've got lots more exciting updates for you!
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Here's what we've got in store for you in this month's edition:

1. Star of the month - Salary Treatment
2. Did you know? - A bit about Shift Broadcasts
3. What's New? - We’ve got a number of small but mighty updates to share

So, without further ado...

⭐ Star of the month: Salary Treatment

Ever wondered how to get smarter insights from your salaried employees' costs?

Our new Salary Treatment functionality is here to transform how you view and manage labour costs! This clever feature determines how your salaried employees' costs are calculated and displayed in Cost Control reporting, giving you the power to make more informed staffing decisions.
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Choose your approach to Cost Control:

Option 1: Hourly Rate 🕐 Perfect for operational reporting and understanding true labour deployment

Rotaready converts salaries to hourly rates based on contracted hours, so costs only appear when employees actually work or take paid leave. You'll see costs on working days only, with totals varying based on hours worked.
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​Option 2: Fixed Daily Rate 📅 Ideal for traditional accounting and budgeting

Salary costs are spread evenly across every calendar day (including non-working days), giving you consistent daily costs throughout the month. Monthly totals will only vary based on the number of days in each month.
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What about Payroll?

Your payroll stays perfectly accurate no matter which option you choose.
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Simply select your payroll calendar and pay run when generating reports (ensuring the period is signed off), and watch as salary costs are calculated. Sometimes, an employee’s pay needs to be adjusted to reflect changes during a pay period, like starting or leaving mid-month, in these cases, salary is pro-rated based on the actual days or hours worked.
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​A quick note:

Cost Control costs won't exactly match payroll costs, as they include additional uplifts like holiday smoothing, tax, and pension contributions. However, this gives you the most accurate picture of what each period will likely cost your business.
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​Ready to explore? Check out our knowledge base article or contact our support team to discuss which option works best for your business.
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🤔 Did you know?

You can fill last-minute gaps in your rota with Shift Broadcasts.
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When someone calls in sick or an unexpected demand hits, there’s no need to panic or spend hours phoning around. Rotaready’s shift broadcasts make it simple to reach your team instantly.
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With just a few clicks, you can notify all available and eligible employees via the Rotaready mobile app. They’ll see the shift details and can choose to pick it up in minutes. Once enough people have claimed the shift, the broadcast automatically closes.
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It’s perfect for the Christmas rush, with increased footfall, staff holidays and seasonal illness, you can utilise Shift Broadcasts to ensure you're always properly staffed when you need it most. Learn more about shift broadcasts in our knowledge base.
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🚀 What's new?

We’ve got three small but mighty updates to share with you this month:
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​🔁 Invite to self-onboard: You can now re-trigger self-onboarding from the Options button on an employee’s profile, which is perfect for rejoiners or when you need to recollect details.

📆 New absence widget: You can now add a widget to your dashboard showing booked and approved absences. Filter by site, period, and absence type to get the view you need.

📊 3-month anniversaries: We’ve added 3-month work anniversaries to the anniversary report and dashboard widget, great for tracking probation periods.

There are lots more exciting widgets on the way, so keep your eyes peeled for what’s landing next.

👋🏼 Until next time

We hope you found this post useful. Keep your eye out for next month's edition of 'In the spotlight 🔦' where we'll be doing a deep dive into... Dashboards

If there's anything in particular you'd like to see featured next, let us know at comms@rotaready.com. And for any questions about new or existing features, get in touch with your Account Manager, or you can reach our team via live chat, and at team@rotaready.com

It’s time for episode 2 of ’In the spotlight’, and we've got lots more exciting updates for you! ​
​
Here's what we've got in store for you in this month's edition:

1. Star of the month: An introduction to Rotaready Evo
2. Did you know? - A quick look at Company Documents
3. What's New! We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to bring you some exciting updates this month

And all with useful links and details on where you can find out more. So, without further ado...
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⭐️ Star of the month: Rotaready Evo

We’re very excited to be able to introduce you to Rotaready Evo, the next generation of Rotaready. It’s everything you know and love about your staff scheduling solution, now enhanced by AI.

