On-Call Roster

Overview

Use the On-Call Roster to schedule workers who are available to respond remotely after hours. While on call, a worker logs each call, meeting or training session in the Support Worker app. A coordinator reviews and approves the reported time, and approved time is paid through Timesheet Batches, along with the standby allowance for being on call where the worker's award pays one.

The same page records Remote Work (Not On Call): calls, meetings or training a worker did when they were not rostered on call.

Configure the On-Call Contact and Reminder

Before adding your first period, open Settings > Scheduling > General and select Edit on each section below.

• Under Scheduling & Travel, enter an On-Call Phone Number if workers should call one shared after-hours number. It can be a mobile, landline, 13, 1300 or 1800 number. Leave it empty to show the rostered worker's own mobile instead.

• Under Approvals & Notifications, tick Push Notifications and set the On-Call Reminder (minutes before): a whole number from 1 to 1440. New accounts start at 60 minutes.

Workers get the reminder before each on-call period starts, along with a push notification when they are rostered, when a period changes and when one is cancelled. Turning off Push Notifications stops all of them.

Check What Can Be Paid

Astalty pays on-call under the award on the worker's employment contract for the date of the work. Every award supports the On-Call Roster, and Astalty never refuses a period because of the worker's award. Under SCHADS, Health Professionals and Aged Care it does refuse a call logged right next to a shift, and Aged Care also refuses a call during a sleepover, as Record an Activation explains.

A worker with no employment contract for the date can still appear on the roster, but the timesheet batch leaves their on-call out and shows a warning. Add the correct contract, then create another weekly or fortnightly batch for the period.

How On-Call Is Paid

Remote Work (Not On Call) earns no standby allowance. SCHADS pays it at the remote work rates for at least 1 hour: records that start within an hour of the first record's start share that hour, and a record starting after it earns its own. Nurses pays it as a recall at the overtime rate for at least 1 hour, shared the same way as calls while on call. Health Professionals and Aged Care pay each record as its own recall at overtime rates, for at least 2 hours under Health Professionals and 4 hours under Aged Care. The same casual minimum-engagement comparison applies to Nurses and Health Professionals remote work.

Public holiday rates for on-call follow the public holidays of the state on the worker's address, or the organisation's address when the worker has none. A part-day public holiday, such as Christmas Eve evening in some states, counts only from when it starts. If neither address has a state, the timesheet export lists the worker until one is added.

The award pages explain the rest of each award's rules: SCHADS, Nurses, Health Professionals and Aged Care.

Adding an On-Call Period

1. Open Scheduling > On-Call Roster.
2. Select Add On-Call Period.
3. Choose the Worker and Timezone.
4. Enter the Start Time and End Time.
5. To create a series, turn on Repeat this On-Call Period. Choose how often it repeats under Every and Period, pick the days under Repeat on for a weekly series, then set Until or leave it empty to keep it ongoing.
6. Add any instructions for the worker in Notes.
7. Select Create.

The Worker list, here and when you record remote work, includes every active team member except Auditors, so you can roster a team leader or coordinator on call as well as a Support Worker.

The worker gets a push notification that they are on call. On-call periods for the same worker cannot overlap, and Astalty refuses a repeating pattern whose occurrences would overlap each other or another series. It also refuses a period that overlaps on-call a timesheet batch has already paid for that worker.

If the worker has approved leave or unavailability, or a pending request, during the period, Astalty lists the dates and asks you to confirm before saving. The same check runs when you edit a period, give an occurrence to another worker or restore a skipped occurrence. It asks only about the dates your change adds or moves.

Reading the Roster

The roster lists each occurrence with its Worker, Date, Time, Activations, Duration and Repeats. A series with no end date shows Ongoing.

• On Call Now at the top shows who is on call at the moment and until when, with their contact number. On Call Next shows the next person rostered in the coming 14 days. When nobody is on call, it shows your shared On-Call Phone Number if you have one.
• A row on call now is highlighted and shows On Call Now. A skipped occurrence shows Skipped.
• A warning icon on a row means no standby allowance will be paid for that occurrence. Hover the icon to see why: the worker has no employment contract for the date, so timesheet batches leave their on-call out until one is added; their award is Aged Care, which has no on-call allowance and pays each call as a recall instead; or they are a registered nurse at level 4 or 5, who earns no allowance but is still paid for calls.
• The Activations count shows how many records the occurrence has, and how many are unapproved.

When activations from the last 92 days are still unapproved, the roster shows how many with a Show all unapproved button, and the On-Call Roster menu item shows the count in place of Beta.

Filter by Approval, date range, Worker and, if you can see payroll calendars, Payroll Calendar, or search by worker name. The date range covers up to 92 days and starts on the current and next week.

