The 4-4-5 reference period feature is relevant to companies in the hospitality and retail sectors that run a monthly payroll but organise their working weeks into a quarterly pattern of 4, 4 and 5 weeks. With 4-4-5 enabled, the integration uses the 4-4-5 period boundaries to determine which rota data belongs to each payroll run.
⚠️Important! This is an optional feature. It is only relevant if your business operates on a 4-4-5 week cycle. If you run a standard calendar month payroll, you do not need to configure this.
Prerequisites
The company's pay frequency in Paycircle must be set to Monthly.
The Rotaready integration must already be enabled and connected.
Every pay date in the tax year must fall after the end of its reference period.
📌Note: The 4-4-5 option will not appear in the integration settings if the company's pay frequency is not set to Monthly. It is hidden rather than greyed out.
The pay date requirement
Each pay period's pay date must fall after the end date of the reference period it covers. Where any single month in the tax year fails that test, the whole configuration is rejected. A payroll that pays on the last day of the month is the usual case that fails this.
Check this before promising 4-4-5 to a customer. If their pay dates cannot satisfy it, see Set up offset reference periods for Rotaready, which anchors periods to the pay date instead.
Available patterns
Pattern | Structure | Most common use |
4-4-5 | 4 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks | Most common in hospitality |
4-5-4 | 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 4 weeks | Less common alternative |
5-4-4 | 5 weeks, 4 weeks, 4 weeks | Less common alternative |
Configure reference periods
Click Company Settings in the left-hand menu.
Click Integrations.
Find the Time & Attendance section with Rotaready connected.
Switch on the Setup periods toggle, under the Rotaready reference periods heading.
Select the pattern that matches your business's quarterly structure: 4-4-5, 4-5-4, or 5-4-4.
Enter the start date for your current reference period in the date field provided. This date determines how the pattern aligns with your tax year and business calendar.
📌Note: Avoid 29 February as a start date. The date is carried forward a year at a time to derive later tax years, and in a non-leap year it becomes 28 February, shifting every boundary in that year a day earlier.
Click Open reference period calendar to preview how the periods will be distributed across the year before saving.
🤓Tip: This preview is where you check the pay date requirement described above. For every period, confirm the pay date is later than the reference period end date. A single period failing that test means the configuration will be rejected when you save.
Once you are satisfied that the preview is correct, click Save to apply the configuration.
📌Note: A saved change is not reflected immediately. The configuration is held for up to five minutes, and the derived period dates are held for up to fifteen minutes. Allow that time to pass before testing a change or concluding it did not save.
How this affects the integration
⚠️Important! Changing the pattern or start date does not apply from the change onwards. The previous configuration is closed off and a new one created, and the period dates for the whole of the current tax year are re-derived, including pay periods that have already been processed.
Once 4-4-5 is configured, the integration uses the reference period start and end dates, rather than calendar month boundaries, when determining which rota data to pull into each payroll run.