Reports
The period as your employer reads it (or as you invoice it), and the figures behind it. The cards are in the order the job is done: see what the period covers, check it is right, then send it, and only then look at what it pays.
Pay cycle
The period strip is the same one as the Log and Summary, and the same choice behind it: pick August here and the Log opens on August.
Under it, the period's dates, and, once you have checked the figures, the headline totals:
- Variable pay for the cycle, on a salary: overtime and allowances from this period, on top of your basic salary.
- Total for the cycle, on an hourly rate: the whole period, meaning the hours at your rate, then the overtime and allowances. There is no basic salary for it to sit on top of.
- Total for the cycle, self-employed: what this period's invoices would charge. See Expected pay.
- On the month payslip, on a salary: basic salary plus that variable pay, on whichever payslip actually carries it. The period ending in one month is usually paid in the next; Muster names the month rather than leaving you to work it out.
- Take-home on the month payslip: an estimate, when you have set a tax code.
These appear only with Show pay figures switched on in Settings.
Check the figures
Always do this before you download. It asks the server for the period's report and shows it back as a statement: the hours, which column each kind of hour is claimed in, the overtime split, the allowances, and anything the exporter wants to warn you about.
Show the plain report is one tap away underneath. That is what the exporter actually produced, and it is the thing to read when a figure looks wrong.
For the period still open, the statement's dates end with the day it is due: submit by the 15th, or, self-employed, invoice by the 1st, the day in Settings › Your pay cycle.
The report ends with a BREAKS note: the days in this period with hours logged and no break recorded. Nothing is deducted for them. Muster cannot tell a break you took and did not enter from one you did not take, so it says what it can see and changes no figure.
With pay figures switched off, the server is asked not to calculate them at all, and the plain report is the whole answer. The hours check identically either way.
Self-employed, the plain report is your hours: each week's total and each day's hours, job and country, with no columns, no weekly 39 and nothing from an employer's agreement. Its warnings are only about the record itself - a shift not finished, an entry with no finish time.
Send to HR
Download for HR fills in the TS-100, Muster's name for the timesheet workbook HR issued, and downloads it as TS-100_<from>_<to>.xlsx. That is the version that gets read, which is why the button sits under the checking card rather than beside it.
Whose name it carries. The sheet has one identity cell, Employee Name, and payroll matches the sheet to you by it. It is your Name on your payslip (Settings › Account); left blank, it is your display name. The card says which, before you download: Name on the sheet: Charles Glieman. When the payslip name is not set it says the sheet will use your display name, with Set your payslip name, which opens Settings at that field.
Which period it sends. The card names the period, and has its own Period list: the period still running and the twelve before it. It opens on the most recent completed period, the one due to HR, and moves on to the next on the day after a period ends. Folded, the card still names it. You can send the period still running: it is marked still running, and the card says the sheet holds only what is recorded so far.
The Pay cycle strip at the top of Reports is a separate choice, shared with the Log and Summary, and Check the figures and Expected pay follow it. When the strip and this card are on different periods, the card says so: Show this period above moves the strip to the period being sent, so you check the same period you send.
If the period you are sending falls outside the workbook you have uploaded, the export still runs and says so at the top, loudly. A right period and an out-of-date workbook is a real situation, and only you can say which of the two is wrong.
Sent, and locked
The first time you download a period that has ended, Muster asks what it is:
- Record as sent, and download - this is the sheet going to HR. Muster keeps it exactly as it left, with its fingerprint (a SHA-256 of the file), the total in each column, the rules it was built on and the name it carries, and locks the period: from then on you cannot change or delete an entry in it, and only an admin can, which is written down with their reason and shown to you.
- Just a copy - not sent - to look at, or to compare with a sheet you sent some other way. Nothing is recorded and the period stays open.
The card then says Sent to HR on the date, the fingerprint and the totals. Download for HR on a sent period gives you that same sheet again, byte for byte, and says whether building it now gives the same - or what has changed since, day by day, and why. The period still running is never recorded or locked: its sheet is a copy, as it always was.
Why it matters: When your payslip does not match.
Self-employed: Invoices
If you are self-employed, this card and Blank forms are replaced by Invoices: a client's logged time as an invoice, numbered when you issue it and never changed after. There is no TS-100: that is an HR form, for a person with an HR.
Before the first one, fill in your business under Settings › Pay figures: your name and an address, and how you want to be paid, which is printed at the foot. Add each client's address under Clients. Without your name, your address or the client's, an invoice is refused, saying which.