Managing an On-Call Period

Open a row's actions menu:

• Activations - view, log, approve, edit or delete the work recorded against that occurrence.
• Edit - change a one-off period or a future occurrence of a series.
• End Night Early - shown in place of Edit on a night of a series that is running. See Ending a Night Early.
• Change Worker - shown in place of Edit on a night of a series that has ended with no calls logged on it. See Correcting a Night That Has Ended.
• Skip This Occurrence - take one future occurrence out of a series, or a night that has ended with no calls logged on it. The worker is not on call and no standby is paid for it. An occurrence with activations logged against it cannot be skipped.
• Restore Occurrence - put a skipped occurrence back at the series' usual times, before it starts or once it has ended. A skipped night cannot be restored while it is running.
• End Series After This Occurrence - keep this occurrence and the earlier ones, with their activations, and remove the later ones.
• Delete - delete a one-off period, or a whole series, before it starts. Every occurrence of a series is removed. Once a series has started, use End Series After This Occurrence instead.
• Audit Trail - when Audit Trail is available on your account, review changes to the period and its activations.

Workers get a push notification when their period is changed, skipped, restored or deleted.

Deactivating a worker removes them from on-call nights that have not started and ends any repeating on-call they are on, leaving those nights with nobody on call. Roster someone else for those nights. See Deactivating and Reactivating Users.

Changing One Occurrence or the Rest of a Series

When you edit an occurrence of a series, choose under Apply this change to:

• This occurrence - only that date changes.
• This and following - that date and every later occurrence change. Earlier occurrences keep the times they had.

To have someone else cover one occurrence, choose This occurrence and pick a different Worker. The original worker is no longer on call that night, and the covering worker is.

Once an occurrence of a series has started, it cannot be edited in full. While it runs you can only end it early, and once it has ended you can only change its worker or skip it, as described below. A one-off period can still be edited after it starts, for example to extend its end time. On-call that a timesheet batch has already paid cannot change either: for a series, choose This and following from a later occurrence to change the rest of it. Once activations are logged against a period, its worker cannot be changed, and its times cannot change so that an activation falls outside them.

If you restore a skipped occurrence that someone else now covers, both workers are on call and both are paid standby. Delete the covering period first if you no longer need it. If the original worker now has another on-call period that night, the occurrence cannot be restored until you delete that period.

Ending a Night Early

On a night of a series that is running, choose End Night Early from the row's actions menu. Only the night's end can move, and only earlier: never before now, or before the end of a call logged on it. Enter the new End Time and select Save. To have someone else cover the rest of the night, add a one-off on-call period for them.

Correcting a Night That Has Ended

When the rostered worker was sick or swapped with someone and the night has already ended, correct it from the row's actions menu. These options appear on a night of a series that has ended with no calls logged on it:

• Change Worker opens a form with only the Worker field. Choose the worker who covered the night and select Save. The night keeps its times, moves to that worker, and the next timesheet batch created for those dates pays them for it. Remote work that worker recorded during the night moves onto it.
• Skip This Occurrence removes the night, so nobody is paid standby for it. If you skip the wrong night, Restore Occurrence puts it back, moves any remote work the worker recorded that night onto it, and the next timesheet batch created for those dates pays its standby. If someone else covered the night, both are paid standby for it.

Neither works once the night's on-call allowance is in a timesheet batch, or once a call is logged on the night. No push notification is sent for a night that has already ended.

Recording and Approving Activations on the Web

Select the activation count on a row, or choose Activations from its actions menu. Each record shows its Status: Approved; an Approve button when it is complete, or Awaiting approval if you cannot approve; or Awaiting end time when it has no end time yet. A record still in progress shows In progress under Duration.

Record an Activation

Workers normally log their own activations in the app. To record one for them:

1. Select Log Activation.
2. Choose Call, Meeting or Training under Type.
3. Enter the Start Time and End Time. In the End Time picker, 15 min, 30 min and 1 hour set the end from the start. Leave the End Time empty if the call is still going.
4. Describe the work under Reason for activation.
5. Add evidence files if needed.
6. Select Log.

An activation cannot start or end in the future. It must start within the on-call period and can finish up to 10 hours after the period ends. It cannot overlap another of the worker's activations or remote work, or time they worked on a shift. Under SCHADS, Health Professionals and Aged Care, a call that starts as a shift ends, or ends as a shift starts, belongs on that shift instead. Aged Care also refuses a call during a sleepover, so record work during that window as active sleepover work on the shift.

To end an activation that is Awaiting end time, choose Edit from its actions menu and enter the End Time.

