How to Configure Minimum Engagement Rules

What This Feature Does

Minimum Engagement Rules guarantee that workers are paid for a minimum number of hours per shift, even if the actual shift is shorter. This is a common requirement in Australian awards and enterprise agreements. For example, if a casual worker is called in for 2 hours but the award requires a minimum 4-hour engagement, the worker is paid for 4 hours.

Minimum engagement rules are configured within Rule Groups inside a pay rate document.

Key Concepts

Minimum Hours

The guaranteed minimum number of hours a worker must be paid for when they attend a shift. If actual hours are less than the minimum, "offset hours" are added to make up the difference.

Offset Hours

The difference between the minimum engagement hours and actual hours worked. These offset hours are paid at a configurable rate (normal or overtime).

Example: Minimum engagement = 4 hours, actual shift = 2.5 hours

• Offset hours = 4 - 2.5 = 1.5 hours
• Worker is paid for 2.5 hours of actual work + 1.5 hours of offset

Paid At Rate

You can configure whether offset hours are paid at:

• Normal rate: Standard base rate
• Overtime rate: OT1 or OT2 rate

Application Scope

Rules can be scoped to apply to:

• All shifts: Applies regardless of when the shift occurs
• Weekday only: Applies on weekdays (and on public holidays — see below)
• Weekend only: Applies on Saturday and Sunday (and on public holidays — see below)
• Public holiday only: Only applies on days marked as a public holiday, either by your public holiday calendar or by a timesheet's own public holiday override. RDO and picnic days are separate day types and do not count as public holidays.

Public holidays and the weekday/weekend scopes. A public holiday is treated as its own day type, not as a weekday or a weekend day. This means Weekday only and Weekend only rules both still apply on a public holiday, whatever day of the week it falls on. If you need a different minimum on public holidays, add a Public holiday only rule.

Rollout note. Saving a Public Holiday Only rule marks the document as using a newer capability. Until every part of the system has been updated, a pay run against such a document reports an error for that document rather than paying it — a deliberate safeguard, because an out-of-date pay engine would otherwise read the rule as applying to all shifts and overpay. Removing the rule returns the document to the previous state.

When a group has more than one rule

A rule group pays the first rule whose day and worker filters match and whose minimum the day has not already reached. Public holiday rules are checked ahead of the others, so you can add one to a group that already has a broader rule without reordering anything.

Because the check stops at the first rule that is not yet satisfied, a public holiday rule is a day scope, not an override. If the day already meets the public holiday minimum, the remaining rules are still considered — so a broader rule with a higher minimum can still apply on that public holiday. Set a public holiday minimum lower than the group's general minimum only if that is what you intend.

Activation Threshold (Optional)

By default, any shift below the minimum hours is topped up — even a very short one. The optional Activation Threshold changes this: the rule only applies once the worker has worked at least the threshold number of hours. Below the threshold, the shift is paid as worked with no top-up.

Use this when short shifts shouldn't be rounded up to the full minimum. For example, a customer with a 9-hour minimum engagement may not want a 3-hour shift topped up to 9 hours, but still wants a 6-hour shift topped up.

Example: Minimum engagement = 9 hours, activation threshold = 5 hours

The same hours that count toward the minimum also count toward the activation threshold — including hours from other timesheets on the same day (such as leave), and leaving out anything the rule's activity and role filters don't count. Leave the field empty to keep the default behaviour (rule always applies).

Tiered Minimums (Optional)

Some agreements use stepped show-up pay: the guaranteed minimum increases with the hours the worker actually worked. This is common in US union agreements (IBEW-style clauses such as "0–2 hours worked pays 2 hours, over 2 to 4 hours pays 4 hours, over 4 to 6 hours pays 6 hours").

Enable Use tiered minimums on the rule and define the bands. Each tier has:

• Over hours: the tier applies once the worker has worked more than this many hours (0 = from the first minute)
• Guaranteed hours: the paid hours guaranteed for that band

The highest matching tier sets the guarantee. Hours at or above the top tier's guarantee are paid as worked — no top-up.