Rotaready Evo goes beyond scheduling. It uses AI to transform employee feedback into actionable insights to help you proactively manage employee happiness, boost performance, and reduce churn.
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So, how does Rotaready Evo work, and what makes it different?

With Rotaready Evo, employee sentiment is captured at clock-out, and analysed at individual, site and company level; delivering AI-powered insights for you to act on immediately. You still have access to all the features you rely on, plus…

📱 Employee Feedback – Capture a simple 5-point rating at clock-out, with optional comments for deeper insights.

🧠 Copilot Assistant – Ask questions like “Did anyone have a bad shift today?” and get instant, AI-powered answers to support your instincts.

🔔 Smart Feeds & Alerts – Stay ahead with morale trend notifications and alerts for key employee milestones

📊 Comprehensive Analytics – Track sentiment by location, shift, and line manager. Understand what drives satisfaction and take action before morale dips.

💬 Engage Lite – Engage your teams with our social communication tool where you can post updates, share learning and tag colleagues.

Upcoming webinar - Rotaready Evo Live Wednesday 29th October at 10am

This week Rotaready Product Owner, Amelia, will be hosting a live webinar where she'll take you through exactly what Rotaready Evo is, including a live demo of the new functionality. If you'd like to join, you can sign up via the link below.

Interested in finding out more?

Here are a few links you might find useful:

• Rotaready Evo video
• One pager
• Request a demo
• Knowledge base

🤔 Did you know?

Company documents

Rotaready’s company documents feature makes employee documentation effortless. Share policies and handbooks in bulk, either to your entire workforce or tailored groups. Instantly upload, update and request document acknowledgement across your workforce, all without the manual admin.
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​​Find out more about the feature here
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🚀 What’s new?

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to bring you some exciting updates this month. Here are the highlights:

Enhanced salary costs – More accurate reporting for salaried employees, helping you track costs and manage payroll with confidence

Employee identity fields – Capture employee preferences such as pronouns and gender identity to support a more inclusive workplace

Employee sentiment updates – Anonymised surveys and an enhanced sentiment dashboard for deeper wellbeing insights

👉 Take a look at what’s new

👋🏼 Until next time

We hope you found this post useful. Keep your eye out for next month's edition of 'In the spotlight 🔦' where we'll be doing a deep dive into Pro Features 👀
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If there's anything in particular you'd like to see featured next, let us know at comms@rotaready.com. And for any questions about new or existing features, get in touch with your Account Manager, or you can reach our team via live chat, and at team@rotaready.com

What’s new? 📣

• Payroll salary costs: Payroll reports now accurately reflect what employees should be paid per payroll period. Simply select the relevant payroll calendar and Rotaready will do the rest by smartly pro-rating for starters, leavers, pay changes, site moves, cover shifts… you name it!

• Cost Control salary costs: We’ve introduced a new salary treatment option for Cost Control: salaries can now be calculated based on hours worked only, using a pro-rated hourly rate instead of a fixed cost across the week. Find out more here.

• Employee pronoun and gender identity: Employees can now set their pronouns and gender identity via the mobile app, with managers able to update this information through employee profiles. Rotaready also supports storing legal gender for HMRC reporting, helping you stay compliant while fostering a more inclusive workplace.

• Anonymous sentiment surveys: Now live for Rotaready Evo customers! Employee Sentiment now supports anonymous responses via the attendance kiosk or mobile app. Employees will be clearly informed when feedback is anonymous. Want to enable it? Reach out to our support team.

• Employee Sentiment analytics dashboard: Get powerful insights into how your team is feeling - all in one dashboard. Rotaready Evo customers can now view weekly sentiment scores, breakdowns by site, department, shift type & manager, week-on-week trends, and export raw data for deeper analysis. Find out more here.

Questions? Send us a message and our Support team will be happy to help 💬

Hi there,

Welcome to ’In the spotlight’, our brand-new monthly initiative designed to help you unlock the full potential of Rotaready! Each month, we'll highlight the powerful features that might be hiding in plain sight, and update you on anything brand new.
​
Here's what we've got in store for you this month:

1. Star of the month: Predictive Analytics
2. Did you know? - A quick look at Rota Templates
3. Coming soon... a sneak peek at some of the features that will be landing next

And all with useful links and details on where you can find out more. So, without further ado...