New invoice drafts one:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Client | The customer your jobs are under |
| From / To | The days it bills. It opens on the cycle whose invoice is owed: the last one until the day you invoice by, then this one to today. Not a day that has not happened yet |
| Lines | Per job, one line for each job, or Per day |
| Mileage, from Journeys | Your own-vehicle drives, at the figure Journeys holds. Ticked are those on days this client's hours are billed; tick another to add it. A drive with no miles yet cannot be charged: measure it in Journeys first |
| Add an expense | A description and an amount, with VAT on it or not |
The draft shows every line, the net, VAT if you are registered, the total and when payment is due, by your payment terms (30 days if you set none). Nothing is numbered or kept until you press Issue invoice.
What it charges. Hours at the client's own rate if you set one, otherwise yours; your own overtime, if you set a rule, week by week; mileage at your rate, or HMRC's approved rate if you set none - 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year, 25p after; VAT only when you are registered and have given the number. Bank holidays are billed like any day, and a day booked as not worked is not billed. An employer's overtime and allowances are never on an invoice.
Issued, an invoice is numbered in order - INV-0001, INV-0002 - and its hours and drives cannot go on another. If anything moved since you looked - an entry edited, a drive measured - issuing is refused, so an invoice is never one you did not see.
A mistake is put right with Cancel it with a credit note: CN-0001 cancels the whole invoice, and its hours and drives can then go on a new one.
Share as PDF turns the invoice, as issued, into a PDF on your phone and opens the share sheet to send it, or saves it.
Paid. Mark as paid records the day the money arrived - never a day still to come - and Mark as unpaid takes it back. Outstanding, above the list, is what is owed out of what you have issued, amber once any of it is past its due date: the client is late, you have done nothing wrong.
The end-of-period check
With the reminder switched on (Company ERP reminder, in Settings › Features), pressing Download for HR first lists the period's finished days not yet ticked, each with the Log's own tick: Have you entered these on the company ERP? HR gets the timesheet either way; this is only the reminder. Self-employed, the reminder is the Invoiced tick on each Log row.
Tick each one once it is in. It never holds the period up: the download is one tap away with boxes still empty, and when nothing is left to tick there is no panel at all.
Noted for this period dismisses the reminder for that period and goes on to the download. It is remembered on this phone, per period: the next period asks again, and so does another phone.
Expected pay
An estimate, not a payslip. Shown only when pay figures are on.
Work it out lists what the period has earned (the hours in each band, the allowances) and totals it the way the Pay cycle card does. On a salary that total is Variable pay, gross. On an hourly rate it is Total this cycle, gross, with the hours at your rate included.
Where Muster cannot know something, it says so rather than quietly assuming: hours from an earlier period are worked out at your salary or rate as it is today, because Muster keeps no record of what it was then.
Take-home
With a tax code set in Settings, Muster estimates what lands in the bank: the gross, then income tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan.
It is worked out the way HMRC works out a single month's tax, and it stays an estimate until it matches a payslip. Two things it will tell you about itself:
- A cumulative code depends on earlier months Muster cannot see, so a month with unusual pay can differ.
- Tax is held to half the month's pay, as HMRC's rule requires.
Hold it against your payslip. Where the tax or National Insurance differ, the payslip's are what was taken. Where the hours behind the overtime differ, see When your payslip does not match.
Self-employed: what your invoices would charge
Self-employed, Expected pay is what this period's invoices would charge, client by client:
- the hours on each client's jobs, bank holidays included, at that client's rate if you have set one, or your own;
- your overtime, only if you have set some in Settings, under Pay figures;
- mileage from Journeys, at your own rate or HMRC's approved rate. A journey on an invoice counts for that client, whatever its day, and one you left off an invoice for its day counts for nobody - that invoice is what you charged. Any other counts for the client whose hours are on its day.
It is worked out the way an invoice is, so the two never disagree. The Pay cycle card and Check the figures show the same figure. It counts every day of the period so far, whether you have invoiced it yet or not. It leaves out expenses, which you add when you invoice. VAT, if you are registered, is shown beside it but is not part of it, because it is HMRC's. Hours on a client with no rate set are listed as not priced, never counted as nothing.
Nothing here is priced by an employer's overtime brackets or overnight allowances. There is no payslip and nothing is taken off at source, so Reports shows no take-home and does not ask for a tax code. The figures are before tax and National Insurance. A tax code you set while employed is kept, and is used again if you switch back.
Jobs
Hours by job opens the Jobs screen: hours, entries and mileage for each job, over the entries the phone holds. See Jobs.
Jobs are created and edited by HR or an admin in the admin console, including the order number that becomes the job code - or, if they have given you project changes from the app, by you, on the Jobs screen.
Blank forms
The TS-100, the timesheet workbook, is issued by HR and each copy covers a fixed run of periods. Upload the one you were given here, and Muster picks the right form for the period automatically.
When yours runs out, upload the next one here. Nothing else changes.
Next: Settings · How your hours are paid