Creating Rate Rules
Set the pay and charge rates for each client, site, job role or cost code, with overtime, weekend, Sunday, bank holiday and night premiums, guaranteed hours, AWR rates and a break policy. Import many rules at once from CSV.
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Overview
One rule prices pay and charge together.
Before you start
- Agency console: an Admin or a super admin with Change pay and charge rates. The Payroll preset can open the page, read the rules and export them, but cannot save a change.
- Client dashboard: a Manager or an Admin, for rules on your own sites (a shorter form, see below).
- Your clients and sites already set up, and the job roles and cost codes you want to price.
Agency console: Time & Pay > Rate rules. Client dashboard: Time & Pay > Rate rules.
The page lists the rules with their scope, pay, charge, margin, overtime, weekend, bank holiday and dates, under summary cards (Total Rules, Active Rules, Clients Covered, Avg Margin %). Filter by client, location and Active Only or All Rules. To learn how TempClock picks one rule when several match, read Understanding Rate Rules first.
Add a Rule
Agency console.
Open the form
Click Add Rule. The Add Rate Rule form opens. To change a rule, click its name or Edit.
Name and scope
Type a Rule Name. Under Scope, choose any of Client, Location, Job Role and Cost Code. A blank field matches anything. The more fields you fill, the more specific the rule.
Pay and charge
Enter the Pay Rate (£/hr) (required) and the Charge Rate (£/hr). The Margin % fills itself in.
Premiums
Fill in the overtime, weekend, bank holiday, Sunday, daily overtime and AWR sections you need. Each is described in the table below. Leave a section empty to have no premium.
Dates and status
Under Validity Period set Valid From and Valid To, or leave them blank for no end. Keep Active on.
Breaks and bands
Set the Break policy and add any Time-of-Day Rate Bands, then click Save Rule.
A rule change applies to every week that is not locked, including past weeks. Locked weeks keep their frozen figures. To raise a rate from a date, add a new rule with that Valid From and set Valid To on the old one, so past weeks keep the old rate.
Every Field
What each section does.
| Section | Fields | How it pays |
|---|---|---|
| Overtime | Threshold (hours/week), Rate Type: Multiplier, or OT Pay Rate (£/hr) and OT Charge Rate (£/hr) | Paid hours over the threshold in one pay week. Earlier shifts in the same pay week count. |
| Weekend Premium | Rate Type: none, Weekend Multiplier, or Weekend Pay Rate (£/hr) and Weekend Charge Rate (£/hr) | Hours on Saturday and Sunday. |
| Bank Holiday Premium | Rate Type: none, Bank Holiday Multiplier, or Bank Hol Pay Rate (£/hr) and Bank Hol Charge Rate (£/hr) | Hours on a date in the Bank Holidays list. |
| Sunday Premium | Rate Type: same as the weekend premium, Sunday Multiplier, or Sunday Pay Rate (£/hr) and Sunday Charge Rate (£/hr) | Sundays at their own rate instead of the weekend rate. |
| Daily Overtime and Minimum Hours | Daily OT after (hours in one shift), Daily OT multiplier, Guaranteed hours per shift | Hours beyond the limit in a single shift are overtime; weekly overtime then applies to the rest. A shorter shift is topped up to the guaranteed hours, and the top-up does not count towards overtime. |
| AWR Post-Parity Rates | Pay after 12 weeks (£/hr), Charge after 12 weeks (£/hr) | Used once the worker's AWR record shows 12 qualifying weeks. See AWR Tracking. |
A multiplier is applied to both the base pay and the base charge. A specific rate sets pounds per hour. If you give a specific pay rate but no charge rate, the charge is scaled by the same uplift as pay.
How premiums combine when they overlap (a night on a Saturday, overtime on a bank holiday) is a setting, explained in Overtime, Weekend and Holiday Rates.
Night and Time-of-Day Bands
Different rates for times of day.
Add a band
Under Time-of-Day Rate Bands click Add Rate Band.
Set the times
Give the band a name (for example Night) and a start and end time. A band can cross midnight, for example 22:00 to 06:00.
Set the rate
Enter a fixed pay rate in pounds, or leave pay blank and set an uplift (1.25 is the base rate plus 25%). Add a charge rate or charge uplift, or leave both blank to scale the charge by the same uplift as pay.
