The Rotaready–Paycircle integration allows your rota and timesheet data in Rotaready to flow automatically into Paycircle for payroll processing. Once set up, signed-off rota data will appear in Paycircle without manual entry, reducing errors and saving time.
⚠️Important! The integration is one-way only. Data flows from Rotaready into Paycircle. Changes made in Paycircle do not sync back to Rotaready.
Before you start
Make sure you have the following in place before attempting to connect the two systems.
In Rotaready
An active Rotaready account with administrator access.
Your API credentials
Realm ID
Key
Secret, provided by the Rotaready team.
Employees set up and approved in Rotaready.
All sites must be configured in Paycircle before the integration is enabled.
Pay elements finalised in Rotaready with consistent names; any changes after go-live will require matching updates in Paycircle.
In Paycircle
Company settings access.
Your element pack must include an element named 'Gross Addition (Units)'; this is essential for shifts and holiday payments to flow through.
Pay element names must match Rotaready exactly; further information can be found on pay element matching.
Pay element positive/negative configuration verified; if a pay element is positive in Rotaready, the corresponding Paycircle element must also be configured as a payment, and vice versa. A mismatch will not prevent data from flowing, but will cause incorrect calculations.
📌Note: Your Realm ID, Key, and Secret are provided by the Rotaready team. Contact them by emailing [email protected]. Save these securely as soon as you receive them.
Holiday Finalisation
Agree on the approach before go-live
Before enabling the integration, confirm how you want to handle final holiday payments and deductions when employees leave. There are three options — this decision affects how pay elements need to be set up in both systems.
Option A
Manual Finalisation (Default): Manually finalise each leaver's holiday allowance in Rotaready before the pay run. Steps: https://help.rotaready.com/en/articles/6407524-finalising-an-absence-allowance
Option B
Automatic Finalisation (Recommended): An optional setting automatically finalises the active holiday allowance when an employment ends. Rotaready calculates the final payment using the employee's current basic pay rate.
This is the recommended approach as it reduces the risk of final holiday pay failing to flow because the allowance was not finalised before the leaver was confirmed.
This setting is disabled by default. Before enabling it, confirm:
Whether you use the carry over field within allowances — the automatic process will pro-rate this rather than treat it as a separate value, so manual review may be needed
Whether the 260-day salary calculation is appropriate for your setup (based on a 5-day working week)
Option C
Manual Pay Elements: Manage holiday payments and deductions entirely via manual pay elements. If this option is chosen:
Create separate pay elements in Rotaready for payment and deduction
Each must have a unique name within the realm
The name "Holiday Finalisation" cannot be used — this is reserved by the integration for the automated process and using it will cause conflicts
The payment and deduction elements must have different names from each other
Step 1
Connect to Rotaready
In Paycircle, click Company Settings in the left-hand menu.
Click Integrations. This opens the Settings overview page, which displays tiles for General settings, Payroll settings, Employee portal, and Modules & Integrations. Click Integrations under the Modules & Integrations tile.
Find the Time & Attendance section and click Edit.
Click Connect to Rotaready.
Enter your API credentials in the fields provided:
Realm: your unique Rotaready environment identifier. Contains letters and numbers only (no spaces or special characters)
Key: your Rotaready API key
Secret: your Rotaready API secret. Treat this like a password and do not share it
Click Connect.
If the connection is successful, you will see a Connected status badge and your Rotaready sites will be displayed in the Time & Attendance section.
If the connection fails, you will see the message "Failed to connect using the API credentials you entered. Please try again." Double-check your credentials for typos — the Realm field accepts letters and numbers only. If credentials are correct and the connection still fails, contact Rotaready support.
Step 2
Map Your Employees
Once connected, you need to match employees between Rotaready and Paycircle so their data synchronises correctly.
How the integration identifies employees
The integration links employees between the two systems using the Rotaready ID only. This is the sole identifier used for matching; no other ID (Employee number, HR ID, or HMRC Submission ID) is used as the integration link.
📌Note: Employee number and HR ID in Rotaready have no function in Paycircle and are not used by the integration.
Click Go to team mapping from the integration settings screen.
The team mapping screen shows two groups:
Unmatched employees: Rotaready employees who have not yet been linked to a Paycircle record.
Matched employees: employees who are already linked between the two systems.
📌Note: Employees must be approved in Rotaready before they appear in the mapping screen. Unapproved employees are not included in the integration.
If employees already exist in both systems (Scenario A)
The system will suggest automatic matches based on name, date of birth, and other details.
Click Review matches.
Click Match now.
For each suggested pair, review the details and choose one of the following:
Accept: confirm the match is correct.