Example: Tiers over 0h → 2h, over 2h → 4h, over 4h → 6h, over 6h → 8h, over 8h → 10h

Tiers use the same hours base as the plain minimum: hours from other timesheets on the same day count, the activity and role filters apply, and paid breaks count — except in Include mode, where only the selected activities count and a paid break is not one of them. When tiers are enabled, the single Minimum Hours field automatically mirrors the top tier's guarantee. The activation threshold can still be combined with tiers — it gates the whole rule before the bands are evaluated, and no tier may start below the threshold (a band that promises hours the threshold gates out — for example a 1.5h threshold with an "over 0h → 2h" band — is rejected when saving the rule, including when the threshold is raised after the tiers were configured). The recommended shape anchors the first tier's "over hours" exactly at the threshold: with a 1.5h threshold and a first tier of "over 1.5h → 3h", a shift of exactly 1.5h passes the gate and is guaranteed 3h.

Activity Filter

By default, all hours count toward the minimum engagement threshold, including non-payable activities like Excused, Training, or other unpaid time. The worker was still on-site or committed to the shift, so these hours typically count when determining if they met the minimum.

You can narrow that with an activity filter. Pick the activities, then choose a Filter mode:

• Exclude selected activities (the default): the selected activities are ignored and every other hour counts.
• Include only selected activities: only the selected activities count toward the minimum; everything else is ignored.

Include mode exists so you can target a minimum at a specific scenario — a call-out, or inclement weather — without having to list every other activity in the system just to isolate the one you want. Exclude mode is the right choice when your award singles out a few time types that shouldn't count.

Example — Exclude mode:

• Worker has 4h Excused (non-payable) + 5.6h Labour (payable)
• Minimum engagement rule is set to 8 hours

Example — Include mode, a 4-hour minimum that includes only "Inclement Weather":

That last row is the important one: in Include mode, a shift containing none of the selected activities is not treated as a shift that fell short of the minimum. The rule simply doesn't apply, so no top-up is paid. Otherwise every ordinary shift would be topped up to the full minimum.

Selecting nothing is not a filter. With no activities selected, both modes behave identically — all hours count. Saving a rule in Include mode with an empty selection is rejected, because it reads as an active filter while doing nothing.

Exclusions only apply to the work the rule governs. The minimum is assessed across the whole day (see Split Shifts and Same-Day Timesheets below). If the worker has another timesheet on that day which this rule doesn't cover — because it matched a different rule group, or because the rule is restricted to an employment type or classification that timesheet doesn't match — all of that timesheet's hours count toward the day in full, including any activity this rule excludes. The same holds for an excluded role: a timesheet the rule doesn't govern keeps all its hours whatever role it was worked in.

Include mode is the exception, in both filters. Excluding is something a rule does to a timesheet, so it stops at the boundary of what the rule governs. Including is a statement of what the day's total is made of — "only hours in these roles" — and that holds across the whole day. So a shift outside an Include-mode selection contributes nothing to the total whether or not this rule governs it. Without that, a rule you scoped to one role would be quietly satisfied by hours worked in another.

Example: Rule = 8-hour minimum, excluding "Travel"

Role Filter

A rule can also be filtered by the role the worker performed. This works the same way as the activity filter — pick the roles, then choose a Filter mode of Exclude selected roles (the default) or Include only selected roles — with one important difference in how it applies.

A role applies to a whole shift, not to individual lines within it. An activity filter reshapes which hours of a timesheet count; a role filter decides whether the timesheet counts at all:

• Exclude selected roles: a shift worked in one of the selected roles contributes nothing toward the day's total, and never receives make-up pay — provided this rule governs that shift. A shift the rule doesn't govern keeps all its hours whatever role it was worked in (see Exclusions only apply to the work the rule governs above).
• Include only selected roles: only shifts worked in the selected roles count toward the day's total, and only those shifts can receive make-up pay. A shift in any other role is left alone.

Use this for clauses that attach a minimum to particular work rather than to particular time — "4-hour minimum for call-outs performed as a Trades Assistant", or "the site minimum does not apply to Office roles" — without having to duplicate rule groups or documents.