⭐ Star of the month: Predictive Analytics

A new AI-driven feature set ready to revolutionise the way you build your staff rotas.

What exactly is Predictive Analytics?

A dynamic trio of features powered by AI and Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics gives you a smarter way to plan, forecast, and schedule your rotas. Here’s a bit more about the AI-powered feature set:
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Sales Predictions

Accurately forecast daily sales by stream using your business’s unique trading history, seasonality, key dates, and even weather patterns. It’s like having an experienced manager who never forgets a detail.
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Labour Predictions

Build rotas that are smarter than ever, and in record time. Labour predictions combines your business knowledge, historical data and intelligent technology to deliver hourly labour predictions. And the more you use it, the more accurate and tailored these predictions become.

Labour Deployment

Your first step to AI-driven labour predictions, Labour Deployment helps you visualise staffing levels in real-time and spot over or understaffing before it happens. It’s your trusted scheduling companion, powered by your rules and forecasts.

Delivering real results

Our early data is showing an average improvement of 5% in rota accuracy, and up to a 25% improvement in the accuracy of sales predictions

Interested in finding out more?

Here are a few links you might find useful:

• One pager
• Knowledge base article
• Request a demo

🤔 Did you know?

We also have a rota templates functionality that helps you save time and ensure coverage by generating rotas from templates tailored to your staffing needs.
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​Find out more about the feature here
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🚀 Coming soon...

Curious about what we're working on behind the scenes? Here's a snapshot of the functionalities that will be landing next:

Hourly Salary Treatment – A new optional setting in Cost Control to pro-rate salary costs based on hours worked, showing costs only when employees work or take paid leave.

Pronoun Visibility – Track employee pronouns across profiles, with options to request during self-onboarding and update via the mobile app.

👋🏼 Until next time

We hope you found this post useful. Keep your eye out for next month's edition of 'In the spotlight 🔦' where we'll be doing a deep dive into Rotaready Evo 👀
​

If there's anything in particular you'd like to see featured next, let us know at comms@rotaready.com. And for any questions about new or existing features, get in touch with your Account Manager, or you can reach our team via live chat, and at team@rotaready.com

What’s new? 📣

• Company documents: No more uploading the same file over and over! Now you can share documents like handbooks and policies in bulk with just a few clicks. Learn more here.

• My documents: Employees can now view, download, and acknowledge their documents directly from the mobile app. This applies to categories marked as “employees can view” only.

• Shift reminders: Your employees will now get push notifications 10 minutes before their shift starts and at their scheduled end time, with a friendly reminder to clock-in and out. Want to customise the timings? Just let us know!

• Show breaks: Use the “Show breaks” toggle on the Attendance page to view scheduled, actual, and sanitised breaks for each shift.

• National insurance updates: We’ve updated our National Insurance logic for wage calculations starting in April to include the new rates. Learn more about our wage cost calculations.

• Republic of Ireland specific financials: We’ve introduced ROI-specific labels across financial fields for sites based in the Republic of Ireland, including IBAN, BIC and PPSN's. Available on the web platform only for now — mobile support coming soon!

• Status dashboard: Stay up-to-date with real-time information on Rotaready’s performance and service disruptions through our Status Dashboard.

Feature spotlight: Asset Registry 🔎

Easily keep track of physical items issued to employees — from uniforms and tech to key sets and more.

Log important details like who issued the item, when it was given, serial or asset numbers, item value, and any relevant notes. It’s a simple way to stay on top of who has what, helping streamline your onboarding and offboarding processes. Find out more here.

Questions? Send us a message and our Support team will be happy to help 💬

What’s new? 📣

• Self-onboarding upgrades: You can now collect even more key details from new employees, including student loan information, starter declarations, and working time regulation preferences—making onboarding smoother than ever! Learn more about employee self-onboarding.

• Guestline Rezlynx integration enhancements: Easily view your room and guest metrics directly within Rotaready’s Cost Control tools. Get the insights you need to deploy your labour more accurately and efficiently, powered by Guestline Rezlynx.