Approve Reported Time

1. Select Approve on a completed record.
2. Review the Reason for activation, any evidence, and the Reported time.
3. Enter the Approved Start Time and Approved End Time, or select Use reported. The summary shows the reported and approved durations. When they differ by more than the Approved Hours Variance Highlight tolerance in Scheduling Settings, which starts at 5 minutes on a new account, it also shows how far the approved time is over or under what was reported.
4. Add a Note if your account uses approval notes.
5. Select Approve.

If the approved time differs from what was reported, the record shows the approved time with the Reported time beneath it, and the worker sees it as Adjusted in the app. You can Undo Approval until a timesheet batch includes the record. After that it shows Timesheet Batched and can no longer change. Choose View Timesheet Batch from its actions menu to open that batch.

Recording Remote Work Outside an On-Call Period

The Remote Work (Not On Call) table sits below the roster. Use it for a call, meeting or training session a worker did when they were not rostered on call. The minimum payment is 1 hour under SCHADS and Nurses, 2 hours under Health Professionals and 4 hours under Aged Care. Under SCHADS and Nurses, records close together can share that hour; see How On-Call Is Paid.

1. Select Record Remote Work.
2. Choose the Worker, Timezone and Type.
3. Enter the Start Time and End Time.
4. Complete What was the work? and add evidence if needed.
5. Select Record.

Anything done during an on-call period belongs on that period instead, and Astalty refuses remote work that starts while the worker is rostered on call. If you later roster the worker on call for a time that has passed, by adding or editing a period, changing a night's worker or restoring a skipped night, their remote work in it moves onto that period and is paid as calls while on call. Remote work that starts before the on-call period and runs into it is refused. To keep all the time worked, end that record when the period starts, roster the period, then record the rest as an activation on the night. Remote work whose logged and approved start times fall on different sides of the period's start or end is refused too: correct whichever time is wrong first. For an approved record, select Undo Approval before you change its times, then approve it again. A remote work record can be saved without an end time while the work is still going, but needs one before it can be approved, and cannot run for more than 10 hours. Remote work follows the same approval, audit and timesheet batch rules as an activation.

Mapping On-Call Pay Items

Each pay group exports on-call through its own pay items. Before the first pay run, open Settings > Scheduling > Pay Groups, select Edit Pay Item Mapping on each pay group, and map the on-call rows for its award. An export that needs an unmapped on-call row stops and names the missing item.

Each remote work row must carry the rate for the pay group's employment basis, so a casual pay group is not mapped at permanent rates:

Remote work past 38 hours in a weekly batch or 76 in a fortnightly one, or past 10 hours a day, is paid as overtime on the overtime pay items rather than these rows. The 10 hours count every hour worked that day, including a shift's overtime.

In Xero, map the six remote work rows to ordinary time earnings rates, not overtime ones, or super is not calculated on them. If your only 150% and 200% rates are overtime rates, create new ones in Xero first.

Xero has no separate rows for recalls. Nurses, Health Professionals and Aged Care calls and remote work use the pay group's overtime rows. Calls by registered nurses at level 4 or 5 use the ordinary weekday, Saturday, Sunday and public holiday rows, and so does a Nurses or Health Professionals casual minimum engagement when it is worth more than recall pay. An Aged Care pay group has no on-call rows of its own. On-call periods and Remote Work records have no cost code, so their Xero lines do not include a payroll tracking option. Review and add tracking in Xero if your payroll process needs it.

Employment Hero, PayCat and QuickBooks Payroll also have these rows:

• On Call Overtime Mon-Sat First 2 Hours, On Call Overtime Mon-Sat After 2 Hours, On Call Overtime Sunday and On Call Overtime Public Holiday, for recall and remote work hours paid as overtime, on every award.
• On Call Ordinary Weekday, On Call Ordinary Saturday, On Call Ordinary Sunday and On Call Ordinary Public Holiday, on Nurses and Health Professionals pay groups, for recall by nurses at RN levels 4 and 5 and for a casual minimum engagement when it is worth more than recall pay.
• On Call Overtime Adjustment, on every award, for the extra shift pay when on-call hours in the batch move later shift hours into overtime or a higher overtime rate. It is also sent when the time paid for a worker's recall in the previous pay period, including its minimum, runs into the batch's first day and pushes that day's shift hours into overtime. It is sent as hours at the base rate.

Map them as follows:

• Standby rows: a work type on a fixed-rate pay category. Standby is sent as a number of allowances.
• Remote Work, On Call Overtime and On Call Ordinary rows: a custom work type that pays a pay category of its own, or one of the platform's own work types on a fixed-rate pay category. Weekday remote work and weekday on-call ordinary hours may instead use a custom work type on the employee's primary pay category.
• Casual pay groups: map those hourly rows to pay categories carrying the full casual percentage on the base rate, for example 175% rather than 150% for SCHADS, or 187.5% for Nurses, Health Professionals and Aged Care. In Employment Hero, put them under Casual - Ordinary Hours.
• On Call Overtime Adjustment: a pay category of its own with no loadings, super or leave accrual.

