Scheduling Costs

Scheduling Costs gives you an estimate of the wage cost of your roster before payroll runs. It calculates the cost of scheduled shifts using SCHADS award rates — gross wages, allowances, super, and on-costs — and compares that cost against the revenue those shifts generate, so you can see the profitability of your schedule at a glance.

The figures are estimates based on your rostered shifts and configured rates, and may differ from what actually gets paid through payroll.

Enabling Scheduling Costs

Scheduling Costs is a self-service optional feature — the Account Owner can turn it on themselves. There are two places to do it:

• From the Scheduling menu. Until it's enabled, Account Owners still see Scheduling Costs in the Scheduling menu; selecting it opens a page that explains the feature and lets you enable it.
• From Optional Features. Go to Optional Features (Settings → Optional Features) and select Enable on the Scheduling Costs card.

Either way you'll land on the Scheduling Costs feature page — select Enable Scheduling Costs and confirm. Scheduling Costs is part of Scheduling, so it only appears once Scheduling itself is enabled.

Opening the Report

Scheduling Costs lives in the Process section of the Scheduling menu, alongside Timesheet Batches.

The report is built from three parts:

• Filters — narrow the report by Period (the date range), Site, Timesheet Batch, Cost Code, Activity, Revenue Charge Status, and Shift Status. The report defaults to the current week.
• Summary figures — a set of cards showing the cost and revenue totals for the filtered period (see below).
• Breakdown tabs — a Cost by Employee and a Cost by Participant tab underneath the summary, so you can see where the cost and revenue are coming from.

The Actions menu (top right) lets you Manage Cost Schedule and Export as XLSX.

Understanding the Figures

Each summary card has a hover tooltip explaining how it's calculated. Cards only appear when they're relevant — for example, Fixed Costs only shows once you've added a fixed-amount cost item.

• Total Cost — gross wages, allowances, super, on-costs, fixed costs, and paid cancellation costs for every costed employee in the period.
• Gross Wages — base wages from each employee's hourly rate and hours worked, including penalty rate loadings.
• Allowances — award allowances such as vehicle kilometre, first aid, broken shift, sleepover, and laundry.
• Super Estimate — estimated superannuation based on gross wages and the current statutory super rate.
• Payroll On-costs — percentage-based cost items (e.g. payroll tax, workers' comp) applied to wages, as set in your cost schedule.
• Fixed Costs — fixed-amount cost items (e.g. rent, insurance) normalised to the reporting period.
• Total Revenue — all scheduled charge items for participants in the period, based on their service agreements.
• Cost per Hour — average cost per hour worked (excluding paid cancellation costs).
• Employees — how many active rosterable employees you have, how many had shifts, and how many could be costed.

Revenue and Profitability

• Additional Revenue — revenue-coded cost items (e.g. participant rent contributions) normalised to the reporting period, from your cost schedule or a site. See Tracking Additional Revenue below.
• Cost-to-Revenue — total cost (including cancellations) as a percentage of total revenue plus any additional revenue. Lower is better; under 100% means revenue exceeds cost.
• Net Profit — total revenue and additional revenue minus total cost. Positive figures show as green (profit) and negative figures as red (a loss).

Cancellation Figures

When there are cancelled supports in the period, a Cancellations card breaks them down by whether the participant is still charged (chargeable / non-chargeable) and whether the employee is still paid (payable / non-payable). Three figures highlight the financial impact:

• Paid Cancellation Cost — estimated wages, super, and on-costs paid to workers for cancelled shifts they're still entitled to be paid for. This is money paid out regardless of whether the participant was charged.
• Lost Revenue — the estimated revenue that would have been billed for cancelled supports marked not chargeable — income the organisation can no longer claim.
• Net Loss — the pay cost for cancelled supports that are not chargeable but still payable — wages paid out with no revenue earned, for example a rostering error under the award.

The Cost Schedule

The cost schedule is where you define recurring cost and revenue items that fold into the estimates for your whole organisation. Open it from Actions → Manage Cost Schedule. Configured items also appear as chips at the top of the report — revenue in green and expenses in red.

Adding a Cost Item

Click Add Cost Item and complete the form:

• Name — a label for the item.
• Direction — choose Expense (a recurring business cost, e.g. payroll tax, insurance, or software) or Revenue (recurring income added to scheduling profitability).
• Type — % of Payroll or Fixed Amount. Revenue items must use a fixed amount.
• Value — the rate (for a percentage) or dollar amount (for a fixed amount).
• Frequency — for fixed amounts, how often the amount applies (Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual). Fixed amounts are normalised to the reporting period.

Percentage-of-payroll items have three extra options:

• Wage Base — apply the percentage to All Wages (base pay plus overtime) or Ordinary Wages Only (standard, non-overtime hours).
• Annual Threshold — only wages above the pro-rated threshold contribute to the cost. For example, a $1,000,000 annual threshold means roughly $38,356 per fortnight is exempt. Useful for tiered costs like payroll tax.
• Allowances — control whether allowance costs (first aid, sleepover, broken shift, etc.) are added to the wage base for this item.

Tracking Additional Revenue

Beyond the revenue Astalty already calculates from participant charges, you can record recurring income so the report reflects a true profit rather than just costs. Revenue items show in green with a + and feed into Additional Revenue, Net Profit, and the Cost-to-Revenue ratio.

There are two places to add revenue:

• Provider-wide — add a Revenue cost item in the cost schedule for income that isn't tied to a single site.
• On a SIL house — record income against a specific site (e.g. participant rent contributions) so the report shows that house's real profit, not just its expenses.

Adding Revenue on a SIL House

Site cost items live on the site's Cost Items tab:

• Open the SIL house site and go to the Cost Items tab.
• Click Add Cost Item.
• Set the Direction to Revenue (recurring income for this site, e.g. participant rent contributions) or Expense (a recurring cost for the site, e.g. rent, power, or internet).
• Enter the Amount and a Frequency (Weekly, Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual).

Site cost items are always fixed amounts. When you filter the Scheduling Costs report to that site, its items appear as chips alongside the provider-wide cost schedule and are included in the totals.

Permissions

Access to Scheduling Costs is controlled by role permissions:

• Viewing the report requires the Scheduling Costs permission.
• Viewing and managing the provider-wide cost schedule requires the Scheduling Cost Item permissions (view, create, update, delete).
• Adding cost items to a site requires the Site Cost Item permissions.

Video walkthrough