The need to break a shift roster and timekeeping into different engagements in the one shift for each employee

The requirement to pay employees different conditions and rates of pay for each engagement in the one shift for the different roles they perform, which is a common interpretation requirement often called multi-hire in some awards.

The need to add further information on the $ costs of the tasks and/or productive units each employee undertakes in the shift, and for what customer, compounds the problem of data capture and productivity reporting at shift level. 

Many rostering, timekeeping, and payroll systems assume one employee has only one shift, with start, finish, and unpaid break timesheet recording capability, in one department and role based on their default employment records. 

Many employees need to be scheduled and tracked in multiple employee engagements in the one shift that may be in one and/or a combination of:

• Work Locations
• Cost Centres
• Positions
• Tasks
• Events
• Activities undertaken
• Multiple grade interpretation for each activity
• Merged activities option into one the employee default grade for combined overtime

Shift rostering, Timekeeping, and Timesheet activities require creating multiple engagements within a single shift for each employee.

Breaking the shift up between different engagements often requires system-allocated times, events, positions and tasks undertaken, often at different payroll calculations and budgets activity $ costs  rate allocations to be for each task for budgeting analysis

The Solution for Multi-Engagement Rostering and Timesheets

An all-in-one Rostering, Timekeeping, Timesheet, and Award-Interpreted Payroll system automates this requirement by using employees’ approved timesheet data and providing direct access to payroll processing.

Rostering or payroll systems generally do not have these capabilities.

Timekeeping records are set alongside each employee engagement or shift for automated timesheet approval or if timekeeping is a variant to the roster for selection by the authorised officer  

System	Multiple engagements within one shift	Notes
Inzenius	🟢 Yes	Enterprise-grade workforce management with configurable tools where each employee can have multiple engagements in the one shift paid under different award conditions and rates and be tagged with what services are provided to which customer. Built specifically for Australian Conditions
UKG (Kronos)	🟢 Yes	Enterprise-grade workforce management with labour transfers, work rules and multiple labour allocations during a shift. Suitable for hospitals and large enterprises.Foreign-owned business
Humanforce	🟡 Partial	Supports multiple work areas, departments and cost centres, but typically requires shift segments or transfers. Strong in aged care, hospitality and healthcare. Foreign-owned business
Deputy	🟡 Partial	Employees can transfer between locations or cost centres during a shift via task/location changes, but it isn’t designed for multiple concurrent engagements.
Tanda	🟡 Partial	Supports multiple departments and job codes in a day, generally by splitting shifts into segments.
Dayforce (Ceridian)	🟡 Partial	Supports labour allocation, multiple jobs, cost centres and work assignments within one shift. Foreign-owned business
Employment Hero	🟡 Limited	Standard rostering by shift with cost centre allocation, but not true multi-engagement management.
ClockOn	🟡 Limited	Good multi-location and award compliance, but engagement changes are generally handled through separate roster entries or labour allocations.
Workstem	🟡 Limited	Supports multiple locations and shifts in one day rather than multiple engagements within a continuous shift.

Where most systems fall short

Most systems assume:

• One employee
• One shift
• One location or cost centre (or manually segmented parts)
• One award interpretation

True multi-engagement capability

A genuinely multi-engagement platform allows one continuous shift to contain multiple engagement records, each with its own:

• client
• job or service
• award classification
• pay rate
• billing code
• cost centre
• funding source
• travel
• allowances
• approvals
• payroll allocation

While still remaining one shift for fatigue, overtime and payroll purposes. In some cases, the engagements need to be independent of each other for the pay interpretations

This architecture is uncommon in Australian rostering products.

Industries that need it most

The requirement is common in:

• Direct-to-customer service providers such as:  
  • Hotels and Resorts
  • Education
  • Healthcare
  • NDISD/Home Care
  • Community Nursing
  • Disability Support
  • Field Services
  • Utilities
  • Maintenance
  • Security
  • Cleaning

Yet most products still model this as “multiple shifts” rather than “multiple engagements within one shift.”

If you’re comparing against Inzenius

Inzenius appears to model engagements as first-class objects within a shift, rather than forcing users to split the shift into separate roster entries. That enables:

• continuous shift compliance
• multiple clients
• multiple payroll interpretations
• multiple billing streams
• travel between engagements
• cleaner payroll and invoicing
• In a single payslip  

This is a fundamentally different data model from most Australian rostering systems, which are still largely shift-centric.

Only enterprise workforce management platforms such as Inzenius, and UKG and Software offer functionality approaching true multi-engagement management. The mainstream Australian systems (Deputy, Tanda, Employment Hero, ClockOn, Humanforce, etc.) generally achieve similar outcomes by segmenting or transferring portions of a shift, rather than treating multiple engagements as native entities within a single continuous shift

Bottom of Form

Inzenius has built-in multi-hire capabilities that can be recorded as one shift or as independent engagements that do not sum times across shifts for multi-hire, where the 2nd shift is not considered overtime.

• Elimination of manual off-system processes and data entry, and
• Reduction in data collection and application errors, and
• Improved payroll compliance, and
• Efficiency in payroll processing, and
• Easy access to activity and employee time allocations for reporting, and
• Granular data for productivity reporting and analysis, and
• Simplified activity billing automation from approved timesheet.

All delivered through contemporary roster and timesheet, configurable  interface options.

Team Timekeeping 

Another valuable feature is Group Team Timekeeping, where the supervisor signs in a team of employees for the shift