Example: 8-hour site minimum that excludes the "Office" role. The worker has a 5h Site shift and a 4h Office shift on the same day.

Example: 4-hour minimum that includes only the "Trades Assistant" role.

As with activities, selecting no roles means the filter is off and shifts in every role count, and saving an Include-mode rule with no roles selected is rejected.

Leave and an Include-mode role filter. Leave, and any other non-worked timesheet, carries no role — so an Include-mode rule treats it as not selected and its hours do not count toward the day's total. A day of 3 worked hours plus 5 hours of leave is assessed as a 3-hour day, and a 8-hour minimum tops it up by 5 hours on top of the paid leave. This is the same behaviour an Include-mode activity filter has (leave is not one of the selected activities either). If you want leave to count toward a minimum, use Exclude mode.

Shifts whose role doesn't match your selection. A shift is matched to your selection by its role, falling back to the task name recorded on the timesheet — which matters for CSV imports and older records that carry a task name but no role. A record carrying no role information at all matches neither channel, and is treated as not selected: ignored by an Include-mode rule, and unaffected by an Exclude-mode one.

Renaming a role is safe for any rule whose roles you picked in this form — the selection is anchored to the role itself, not to its name, so renaming it in your roles list changes nothing. The exception is a rule whose roles were read out of an uploaded agreement document: those start out matched by name only, and a rename can stop them matching. Opening the rule and saving it once anchors the selection to the roles themselves.

Using both filters together. A rule may carry an activity filter and a role filter at once, and both must be satisfied — the role filter decides which shifts count, and then the activity filter decides which hours within those shifts count. A 4-hour minimum that includes only the "Trades Assistant" role and only the "Call Out" activity pays a top-up for call-out hours worked as a Trades Assistant, and nothing for call-out hours worked in any other role.

Split Shifts and Same-Day Timesheets

The minimum is a daily guarantee, not a per-timesheet one. When a worker has more than one timesheet on the same date — a split shift, or a shift plus a leave block — the day's hours are added together and checked against the minimum once. If the day falls short, a single make-up line is added for the day, not one per timesheet.

Example: Minimum engagement = 8 hours, two shifts on the same Monday

The outcome doesn't depend on the order the shifts are processed. Every timesheet on the day measures the day the same way, so the day's total make-up is the same regardless of which shift came first.

A role filter narrows which of the day's shifts count. Because a role applies to a whole shift, a same-day shift the role filter doesn't count contributes nothing to the day's total and cannot receive the make-up — so a split shift across two roles can be assessed on only one of its halves. In Exclude mode this applies to the shifts the rule governs; a same-day shift under a different rule group (or outside the rule's employment-type or classification scope) keeps all its hours regardless of role. In Include mode it applies across the whole day, governed or not — the same distinction the activity filter makes. A shift dropped this way is also left out of the blended rate the make-up is priced at. See Role Filter above.

When a rule group contains more than one minimum engagement rule, the day binds the first rule in the list whose guarantee the day's hours don't already meet. A day with 5 counted hours, against a 6-hour rule followed by an 8-hour rule, tops up to 6 hours — the first rule that isn't satisfied — rather than skipping ahead to the larger one.

List narrow rules above general ones. "First unsatisfied rule wins" does not prefer the more specific rule, so order matters as soon as you combine a filtered rule with an unfiltered one. If a general 8-hour minimum sits above a 4-hour minimum that includes only the "Trades Assistant" role, a 2-hour Trades Assistant shift binds the general rule and is topped up to 8 hours — the role-scoped rule is never reached.

Put the narrower rule first. The same applies to activity-filtered rules.

When the day's timesheets are paid at different base rates — a worker who changes classification at lunchtime, for example — the make-up is priced from the day's hours-weighted average base rate. A day of 2h at $40 plus 2h at $80 against an 8-hour minimum pays its 4-hour make-up at $60/hour ($240), whichever shift came first. If Paid At Rate is set to Overtime, that averaged base rate is what the overtime multiplier is applied to. When every timesheet that day shares one rate, that rate is used as normal.