• Performance enhancements: We're really sorry if you were affected by the performance issues earlier this month. The good news? We’ve resolved everything and made improvements to ensure a smoother, faster, and more reliable experience than ever before. Learn more about the updates here.

Interested in these updates? Reach out to our Support team, and we’ll help you get started!

Feature spotlight: Document signatures 🔎

Did you know you can send documents for signature directly through Rotaready? With document signatures, you can:

✅ Automatically populate key details like name, address, and job title using templates

✅ Collect legally binding signatures directly within Rotaready

✅ Request counter-signatures from other Rotaready users for added flexibility

✅ Track signature progress and watch as completed documents automatically upload to an employee’s profile

Questions? Send us a message and our Support team will be happy to help 💬

What's happening?

In the UK, clocks go forward 1 hour at 1AM on Sunday 30th March 2025 (jumping straight to 2AM).

What does this mean for you?

Rotaready automatically adjusts hours for the clock change, so there’s nothing you need to do! However, you may notice a few differences during the change-over, including:

✅ Rotaready will automatically apply the time change when you build your rotas. Just make sure to select the correct updated times for shifts starting or ending after 1AM.

✅ You may notice a slight variance in scheduled or worked hours—for example, a shift from 6PM (Sat) to 2AM (Sun) will total 7 hours instead of 8, as the clocks skip an hour.

No need to worry—we’ve got it all covered!

The Rotaready team 🚀

At Rotaready, we’ve always been committed to making your experience smooth, fast, and hassle-free. For nearly 10 years, we’ve worked hard to keep our platform running reliably. But we know that over the past few weeks, some of you faced performance issues that affected your experience.

We completely understand how frustrating it can be when things don’t go as expected, and we’re truly sorry for any inconvenience this caused. Honestly, we were just as disappointed to be in that situation, and we’ve been committed to making things right.

Behind the scenes, we’ve been working around the clock to fix these issues and improve our platform. Unfortunately, it was a bit trickier to pinpoint the root cause than we originally anticipated, but we’re pleased to share that the issues are now resolved.

💭 Keen to learn what we did? Here’s a look at the steps we’ve taken over the past few weeks to not just resolve these problems but also make Rotaready more reliable than ever:

Keeping things running smoothly when it's busy ⚙️

As Rotaready continues to grow, more people are using the platform, especially during busy times—like when employees are scheduling shifts or requesting time off. You may have noticed things slowing down during these peak moments. With the industry constantly evolving, our technical team is working hard to keep everything running smoothly and efficiently.

To fix this, we’ve made improvements to how Rotaready handles high demand. Now, even when things get busy, the platform will continue to run smoothly without delays.

Making updates more reliable 💪

In the past, you may have noticed some issues as a result of us making updates to Rotaready. But rest assured—that's a thing of the past! 👋🏼

We know how important it is for Rotaready to be reliable every day, so we’ve made our update process better than ever. Now, if something unexpected happens during an update, Rotaready can quickly bounce back without affecting your experience. This means fewer surprises and a more stable platform overall.

Faster mobile experience ⚡️

We understand that being able to manage things like holiday requests and shift swaps quickly is really important, especially when you’re using the app on the go. Recently, during busy times, these features weren’t as fast as they should’ve been.

We’ve now made improvements to speed things up. So, whether you’re approving a holiday request or swapping shifts, everything should now work faster and smoother, just like it should.

Staying in the loop 📣

It’s not only our technical team who have been busy… we know how important it is to stay informed, so we’ve added a News Center to our help desk tool. This means you’ll always be up-to-date with the latest news—whether it’s exciting new features or significant service updates.

You can find the News section by clicking the blue circle in the bottom right corner when you’re logged into Rotaready. We hope this helps keep you in the loop and makes communication even smoother.

What’s next? 🤔

We’ve made a lot of improvements over the past couple of weeks, but we’re just getting started! We’ll continue working to make Rotaready faster, more reliable, and even easier for you to use. We’re always looking for ways to make your experience better, and we’ll keep you updated as we roll out new features. Be sure to keep an eye out for our latest releases in the coming weeks! 👀

Once again, we truly apologise for any inconvenience caused by the recent issues and a big thank you for your patience as we worked through them.

