Connecting your scheduling & payroll solutions – A discussion with Rotaready and PayCaptain

You may or may not already know that Rotaready has been partnered with PayCaptain pretty much since the payroll company was founded in 2020. But what does that partnership look like? How do the two companies and products work with one another? And most importantly, how do our clients benefit from that partnership?

In summary, Rotaready offers a best of breed workforce management solution and PayCaptain offers a best of breed payroll solution. Together the two solutions work to seamlessly deliver an end-to-end staff scheduling and payroll solution. But what does that really mean? I recently caught up with the PayCaptain team to discuss exactly that. Putting our heads together to answer some of the questions you may have about our partnership.

In this blog, we share our discussion points and invite you to let us know if there’s anything you think we’ve missed.

Q1. What would you say are the top benefits to our clients of using Rotaready with PayCaptain?

The core benefit of this integration is the automation between the platforms. But here’s a bit more on the specifics…

The seamless flow of data from Rotaready into PayCaptain

The integration removes the need for any manual intervention from our clients. The fact we have numerous clients using the integration and feeding back the benefits they’re seeing from it, proves the flow of data from one point to another really is seamless. For me, the seamless flow of data is definitely one of the top benefits of using Rotaready & PayCaptain together. – Stacey Heathcote, Head of Payroll, PayCaptain

Employee creation and the ability to rehire someone

The API is set up to automatically recognise a rehire. So whilst a new Payroll ID is created within PayCaptain, there’s no change whatsoever from the customer’s perspective. They just click a button and a new employment is created. – Val Ellis, Payroll Manager, PayCaptain

Visibility of approved hours

Being able to see worked hours from Rotaready within PayCaptain is really beneficial from a drawdown perspective. Employees can see exactly what’s available to them from one product to the other; meaning they can confidently draw on emergency cash if necessary.  – Stacey Heathcote, Head of Payroll, PayCaptain

Holiday management

Holiday management is really good within Rotaready, and anything that is recorded within Rotaready automatically flows into PayCaptain. This means PayCaptain has everything it needs to automatically calculate what needs to be paid and make the payment. – Val Ellis, Payroll Manager, PayCaptain

Flexibility

All businesses operate differently and both Rotaready & PayCaptain are flexible solutions that can be tailored to individual client needs. It’s so important to have the ability to make things bespoke to each client. – Stacey Heathcote, Head of Payroll, PayCaptain

More than just a product partnership

The partnership between Rotaready and PayCaptain stems further than just a connection between the two products. We share our roadmaps with one another and make suggestions to help shape the combined offering to truly benefit our customers. Our sole focus doesn’t follow the traditional approach of referral schemes and revenue generation. Rather, our primary goal is to give our clients the best tools to help them for their job. And in delivering this, our partnership has become a friendship… as cliché as that may sound.  – Mike Fisher, Sales & Partnerships Manager, PayCaptain

Q2. Is opting to build my own tech stack rather than using an all-encompassing solution going to cause me unnecessary admin?

Quite the opposite. In fact, building your own tech stack comes with many benefits. Opting for solutions that don’t all sit under one umbrella means they can all bring different things to the table. The Rotaready and PayCaptain teams are both hospitality experts, but have separate core focusses and area of expertise. Meaning that when it comes together you get the best of the best. Whilst we are continuously collaborating to achieve a seamless user journey, having two products gives you two points of contact and access to specialist support for each component of your tech stack. From a user perspective, having separate solutions for staff scheduling and payroll makes things easy to find without having to trawl through a million tabs to find what you’re looking for. You get the best of both worlds. Rotas sitting in one app and payroll in another, but both connected by one login.

At the same time, each team has taken the time to get to know each other’s products, meaning we are well-placed to deal with queries concerning both products. Working closely together means we can be sure our platforms are aligned to work in the way customers expect.

We work collaboratively, so whilst there may be two points of contact, our customers have access to an expert in each area and we know how to get the right answers for our customers. I don’t think we’ve ever had a scenario where Rotaready or PayCaptain has approached the other side and not got an answer for the client. I think that’s really important. – Val Ellis, Payroll Manager, PayCaptain

Q3. How does the integration between Rotaready & PayCaptain impact the speed and accuracy of payroll?

Over to Val Ellis, Payroll Manager at PayCaptain for this one. The proof is in the pudding as they say…

The integration between Rotaready and PayCaptain gives me excellent visibility and the confidence that the relevant data to inform payroll has seamlessly flowed into PayCaptain, and reconciled back to the timesheets within Rotaready. I can easily see that every single day has been signed off within Rotaready and can effortlessly process the payroll export; balancing it like for like. Thanks to the visibility and reporting the two products give me, I can get all of the hours in and net figures pulled, in 60 – 90 minutes, where previously this would have taken me more than a day. There’s no doubt that the integration between the two solutions massively cuts down processing time and improves payroll accuracy.

Rotaready supports a customisable and unlimited number of pay elements. The software is extremely flexible and exposes variable pay clearly for both the employer sign off and PayCaptain processing. Same said with allowances. It can be as simple as holiday allowances, but can also incorporate company sick pay and accommodate different rules for company sick pay. Clients can set up multiple balances for areas specific to them and this data feeds seamlessly into PayCaptain.

Having multiple and customisable pay elements means forecast vs actual, actually includes bonus, commissions, extra shift pay etc; massively improving payroll accuracy.

Q4. Delivering on employee experience is crucial to both parties, how does each product achieve this?

Visibility

Again this comes back to visibility. Both the Rotaready and PayCaptain apps offer employees a digestible view of the hours they’ve worked and what they are going to be paid. As soon as a manager signs off hours within Rotaready, an employee can see their timesheet and any holiday they’ve booked. This information is fed directly into PayCaptain and used to inform payroll. This is hugely important, especially to hourly paid workers.

Visibility of the same data within the two solutions gives employees confidence that the hours they have worked are being accurately transferred to payroll. And there’s a benefit to managers too – the fact employees can see signed off hours per day means managers don’t get an influx of queries when it comes to payday, because on the rare occasion there’s an issue, the employee has already seen flagged it. – Stacey Heathcote, Head of Payroll, PayCaptain

SSO

Another factor that contributes to a great employee experience is SSO. Whilst scheduling and payroll sit in two standalone solutions, they appear as one thanks to single sign on. An employee can login to both products using their Rotaready login, so they can access both solutions without having to log in with separate credentials.

Ease of use

Both Rotaready and PayCaptain have been designed with the end user in mind, plus each boasts  an easy-to-use app and customisable reports.

The in is Rotaready and the out is PayCaptain – both solutions are really easy to use. The reports are fabulous, and you can get all the information you need from one solution or the other. One doesn’t overshadow the other, they support one another perfectly, making it easy for customers to navigate to the information they’re looking for. – Stacey Heathcote, Head of Payroll, PayCaptain

Anything we missed?

Hopefully this blog gives you a little more insight into the partnership between Rotaready & PayCaptain and benefits of using the two solutions together. If you have any additional questions that aren’t covered in this blog, or would like to find out more about either solution, then get in touch with either team via the email…

Rotaready: team@rotaready.com
PayCaptain: hello@paycaptain.com

Alternatively, drop us a message via live chat. We’ll be happy to answer any of your questions!