On-call reaches these platforms as units per day on each row's work type, not as timed lines. Validation refuses a work type that cannot price those units.

Timesheet Batch Warnings

The timesheet batch list and each batch show Standby Claims and Activations counts. A batch's Award Interpretation tab shows on-call in its own columns, such as On call (weekday) and Remote work, whenever a worker has any.

On-call is paid only through a weekly or fortnightly batch. When the dates hold on-call, a Manual date range must be 7 or 14 days: any other length shows an alert and Create Batch stays disabled until you change the dates. A batch made By Xero payroll calendar whose pay period is neither weekly nor fortnightly is created without its on-call, and its warning tells you to pay that on-call in Xero by hand.

Astalty checks on-call for the period when you create a batch, and again on each batch's Details page and Award Interpretation tab. It lists everything to check in one alert, including:

• Completed activations that are still unapproved. An unapproved activation is never paid.
• Activations with no end time, which cannot be approved until one is set.
• On-call and remote work that cannot be paid because the worker has no employment contract for the date.
• Approved activations held back because an approved shift that overlaps them is not in a batch yet.
• Approved activations in no timesheet batch, although a batch already covers their date.
• Approved activations from the previous pay period that its batch missed, which this batch does not pay either.
• Shifts that start less than 10 hours after an approved call under the Nurses, Health Professionals or Aged Care Award, when the calls left the worker without 10 consecutive hours off duty between the end of their last shift and the start of the next. The Aged Care warning applies to full-time and part-time workers, not casuals.
• Workers with shifts or on-call in the period but no payroll calendar assigned in Xero.

Each row has a button to resolve it. View on-call roster opens the roster in a new tab, showing only unapproved records for the batch dates, up to 92 days at a time. View records lists on-call with no employment contract: add the contract, then create a weekly or fortnightly batch over those dates. View earlier activations lists the previous pay period's approved activations that its batch missed: create another batch for those dates to pay them, once any shift holding one back is in a batch.

View short-rest shifts lists the worker, when the call ended and when the next shift starts. A worker who had 10 hours off before the call is owed nothing and is not listed, for example after a 2:00am call that followed a shift ending at 3:00pm. Astalty does not add the award's short-rest payment. If the worker keeps working without the required rest, adjust their existing shift payment in payroll to a total of 200% of the base rate until release, or 250% for a casual Nurses or Health Professionals worker. These are total rates, including any shift pay already exported. A worker other than a casual who rests instead is paid the ordinary hours they miss.

An activation held for a shift is released once that shift is batched. To pay an activation that missed an earlier batch, create another weekly or fortnightly batch for the same dates as that earlier batch. It pays only what the earlier batch missed. Do not wait for the next regular date range. The catch-up batch uses work included in the earlier batch when it calculates ordinary-hour caps and overtime bands, but exports only the newly claimed on-call.

Astalty recalculates earlier work using current employment contracts and pay settings, with the award rules that apply to the period. It does not compare the result with amounts previously exported or paid. If a contract or pay setting has changed, or a correction to an award calculation affects that period, recheck the affected batch and any later catch-ups that depend on it. Compare the recalculated pay with your payroll records and reconcile any difference before sending the catch-up. A catch-up does not automatically correct an earlier payroll payment.

Astalty blocks the catch-up's export if adding the new work changes the recalculated pay for the earlier batch. Employment Hero, PayCat and QuickBooks Payroll also block a shift-only catch-up when the worker has on-call work in an earlier batch from the same pay period. To resolve a blocked calculation, check any existing payroll records first, then delete and rebuild the Astalty batches for that pay period together. If payroll has already processed the earlier pay, reconcile the correction in payroll instead.

Xero accepts only one timesheet for a worker in a pay period, so the catch-up does not send a worker whose draft timesheet from the earlier batch is already in Xero. Do not delete that draft. Either add the catch-up's hours to the draft in Xero by hand, using the Xero-formatted timesheet export to list them, or delete both batches in Astalty and create one batch for those dates, which sends everything together and replaces the draft. If payroll has already processed the earlier timesheet, enter and reconcile the extra pay in Xero instead.

Deleting a batch releases its shifts and on-call to be claimed by the next batch for those dates. A batch cannot be deleted while a later batch depends on it: one for overlapping dates that uses its work, including its shifts, or one whose on-call pay depends on it. Delete the later one first.

Using On Call in the Support Worker App

Workers see who is on call, check their own periods, and log activations and remote work from the app's Overview tab. See On Call in the Support Worker App.

On-Call Report

To review rostered on-call, standby units and logged work across workers for a date range, use the On-Call Report.