Only the worked timesheets this rule governs are averaged. Leave blocks are left out — leave is not worked time, so it still counts toward whether the day meets the minimum, but it does not affect the rate the make-up is paid at. Timesheets under a different rule group are left out of the average for the same reason the rule's filters don't apply to them: this rule doesn't govern them. A timesheet the role filter doesn't count is left out too — a shift dropped from the day's total must not set the price of the make-up either. Timesheets on a classification that has been set up for quantity-only coding (no dollar rates) are also left out, and if one of them is involved the make-up simply falls back to the rate on the timesheet that pays it.

When the make-up is paid at an averaged rate, the calculation reasoning on the timesheet says so, naming both the day's blended rate and that timesheet's own rate.

How to Create a Minimum Engagement Rule

1. Open a pay rate document from the Pay Rate Documents tab
2. Navigate to the Rule Groups section
3. In the minimum engagement rules area, click "Add Minimum Engagement Rule"
4. Fill in the form fields described below
5. Click "Save" to create the rule Basic Information:

• Rule Name: Descriptive name (e.g., "4-Hour Minimum for Casuals", "Weekend Minimum Engagement")
• Minimum Hours: The guaranteed minimum hours (e.g., 4)
• Activation Threshold: Optional — the minimum actual hours the worker must have before the rule applies. Leave empty to always apply. Must be less than the minimum hours (or the top tier's guarantee when tiers are enabled)
• Offset Description: Label for the make-up hours pay item when workers work less than the minimum (e.g., "Minimum engagement")

Tiered Minimums:

• Use tiered minimums: Optional — enable stepped show-up pay and define the bands (see the Tiered Minimums concept above). Guaranteed hours must increase from tier to tier

Rate Configuration:

• Paid At Rate: The rate at which minimum engagement hours are paid — Normal Rate or Overtime Rate
• Applies To: Which shifts this minimum engagement applies to — All Shifts, Weekday Only, Weekend Only, or Public Holiday Only

Employment Types:

• Optionally restrict the rule to specific employment types. The list is your account's own employment types (the ones under Settings, imported from Assignar) — not a fixed Full Time / Part Time / Casual list — so a type your organisation calls something else, like "Casual Employee", can be selected here. If none are selected, the rule applies to all employment types.
• Matching ignores capitalisation and hyphen/space differences, so a rule set up for "Part Time" still applies to a worker recorded as "Part-Time".
• Rules saved from this screen are also anchored to the employment type itself, not just its name, so renaming an employment type does not stop them applying. Rules created before this was added match by name only — open one and save it, and every selected type that still exists in your account is anchored automatically.
• If a rule names an employment type that no longer exists in your account, the checkbox for it is shown ticked and marked "(not in this account)": untick it to remove the filter, because a rule scoped to a name no worker has applies to nobody. If the employment type list could not be loaded, no such marks are shown — we cannot tell what exists while the list is unavailable.
• If a worker has no employment type recorded, they are treated as Full Time. When a minimum engagement rule scoped by employment type is evaluated for that worker, the pay breakdown notes that the filter was checked against the default, so you can tell a genuine Full Time worker from a missing record.
• If a rule's employment-type filter doesn't cover the worker, the rule is skipped for that timesheet and the reason — naming the rule, the types it is scoped to, and the worker's own type — is recorded in the calculation reasoning. Where more than three rules are skipped this way, they are summarised on one line.
• A rule whose employment-type filter is set but left empty matches nobody, and the calculation reasoning says so. Re-save it with the types it should cover, or clear the filter to apply it to everyone.
• Only the first unsatisfied matching rule in a group is applied. So if a group has both a narrow rule with a lower minimum and a broader rule with a higher one, a worker the narrow rule covers gets the narrow rule's smaller guarantee — not the bigger one. Order the group, or set the minimums, with that in mind.

Activity Filter:

• Filter mode: Exclude selected activities (the default) ignores the selected activities and counts every other hour; Include only selected activities counts only the selected ones. By default, with nothing selected, all hours (including non-payable) count toward the threshold.
• Exclude / Include Activities: The activities the mode applies to. Include mode requires at least one activity.

