The new tool addresses the limitations that have been reported to us by organisations as found in all older versions of RosterCoster distributed between 1999 and 2008, as follows:
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The previous tool was limited to 14 staff per screen. The new tool allows as many staff as you like, though we have never seen a standard community based accommodation setting with more than 21 staff (one imagines that a setting with this many staff would seem to be a return to some sort of institutional model).
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The formatting is more 21st century. The original RosterCoster tool was built within a year or two of Bill Gates launching Microsoft Excel, and some of the formatting in the old tool is a hangover from those early days. For example, with the old tool, you could get '#REF!' coming up if you used 'cut and paste'.
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One tool for all Awards in a given sector. In the past, if an organisation had staff under three Awards, it had three tools. With the new tool, you simply switch the Award at the top of the screen.
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Version controlled (via a VCN at www.RosterCoster.com). On-the-ground conditions for rostering are never static, and the new 'single tool' version is the only version of RosterCoster going forward that is subject to a continuous improvement program.
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Supported by a 24 hour integrated user support package running off a link on the tool, which includes both online and human (help desk) supports.
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Considered by RosterCoster.com to be current, accurate and maintained, and this is validated in collaboration with each organisation during installation.
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Has the shift and costing validations seen in the old versions, but none of the slow (in some cases, very slow) processing speeds. In fact, it's all pretty much instantaneous, or within a second or so.
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Provides staff timesheets that accurately include the original rostered shifts. We recommend* that if you actually pay staff off these electronic timesheets, and then validate them against signed paper-based timesheets (if you use those) as they slowly make their way in, then the re-journalling and errors will be less than if you run exclusively off paper-based timesheets.
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For those organisations that also use online rostering, feeds rostered shifts into www.RosterCoster.com, ready for staff replacement. Many managers prefer to draw up their rosters at the start of the fortnight in Excel (Excel is hard to beat for copy/pasting shifts, saving templates and so on), rather than directly into the online program.
*If you have a timesheet function in your payroll system, ignore this recommendation. However, most payroll systems do not have this functionality, as it is complex and expensive to code and implement.
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Last modified at 20/01/2010 10:59 by Damien Ryan
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