Issue 014 · On rostering

A quieter
Friday night,
by design.

RosterPro was written by a practising dentist, for the owners who currently spend the back end of their week chasing availability through a group chat. It publishes the fortnight in two minutes, and files the timesheet on your behalf.

Plate I · The fortnight, week A
Live
M·13
T·14
W·15
T·16
F·17
S·18
DENT
PS
NK
PS
·
JP
·
HYG
SC
SC
·
SC
SC
·
DA
GW
GW
GW
MT
ES
ES
RCPT
AP
AP
AP
AP
AP
JW
332.0 h scheduled$24,652 · award-compliant
A fortnight rendered in two minutes. Visa caps honoured, Saturday penalty rates applied from 12:30, and the steri bay never left unstaffed.
07:42 · shift drop● broadcasting
"Erika can't make Wed 08:30. First to claim wins."
offered to 4 DAs · GW claimed in 3m 11s
§ Fair Work penalty
$19,800
per breach · unchanged since 2023
§ Award
MA000027
auto-applied on every publish
§ Generation time
< 2 min
median fortnight · 14 staff
§ Free tier
5 staff
full compliance · no card
§ Pro
$6 AUD
per user / month · $4.80 yearly
§ 01 — The
Friday-night
problem

Sunday used to be spreadsheet night.
Then 7 a.m. on Monday was phone-call morning.

Before RosterPro, a mid-size practice spends roughly nine hours a fortnight on roster admin — and that's before anyone calls in sick. Here's the rough shape of the cost, with and without.

Without RosterPro

  • Sunday nights pulling the roster into a spreadsheet (2.5 h)
  • Texting everyone to ask whether they can work (1.0 h)
  • Manually clocking in / out, manually adjusting for breaks (1.5 h)
  • Re-keying hours into Xero on Monday morning (1.0 h)
  • Guessing at penalty rates, worrying about the audit (priceless)

With RosterPro

  • Availability collected by push notification (staff side)
  • Fortnight generated in under two minutes (your side)
  • GPS clock-in automatically breaks a shift at meal time
  • Timesheets file to Xero on Monday — no double-entry
  • Award MA000027 applied every time. Audit trail exportable.
The cost of a Friday night · 14-staff practice · fortnightly
median · n = 312 practices · Apr 2026
Owner hours reclaimed
8.4 h
or roughly a whole Sunday, back in your diary
Over-/under-payment exposure
$6,400 / yr
missed penalty triggers compounded fortnightly
Fair Work penalty · single breach
$19,800
per breach, per employee, per audit finding
§ 02 — How
it works,
in four gates

A fortnight, in four deliberate steps.

Nothing here was designed to go viral. Each gate closes on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday — in turn — and the practice moves on.

FRI
19:30

Push — mark availability

Staff answer once, on the couch. The default is last fortnight's pattern. Exam nights, school pickups, visa caps and long-weekend plans go in now — not at 7am on the day.

Staff-side, friday evening
"Avail Mon/Tue/Thu · AM only Fri · off Sat (exam)"
→ 13 of 14 staff submit within 3 hours of the push
SAT

Coverage set by owner

Per-day mix of dentists, DAs, hygienists, reception and steri. Set it once a quarter, tweak only when you add a chair. The template learns your busy days.

Template, typical day
1 dentist · 1 hygienist · 2 DAs · 1 reception · 1 steri
→ Saturday template drops to ½ and flips on penalty rates
SUN
21:07

Roster generated

Two minutes. Award rates and visa caps pre-applied. Review on the sofa, drag a shift if you want, publish with one tap. Staff see it before the kettle's cold.

Solver run · 27 Apr fortnight
332.0 h · $24,652 · 5 open · PASS
→ 1m 47s · 14 constraints · 0 hard-constraint violations
MON
05:55

Practice opens

Staff clock in on the door with GPS verification. Meal breaks auto-deduct. When reception's kid gets sick at 7, the open-shift pool routes cover before you've finished your coffee.

Monday · T+00:12:00
AP unassigned · JW claimed · roster republished
→ 0 outgoing phone calls · 1 owner's morning preserved
§ 03 — On
compliance,
specifically

A single overlooked penalty rate,
compounded fortnightly.

Under MA000027, Saturday work crosses into penalty territory at 12:30. Miss it once a week and a four-person practice quietly over-pays — or under-pays, which Fair Work fines at $19,800 per breach. RosterPro applies the trigger to every published shift.

Saturday · 08:30—17:00HoursRate×Pay
08:30—12:30 · ordinary4.00 h$28.41×1.00$113.64
12:30—17:00 · penalty4.50 h$28.41×1.25$159.81
Meal · unpaid0.50 h
RosterPro total$273.45

Five things we handle, without asking.