Thank you for being part of the Rotaready community! If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out—we’re always here to help!

The Rotaready team 🚀

As we bid farewell to 2024 and prepare to welcome 2025, it’s the perfect time to look back on an incredible year!

From groundbreaking additions like dashboards to handy improvements like self-serve settings, we’ve been working hard to enhance Rotaready in every way possible. We hope you agree—we’ve come a long way this year, and we’re even more excited for what’s to come in 2025.

So, without further ado, here are our 12 favourite features of 2024:

1. Dashboards 📈

Taking pride of place on the homepage, Rotaready dashboards allow you to create and share customisable dashboards made up of widgets that suit your needs. Collaborate effortlessly with your colleagues and keep key information at your fingertips.

Haven’t set one up yet? Learn how to do so here.

2. Mobile rota editor 📱

We’ve brought more power to your pocket! The mobile rota editor lets you build, edit, and manage rotas on the go. Designed for ultimate flexibility, it ensures you can handle changes wherever you are—because we know you’re always on the move.

3. Employee submitted details 📝

Say goodbye to tedious admin! Employees can now update their key details like their address, bank info, and emergency contacts directly through the mobile app. Of course, these changes are always pending manager approval, keeping you in control. Learn more here.

4. More integrations 🔀

We’ve expanded our integration network to connect Rotaready seamlessly with even more of your favourite tools. New integrations include Newbridge, EarlyPay, Clover, Talos360, and Vita Mojo. And trust us—there’s plenty more to come in 2025!

5. Right to work improvements (gold rings included!) ✅

Stay compliant with ease. Record visa details and share codes directly in an employee’s profile to ensure you’re always up to date with right to work requirements.

6. Site access manager 💼

The site access manager automatically grants managers access to new sites and departments based on their assignments, saving you time and effort. Say goodbye to manual updates!

7. Clock-in notes ⏰

Employees can now add notes when clocking in and out, giving managers all the context they need to sign hours off accurately.

8. Self-serve settings ⚙️

Our updated self-serve settings let you manage sites, access, leaver reasons, job roles, recruitment sources, and document categories directly from your settings page. Configuring Rotaready has never been easier!

9. Custom metrics ✏️

Track what matters most to your business! With custom metrics, you can record key metrics like covers, reservations, or something else. Even better, integrations like Guestline Rezlynx automatically pull this information directly into Rotaready!

10. Large reports 📊

Big data, no problem. With large reports, you can generate detailed, data-rich reports without the wait. Once your report is ready, you’ll receive an email with a link to download it in an easily exportable format—no need to hang around!

11. Allowance updates 🏖️

Allowances have had a major glow-up this year! Key updates include:

• Easily track allowances by converting hours into days.

• View the total number of hours an employee is expected to accrue by the end of the holiday year, simplifying holiday planning.

• Automatically close allowances, ensuring final balances and payments are processed seamlessly, without the need for manual intervention.

12. Labour predictions 🤖

We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes on something truly exciting—and we can’t wait to share it with you! Our new labour predictions intelligently forecast the hours you’ll need based on historical trends, events, and sales, all directly within your rota. Say goodbye to the guesswork and hello to smarter workforce planning! Stay tuned—big things are coming! 👀

And finally… a big thank you to you! Your support and feedback have been instrumental in shaping this journey, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

From all of us at Rotaready, we wish you a fantastic 2025 – we can’t wait to keep building and growing together! 🎊

What’s new? 📣

• Self-serve document categories: Manage your document categories with ease—add, edit, and delete them directly from the Settings page.

• Site manager: Effortlessly manage your sites—add, edit, rearrange, or delete them directly from the Settings page.

• Employee visa details: Record an employee's visa details, including visa type, number, and expiry date, in the Personal tab of their profile.

• Employee share codes: Track Right to Work share codes and their expiration dates, all within the Personal tab of an employee’s profile.

Feature spotlight: Shift broadcasts 🔎

Easily fill unassigned shifts with Shift Broadcasts. This feature automatically notifies available and eligible staff about open shifts, allowing them to claim outstanding shifts quickly on a first-come, first-served basis.

Questions? Send us a message and our Support team will be happy to help 💬