Staff member – the person. One person can have more than one contract at the same time.

Contract – a set of employment terms for that person: their pay rate, contracted hours, worker type, the roles they do and the locations they cover, plus their leave and any pay uplifts.

Pay rate code – the pay "template" set up for your company. Each pay rate needs its own contract. Roles that are paid the same rate can share one contract; a role on a different rate needs a separate contract.

Contract period – a dated "version" of a contract. Every time you edit a contract from a date onwards, Florence keeps the old terms as history and starts a new period. This means you always have an accurate record of what the terms were on any given day (important for payroll and leave).

Contracted hours – the hours per week the person is expected to work on that contract. If they have other contracts, these hours are added on top — the number on each contract is not their grand total.

Worker type / tier – Permanent or Bank. This affects how pay and leave are calculated.

Leave allowance – annual leave, sick leave, etc. Annual leave is pro-rata to contracted hours, so it recalculates when contracted hours change.

Pay entitlements (uplifts) – extras on top of the base rate, e.g. a fixed amount per hour, a multiplier (like 1.5×), or an override rate for certain conditions. E.g. When a worker exceeds a 40hr week they are paid at x1.5 rate.

Effective date – the date a change starts to apply. Most edits are applied from a date you choose onwards, rather than rewriting the past.

A location + role can only be on one contract at a time. If you pick a combination that's already covered by another contract, Florence blocks it and asks you to remove the clash.

If no leave allowances or pay entitlements are set up for your company, you'll see a prompt to contact your account manager to configure them.

A carer who picks up bank shifts at a higher rate → give them a second contract on the bank pay rate.

Someone doing two different roles at the same rate → these can sit on one contract (add both roles in the Hours and roles step).

Someone doing two roles at different rates → they need two contracts.

Choose an effective date — "When would you like to apply these updates from?" The change applies from that date onwards. Everything before it stays exactly as it was.

Florence works through only the relevant follow-on steps (for example, it only shows the leave recalculation if you changed hours, or the shift-resolution step if you removed a role/location).

A final Review edits screen summarises every change ("Contracted hours updated from X to Y", "Role removed", "3 shifts moved to open", etc.) before you confirm.

Your history is preserved. Rather than overwriting the contract, Florence "closes off" the current terms the day before your effective date and opens a new period from the effective date. Payroll and leave for past dates are unaffected.

You can't back-date past finalised payroll. The earliest date you can edit from is the day after the last shift that's already been through a finalised payroll run. This protects pay that has already been paid.

Watch for scheduled changes. If the contract already has a change queued for a future date, editing will warn you: "This contract already has a change scheduled for [date]. Continuing will overwrite that scheduled change." Similarly, if terms changed on dates within your chosen range, Florence warns that saving will replace everything from your chosen date onwards, including those changes.

Future shifts are kept in step. Changing the worker type or roles/locations updates the person's future approved shifts so pay is calculated correctly, and triggers a re-match so the rota stays accurate.

If the new allowance is higher, the balance simply goes up.

If the new allowance is lower and the person has already taken more than the new allowance (they're "overdrawn"), Florence asks how to handle it:

The following year's allowance is updated to match the new hours too, keeping future years consistent.

Leave allowances are tied to the contract. You can remove allowances that no longer apply or add new ones from your company's set.

An allowance that has leave already booked against it can't simply be removed — you'll need to handle that booked leave first.

Because annual leave is pro-rata, changing hours (section 5) and changing the allowance are linked — Florence keeps the numbers consistent and always shows you the before/after and any overdrawn choice before you commit.

Move to open – unassign the person; the shift goes back to open shifts for someone else to pick up.

A different contract – reassign the shifts to another of the person's contracts (you choose which).

Cancel the shifts – remove them from the rota.

Terminate contract – ends one contract (e.g. they're dropping a role but staying employed). You record a reason (resignation, end of contract, redundancy, etc.) and an optional note, set the last working date, then reassign scheduled shifts (cancel or move to open) and review the remaining leave balance. Leave allowances shared with other active contracts are not affected.

Terminate employment (offboarding) – ends the person's employment entirely: they come off the rota and can no longer pick up any shifts. Same steps (reason, reassign shifts, final leave balance), but applied across the board. Their final leave balance is calculated on their final day for their last payroll.

Delete contract – removes a contract entirely. This is for correcting mistakes, cannot be undone, and is different from terminating (which keeps the record and end-dates it). You can only do this before a shift has been booked against that contract.