Configuring the Pay Period for your organisation
This article outlines how to help the rostering team select the most suitable Staff Member by configuring your organisation's Pay Period to display accurate ‘Agreed Hours’ and ‘Potential Overtime’ when updating Staff Shifts.
Privileges: System Preferences
Audience: Authorised Customer Representatives, Operations Management, System Administrator
Summary
The following list summarises the content within this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:
- What is the Pay Period used for?
- How to configure your organisation's Pay Period in System Preferences
- Related: Pay Cycle Week Alignment for 14-Day Staff Availability
What is the Pay Period used for?
This setting, introduced in the upgrade to SupportAbility v8.12 (November 2024), allows your organisation to define the first day of your organisation’s next pay period in SupportAbility.
This is required to determine the pay period cycle for your organisation.
Your organisation's Pay Period will be used together with the ‘Agreed Hours’ and the corresponding ‘per Period’ as configured in the Human Resources tab of the Staff Account, e.g. 20 hours per week, to:
- Determine the remaining agreed hours a Staff Member has in the pay period, and
- Display the estimated potential overtime
This information is displayed when creating Activities, filling Shifts or changing a Staff Member in a Shift.
How to configure your organisation's Pay Period in System Preferences
To configure your organisation's Pay Period, navigate to the Settings tab in System Preferences:
Scroll down to the 'Pay Period' section:
Choose the relevant pay period cycle, noting that the default is 14 days; however, this is not activated until the date that the next pay period starts is configured.
Select 'Change' to define the first day in your organisation's next Pay Period:
When 'On' is selected, add the date your organisation's next Pay Period begins within the next 14 days:
Once saved, you will notice that the 'Previous pay period', 'Current pay period' and 'Next pay period' are listed below this, reflecting your organisation's pay cycle:
If this is not accurate, the date may be changed by selecting 'Change':
It is important to note that any changes made will update the previous, current and all future pay periods instantaneously.
Related: Pay Cycle Week Alignment for 14-Day Staff Availability
If your organisation uses a 14-day Standard Availability cycle for Staff, a related setting, 'Pay Cycle Week Alignment', is also available in the Settings tab of System Preferences (from v9.9, March 2026).
This setting ensures that the two weeks displayed in the 14-day Availability view align with your organisation's actual pay fortnight. It controls whether pay cycle week 1 corresponds to an odd or even calendar week.
For more information about configuring 14-day Staff Availability, please see the How to configure Staff Standard Availability article linked below.