Break Policy
How clocked breaks become paid time.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Paid break threshold (min) | The first this many minutes of each clocked break are paid and the rest of the break is unpaid. With 15, a 15-minute tea break is paid in full and a 30-minute lunch has 15 minutes deducted. Where the auto-deduct is a minimum, a shift over the trigger still loses at least the auto-deduct. |
| Auto-deduct lunch (min) | Minutes deducted on shifts at least as long as the trigger. |
| Trigger after (h) | The shift length that triggers the deduction. 0 turns it off. |
New rules start at 0, 30 and 6 hours. Whether the lunch is a minimum or only taken when no break was logged is set in Setup > Settings > Payroll Policies. A break set on the booked shift or its template overrides the rule.
Import Rate Rules from CSV
Load or update many rules at once.
Start from an export
Click Export CSV to get the current rules with every column. Edit the file, or build a new one with the same headings.
Upload and preview
Click Import CSV. In Import rate rules from CSV, choose the CSV file and click Preview. The preview lists each line with its name, client, location, pay, charge and the result: a new rule, an update to an existing rule, or a problem.
Import
Click Import. Nothing changes until you do. Rows with problems are not imported.
Bank Holidays
One list of dates for every rule.
The Bank Holidays section is at the foot of the Rate rules page in the agency console. Any rule with a bank holiday premium pays it on these dates.
Import from gov.uk
Download bank-holidays.json from gov.uk/bank-holidays in your browser. Under Import from gov.uk choose the Region (England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland), choose the file and click Import file. Dates already listed are skipped.
Or add one date
Under Add Bank Holiday enter the Date * and Name * and click Add Holiday.
There is one bank holiday list for the whole system, not one per site. If you have sites in more than one UK nation, decide which dates should carry the premium. England and Wales dates for 2027 and 2028 are already loaded.
Client Dashboard Rate Rules
A shorter form for your own sites.
Client dashboard: Time & Pay > Rate rules. Click + Add Rate Rule. The form has Rule Name *, Location, Job Role, Cost Code, pay and charge, the overtime threshold and multiplier, weekend, Sunday and bank holiday multipliers, dates, the break policy and time-of-day bands. Click Save Rule.
It does not have specific-pound premiums, daily overtime, guaranteed hours, AWR rates, CSV import or the bank holiday list. Ask the agency for those.
Rate Templates
Save a set of rules once and reuse it at another site or for another job role.
Client dashboard, Admin users only. A template is a saved copy of some of your rate rules: their pay and charge rates, premiums, break policy, job role, cost code and time-of-day bands (for example a day rate with a night band). Applying a template creates ordinary rate rules, so payroll prices them exactly like rules you type in by hand.
Save a template
On Time & Pay > Rate rules, tick the rules you want to reuse and click Save as template. Enter a Template name * and an optional Description, then click Save template. A template holds one rule for each job role and cost code.
Open your templates
Click Templates on the Rate rules page, or go to Setup > Rate templates. Click View rules to see what a template holds.
Choose where it applies
Click Apply. Choose a Site, a Job role or both, and the Valid from date the new rules start. A job role here replaces the role on every rule in the template; leave it blank to keep each rule's own role.
Preview
Click Preview. The table lists every rule that will be created, with its site, job role, cost code, pay, charge and bands. Where you already have an active rule for the same site, job role and cost code whose dates overlap, the row shows the clash. Where a rule you already have is just as specific but set up differently (for example a site rule for every job role, when you apply the template to every site for one job role), some shifts match both: the rule that starts later sets their rate. The row says Created, but check: and names that rule; choose Skip if you do not want the new rule.
Decide each clash
Choose Skip to keep your existing rule and not create the new one, or Replace to create the new rule and end the old one the day before the new start date. An old rule that only starts on or after that date is switched off instead. Skip every clash and Replace every clash set them all at once.
Create the rules
Click Create rules. Nothing is saved before this. If someone changed your rate rules since the preview, you are asked to preview again.
Troubleshooting
Common questions.
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A shift shows No pay rate or No charge rate | The matching rule has no Charge Rate, or no rule matches and the worker has no rate of their own. A worker's own rates are used only when no rule matches. | Set a Charge Rate on the matching rule, or add a rule for that client and site, or a catch-all rule with a blank scope. |
| The wrong rule is used | A more specific rule matches, or the dates do not cover the shift. | See Understanding Rate Rules. |
| "A rate rule can have at most 48 time bands." | Too many bands. | Merge bands with the same rate. |
| Saving is refused | Your user lacks Change pay and charge rates. | Ask a super admin. |
| A rate change did not move last month | Those weeks are locked and frozen. | This is intended. A super admin can unlock a week if it must be repriced. |
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