Search: find a different Paycircle employee to match to.
Create: create a new Paycircle employee record from the Rotaready data
Click Save when you have reviewed all suggested matches.
If you are starting fresh and all employees need to be created (Scenario B)
Click Match now.
Click Create All to create Paycircle records for all unmatched Rotaready employees.
New starters and non-new starters
How an employee is created in Paycircle depends on whether they are a new starter. An employee is a new starter if their start date falls on or after the start date of the current Paycircle pay period.
New starters are created as complete and ready for payroll. Starter declaration defaults to 'B' unless specified in Rotaready. If the employee has a P45 or the correct declaration is known, it must be entered in Rotaready before their first payment; submitting an incorrect declaration on the FPS affects their tax code.
Non-new starters are created as incomplete. Payroll admin must manually add the year-to-date and the correct tax code before they can be paid.
HMRC Submission ID: This does not flow from Rotaready. It is either set at the point of initial payroll setup in Paycircle, or allocated automatically by Paycircle. If a specific HMRC Submission ID is required for a non-new starter, this must be entered manually in Paycircle.
Once employees are mapped, IDs must not be changed. Modifying IDs after go-live can break the employee mapping. If a correction is needed post-go-live, contact Paycircle support before making any changes.
Step 3
Check Your Pay Elements
Before processing your first payroll, confirm that your pay element names in Paycircle match those in Rotaready exactly.
The compatibility check screen will highlight any elements in Rotaready that do not have a matching element in Paycircle. It displays two sections: Employees and Pay elements. The Pay elements section lists any Rotaready elements that are unmatched, along with a note directing you to create them in Paycircle.
⚠️Important! This screen is a warning display only; it is not a mapping tool. You cannot manually link elements on this screen. To resolve a mismatch, you must create the element in Paycircle with the exact same name as it appears in Rotaready.
For each element shown as unmatched:
Note the exact name as it appears on the compatibility screen.
Go to your pay elements in Paycircle and create the missing element using that exact name.
Return to the compatibility check and refresh; the warning should clear.
Also, check the positive/negative configuration. The compatibility screen only checks name matching; it does not validate whether the payment/deduction direction is consistent between systems. Confirm this separately for each element before go-live.
Step 3a
Check for hours signed off before setup was complete
⚠️Warning! This step is important and easy to miss; don't skip it.
The integration only processes sign-off events from the point at which the integration is active and the relevant employee is matched in Paycircle. If any rota days were signed off before both conditions were in place, those hours will not flow through automatically and will not be queued for retry.
Before running your first payroll, check whether this applies:
Have any rotas been signed off in Rotaready before the integration was enabled?
Were any employees matched after some of their shifts had already been signed off?
If either is true, you will need to resend the affected data manually:
In Rotaready, navigate to the week containing the affected signed-off day(s).
Reverse the sign-off for each affected day.
Sign those days off again.
This triggers a fresh sign-off event, which Paycircle will process as normal. Repeat for each affected week and employee.
Recommended setup sequence to avoid this issue:
Enable the integration and confirm the connection is active.
Match all employees in the Paycircle mapping screen.
Only then, allow site managers to begin signing off rotas.
📌Note: For businesses with many employees and multiple site managers signing off daily, this manual resend process can be significant. Identify the affected periods early and agree on a plan before the first payroll run.
Step 4
Before your first payroll run
Once your employees are mapped and pay elements are matched, run through this checklist before processing payroll for the first time.
All employees are matched between Rotaready and Paycircle.
All Rotaready pay elements have a matching element in Paycircle (no warnings remaining).
Your element pack includes 'Gross Addition (Units)'.
All rotas for the pay period have been signed off in Rotaready.
You have checked the Rotaready Updates page in Paycircle for any failed events.
Confirmed whether any rota days were signed off before all employees were matched — if so, unsign/re-sign process completed for all affected days.
Pay element positive/negative configuration verified against Paycircle element setup.
Holiday Finalisation approach agreed and configured (automatic, manual process, or manual pay elements).
If manual pay elements for holiday (Option C): "Holiday Finalisation" name not used; payment and deduction elements created with distinct names.
Non-new starters identified and manually completed in Paycircle (year-to-dates, tax code).
Starter declarations reviewed for all new starters — correct declaration entered in Rotaready before first payment if known.
HMRC Submission IDs confirmed for non-new starters — entered manually in Paycircle where required.
What happens next
Once your rotas are signed off in Rotaready, the data will begin flowing into Paycircle automatically. You can monitor incoming data on the Rotaready Updates page in Paycircle
Click Team, then click Rotaready Updates.
Review our guidance for managing events and resolving failures.