The three kinds of pattern
Pick the one that describes how the person actually works. They are alternatives, so only one applies at a time.Same days every week
A fixed week. Tick the days worked and they repeat indefinitely. This covers most salaried staff.
Repeating rota
A rotation that repeats on a cycle, starting from a date you choose. Either a named rota, or a custom one you set week by week.
Set week by week
A genuinely irregular schedule with no repeat, where each week is listed individually. For shift workers whose hours change constantly.
Same days every week
The simplest case: seven true/false flags, one per weekday. Someone working Monday to Thursday has four working days a week, and SSP divides by four.Repeating rota
A rota starts on a rotation start date and repeats from there forever. You choose a rota type:
The five named rotas have their shape built in — you only supply the start date. Custom is the one you spell out.
A custom rota is an ordered list. Starting from the rotation start date, each entry applies for its number of days, then the next one takes over, and when the list runs out it starts again from the top. The cycle length is simply the durations added together — so two entries of seven days each give you a fortnightly rota.Because the order is what defines the rotation, reordering the list changes the pattern. There is no separate week number to set.
Set week by week
Each week is listed with its own start date and its own worked days. Weeks you do not list count as not worked, which is deliberate: a week with no shifts is a real state, not missing data. Weeks must be at least seven days apart so they cannot overlap, and a week can start on any weekday — shift and pay weeks are often not Monday-based. A schedule holds at most 53 weeks at a time; feed later weeks as they get scheduled. This is the pattern to use when an external rota system pushes shifts into Flow Payroll.Which pattern applies to whom
Flow Payroll resolves a pattern most-specific-first, and stops at the first one it finds:1
The employee's own pattern
Set on their record, or through the API. Always wins.
2
The pay run default
Set in Pay run settings. Applies to everyone in that pay run without their own pattern.
3
The organisation default
Set in Settings → Working patterns. Applies to everyone else.
4
Monday to Friday
The built-in fallback when nothing else is set.
Patterns change over time
Working patterns are effective-dated. Saving a pattern does not overwrite the old one — it adds a new version that applies from a date you choose, and the previous versions stay on record. This matters because statutory sick pay for a past date has to use the pattern that was in force then, not the one in force today. Someone who moved from three days a week to five in July should have a June sickness paid on the three-day pattern. Set the same effective date twice and the second save replaces the first, so correcting a mistake does not leave a stray version behind.Going back to an inherited pattern
Giving somebody their own pattern takes them out of the defaults, and sometimes that was not what you wanted. Removing a version puts them back: once an employee has no versions of their own left, they fall through the cascade again to the pay run default, then the organisation default, then Monday to Friday. The same applies to the qualifying-day policy. On the employee’s record, when the pattern shown is their own, the note above it carries a Use the default button. Confirming removes every pattern they had of their own, so the cascade applies again. The qualifying-day section has the same control when they have their own policy.Through the API there are two ways to do this.
DELETE /employees/{employeeId}/working-pattern clears the whole history in one call, which is what the button does. DELETE /employees/{employeeId}/working-pattern/{effectiveFrom} removes a single version by its effective date, for correcting one dated entry — bear in mind that only reveals the version before it. Both have a qualifying-day-policy equivalent.Qualifying days and SSP
Qualifying days are the days SSP can be paid for. They are usually the days worked, but HMRC treats them as agreed between employer and employee rather than simply derived from the rota, so Flow Payroll keeps them separate from the working pattern. You choose how they are decided:Every week must have at least one qualifying day — that is a statutory floor, not a Flow Payroll rule (SSP (General) Regulations 1982, regulation 5). If a pattern would otherwise leave a week with none, the Wednesday default covers it.
Setting a pattern
1
Open the employee's record
Go to People and click the employee’s name.
2
Edit employment information
Find the Employment information card and click edit.
3
Choose the kind of pattern
Pick Same days every week, Repeating rota, or Set week by week. Switching between them keeps what you had entered in the others, so you can compare before deciding — only the one you have selected is saved.
4
Fill in the days
Tick the days, choose the rota and its start date, or click the days worked on the calendar. The calendar preview below always shows how the pattern actually falls, so you can check it before saving. For the week-by-week calendar, hold Shift and click to fill a run of days at once.
5
Save
The pattern is recorded from today. The card returns to view mode showing the saved pattern.
Setting patterns through the API
PUT /working-schedule is the one to use from a rota or scheduling system. It merges the weeks you send into the employee’s existing schedule by week-commencing date, so pushing the same week twice updates it rather than duplicating it, and you can send one week or many.
See the Pay API reference for full request and response shapes.