Role Filter:

• Filter mode: Exclude selected roles (the default) drops shifts worked in the selected roles from the day's total; Include only selected roles counts only those shifts. With nothing selected, shifts in every role count.
• Exclude / Include Roles: The roles the mode applies to. Include mode requires at least one role. A role applies to the whole shift, so an excluded shift is never topped up and, in Include mode, only a selected shift can be.

Cost Code:

• Cost Code: Select the cost code for the offset hours pay line item

How the Calculation Works

When "Apply Pay Rates" processes a timesheet:

1. The system checks if a minimum engagement rule applies to this timesheet
2. If the rule has a role filter that doesn't count this timesheet's role, the rule is skipped for it — no top-up, and the reason is recorded in the timesheet's calculation reasoning. The next rule in the group is still considered
3. In Include mode, if none of the selected activities occurred on this timesheet, the rule does not apply — no top-up. (This is assessed per timesheet, before the day is totalled: a day where a different shift did the selected activity still skips the rule for this one. An Include-mode rule on a timesheet with no activity breakdown at all is skipped for the same reason — there is nothing to assess)
4. It totals the hours that count toward the minimum for the whole day — this timesheet plus any others on the same date (see Split Shifts and Same-Day Timesheets above), leaving out any same-day shift the role filter doesn't count and any hours the activity filter doesn't count
5. If the rule has an activation threshold and the day's counted hours are below it, the rule does not apply — the shift is paid as worked with no top-up
6. If the rule has tiers, the guaranteed hours come from the highest band the day's counted hours reach (below the lowest band, the rule does not apply); otherwise the guaranteed hours are the rule's minimum hours
7. If the rule is set to apply only if the worker shows up and this timesheet recorded no worked hours, the rule does not apply
8. If the day's counted hours are less than the guaranteed hours:
   • Offset hours = guaranteed hours - the day's counted hours
   • A separate pay line item is created for the offset hours, once for the day
   • The offset is paid at the configured rate and linked to the specified cost code
9. If the day's counted hours meet or exceed the guaranteed hours, the rule has no effect

Example Calculation

• Rule: 4-hour minimum engagement at normal rate
• Timesheet: Worker clocked 2 hours at $40/hour base rate
• Result:
  • 2 hours actual work: $80 (paid normally)
  • 2 hours offset: $80 (paid at normal rate)
  • Total: $160 (equivalent to 4 hours)

Tips

• Check your award: Most awards specify minimum engagement hours by employment type (casual workers often have higher minimums)
• Scope appropriately: Weekday and weekend minimums may differ under your award
• Use employment type filters: Permanent workers often have different minimum engagement requirements than casual workers
• Link to a dedicated cost code: Tracking offset hours separately helps identify the true cost of short shifts
• Review after applying: Check the Summary View to see which timesheets had offset hours added
• Both filters are optional: leave the activity and role filters empty unless your award specifically narrows what counts. By default all hours in every role count, which is the most common requirement
• Pick the mode that needs fewer selections: use Exclude when your award singles out a handful of time types or roles, and Include when the minimum only ever applies to one or two. Include mode also avoids the trap of an Exclude list silently going out of date the moment someone adds a new activity or role
• Include mode never invents a top-up: a shift with none of the selected activities, or in none of the selected roles, is left alone rather than topped up to the full minimum. If you expected a make-up and got none, check the timesheet's calculation reasoning — it names the filter that skipped the rule
• Remember the difference in granularity: an activity filter changes which hours of a shift count; a role filter decides whether the whole shift counts and can be topped up at all
• Use the activation threshold sparingly: Only set it if very short shifts should not be topped up. Most awards require the minimum for any attendance, which is the default behaviour when the field is left empty
• Check the day, not the timesheet: On split shifts the guarantee is assessed and paid once across the whole day, so read the day's combined hours before deciding a make-up looks wrong
• Order multiple minimum engagement rules deliberately: within a rule group they are evaluated top to bottom, and the first one the day doesn't already satisfy is the one that pays

What's Next

• Return to Rule Groups to configure other rule types
• Set up Consecutive Shift Rules for fatigue-based adjustments
• Configure Shift Spacing Rules for rest period enforcement