→ 12:30 Saturday penalty trigger
→ ordinary-hours cap per employee
→ half-hour unpaid meal break deduction
→ visa 24h / 48h caps, tracked weekly
→ overtime thresholds by employment type
Audit trail · exportableEvery shift, clock event, and rate calculation is stamped with the MA000027 version that applied on the day. Drop it into a PDF for Fair Work in two taps.
§ 04 — The
7 a.m.
incident

The shift that used to take ten phone calls and forty minutes
now takes twenty-three seconds.

When someone can't make a shift, they unassign. The shift drops into an open pool — first colleague qualified to claim it wins. No group texts, no ringing around, no standing at the door trying to remember who owes you a favour.

06:52
Rcpt texts sick
07:04
Pool broadcast
to 5 qualified
07:04:23
JW claims
the shift
07:05
Roster
republished
07:06
Clinic opens
as planned
12:30
Penalty rate
auto-applied
17:55
Timesheet →
Xero
"Erin claimed her own overtime shift before I had coffee. I didn't touch my phone."
— Practice Manager · 14 staff · Perth
§ 05 — Field
notes from
the chair

Owners, on what actually changed.

Quotes from practitioners running between four and twenty-eight staff. Not on a pedestal — on a Tuesday.

"
The Friday-night spreadsheet is gone. I got my weekend back in the first fortnight.
LP
Dr. L. Pham · Brunswick, VIC · 8 staff
"
Rosters take me eleven minutes. Eleven. It used to be two hours on a Sunday.
SO
Dr. S. Ortega · Adelaide · 12 staff
"
The first time the audit happened I exported the MA000027 log and we were done in fifteen minutes.
RM
R. Miyake, Practice Mgr · Sydney · 21 staff
§ 06 — On
what it
costs

Free up to five. Everything after that costs less than a flat white.

Compliance is in the free tier — because a practice that can't afford software shouldn't be the one exposed to an audit. Pro adds multi-location, roles, and analytics.

Tier · Free
The starter.
For single-site practices up to five staff. Full award compliance, not a demo.
$0
forever · no card
  • Unlimited rosters & fortnights
  • Award MA000027 compliance engine
  • GPS clock-in / clock-out
  • Open-shift pool
  • Push + email notifications
Start free →
Tier · Pro
For growing practices.
When you cross five staff, or need payroll sync, multi-location, or analytics.
$6
AUD · per user / month · $4.80 yearly
  • Everything in Free, plus —
  • Xero & QuickBooks payroll sync (+ CSV fallback)
  • Multi-location & shared staff pools
  • Shift-cost forecasting & variance reports
  • Priority support & onboarding call
Begin Pro trial →
§ 07 — On
what it
talks to

Four integrations, chosen on purpose.

We don't bolt on every API. The ones we support, we support seriously — OAuth, two-way sync where it makes sense, and a CSV fallback for the stragglers.

Payroll
Xero
Two-way timesheet sync via OAuth. Shift events push to draft pay runs hourly; pay-run IDs come back and live on each shift for audit.
Payroll
QuickBooks
Timesheet export via Intuit Payroll API, or MYOB CSV if you'd prefer manual upload. Roles and employment types map automatically.
Comms
Push & Email
Roster publish, shift-drop, approval requests, manual entry flags — every event has a routing rule and a fallback channel.
Calendar
iCal feed
A per-staff read-only iCal feed so shifts appear in Apple/Google Calendar without a separate app install. Updates within 90 seconds of publish.
§ 08 — On
the things
owners ask

Questions we hear on the demo call.

01

We use an iPad at reception. Is this a native app?

It's a PWA — you install it from Safari's share sheet and it behaves like any other app, including offline for in-clinic use. We're a small team and supporting one codebase means faster fixes and current features for everyone.

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02

What happens on April 1 when MA000027 changes?

We re-cost every published fortnight automatically the day the award updates, email you the diff, and the audit trail records the version change. There's nothing to do. See the Award changes page for this April's update.

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03

A staff member works DA and reception and steri. Can one person hold multiple roles?

Yes. Each staff member has a primary role and any number of qualified secondary roles. The solver honours all of them when filling open shifts, and the open-shift pool only offers a shift to staff who are qualified for it.

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04

We're on a visa program with weekly hour caps. What happens at the limit?

Visa caps live on the staff profile. The solver treats them as a hard constraint and will never publish a roster that exceeds them. You'll see a warning on the dashboard when a staff member crosses 85% utilisation for the week.

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05

Can I migrate from Deputy / RosterElf / When I Work?

Yes. We import staff, roles, and the last eight weeks of history via CSV export from any of them. Most practices are live on RosterPro within a single Sunday evening, including the data import.

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§ 09 — Begin

Your next Friday night,
on the couch.

No credit card required · Sandbox with real MA000027 data · You can delete everything in one tap