Setting Up Employees Who Work Midnight Shifts (NZ)
For an employee that works overnight, with shifts starting one day and ending the next, you need to choose which day their midnight shift hours fall into. This determines when the employee is paid for a shift that starts on the last day of one pay period and ends on the first day of the next. It also ensures that the employee is paid correctly for FBAPS leave and that their leave balance gets reduced correctly.
For more information about setting up employee's for FBAPS leave, see Defining an Employee's Working Day For FBAPS Leave (NZ).
There are two settings that let you choose how midnight shift hours contribute to a day's total hours:
- Put shift hours across midnight towards – All standard hours, scheduled hours and timesheet hours in payroll use this setting when assigning hours to a particular date in an employee's work schedule. The table below describes the options for this setting.
- Consider midnight timesheets as continuous when the time between is less than or equal to – This helps you identify multiple timesheets that relate to one shift over midnight. By default this is set to 2 hours.
You can find these settings in the Employment tab of the Pay Details form (MP.PP.23.10) and on the Employee Onboarding Settings form (MP.AT.10.10).
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Shift start day |
All hours from a midnight shift will be dated on the date the shift starts. This is the default option. If an employee works one night shift per day, then any leave taken in that shift will be a part-day based on the total hours of the shift. This option is most suitable for employees that start multiple shifts on the same date and the total hours are considered as a single day. Note:
If an employee's definition of a week is based on their
standard hours, you need to select this option for
them. |
| Shift end day | All hours from a midnight shift will be dated on the date the shift ends. If an employee works one night shift per day, then any leave taken in that shift will be a part-day based on the total hours of the shift.Most suitable for employees that finish multiple shifts on the same date and the total hours are considered as a single day. |
| Day with more hours |
All hours from a midnight shift will be dated on the date that has the most shift hours. If an employee works one night shift per day, then any leave taken in that shift will be a part-day based on the total hours of the shift. Most suitable for employees that work night shifts every now
and then, but not each night or multiple nights in a row.
Warning: If an employee works consecutive
night shifts with variable start and finish times, the
consecutive night shifts may be dated on the same date,
causing any leave taken to be a part-day of the total
hours of both shifts. |
| Split hours proportionally | All standard hours, scheduled hours and timesheets that cross midnight are split by the proportion of hours on each date of the midnight shift. This is useful when employees work multiple shifts each day and the employer feels its unbalanced to fully assign the midnight shift hours to either the start or end date. This option does not use the Consider midnight timesheets as continuous when the time between is less than setting. |
Example Employee Setups
The following related articles show examples of how you might set up employees who work midnight shifts.