Can it hold different ratios for different rooms?

Yes. Each team carries its own minimum staffing number, so babies, toddlers and pre-school can be set separately and warned on separately.

Does it handle term-time-only staff?

Yes — set their working pattern and their entitlement, and leave is counted against the days they actually work.

What about apprentices who do not count towards ratio?

Put them in their own team with a minimum of zero. They still appear on the rota and still clock in; they just do not count towards the room's floor.

For nurseries

Nursery rota software that checks ratios before you approve

Ratios are not a preference in early years, they are the law, and they are the reason approving a day off is never simple. Rotasmith knows who is rostered on the day somebody has asked for, so it can tell you before you say yes rather than after.

Open a live example What it costs

What usually goes wrong

Approving holiday means counting heads against ratio by hand.

Set the minimum for each room and Rotasmith checks the day being requested. It warns you on the approvals screen, before the decision.

Staggered part-time hours make holiday entitlement a guessing game.

Leave is counted against the days each person actually works, so somebody on Monday to Thursday is not charged for a Friday they were never in.

Timesheets are paper, and paper goes missing before payroll.

Staff clock in on a phone or a shared screen with a PIN. Hours and overtime come out the other end as a file payroll can take.

Patterns it already handles

✓Early and late shifts covering 07:30 to 18:00
✓Part-time practitioners on fixed weekdays
✓Term-time-only contracts
✓Apprentices and bank staff covering ratio gaps

The rules you answer to

Statutory staff-to-child ratios differ by age group. Rotasmith holds a minimum per team, so a room can carry its own figure rather than one number for the whole setting.

Questions

Can it hold different ratios for different rooms?: Yes. Each team carries its own minimum staffing number, so babies, toddlers and pre-school can be set separately and warned on separately.
Does it handle term-time-only staff?: Yes — set their working pattern and their entitlement, and leave is counted against the days they actually work.
What about apprentices who do not count towards ratio?: Put them in their own team with a minimum of zero. They still appear on the rota and still clock in; they just do not count towards the room's floor.

See it on a real rota

The demo opens a working example with a published rota, three weeks of clocked hours and a leave request waiting to be approved. Nothing to sign up for, and it is deleted after a week.

Open the demo