Settings
Two cards at the top say what the app does for you; the groups under them hold everything else, each shut until you want it.
Saving. A switch saves the moment you move it; Pay figures is kept on the station with your pay, so it needs a signal to move. Everything else - fields, times, rates, your payslip name - is saved by the one Save settings button at the bottom. While anything is unsaved a Cancel sits beside it: it puts the whole page back to the last save, including a previewed theme, the pay box and a home town you picked. Leave Settings with changes unsaved and it asks first; discarding there does exactly what Cancel does.
How do you work?
Which of the three presets you chose - Employee on site, Self-employed or Hourly or student - and Change how you work to choose again. A preset switches features on and off, and sets how you are paid: Self-employed as self-employed, Hourly or student by the hour, and Employee on site leaves an employee's pay as it is. Leaving self-employment, you are salaried if a salary is on file and hourly if not. It says what it will change before it does, and changing how you are paid needs a signal; see Getting started.
How you work is here too: Employed or Self-employed. It is the same answer as How you are paid, under Pay figures: choosing one moves the other, and Save settings keeps both. Employed: the end of a period is the timesheet HR is sent. Self-employed: you send invoices; see Reports.
Features
One row per part of Muster that not everybody needs: its switch, what it does, and what switching it on adds. Switching one off hides it - its tab, its cards, its questions and its checks on Summary - and never removes anything you recorded. Switch it back on and everything is there again. A hidden tab gives its room on the bottom bar to the others.
| Feature | Switched on, it adds |
|---|---|
| Travel and Schengen | The Travel tab, and a question on Today when you worked away and no stay is recorded |
| Journeys and mileage | The Journeys tab, the Journey card on Today and miles at clock-out. Measure journeys by road sits under it |
| Nights away | Overnight stay on clocking in, clocking out and the entry form, and nights and allowances on Summary. The allowance rates sit under it |
| Show pay figures | Pay on Reports; your salary, tax code and pension sit under it. Self-employed: what your invoices would charge, and your rate, business details and clients |
| Attach GPS to entries | A position at clock-in and clock-out, which also names the towns for your stays and journeys, and the Journey card on Today |
| Remind me to clock in at a site | A question on Today, when you open Muster at a place you have clocked in at with GPS on in the last fortnight and nothing is running. Your position is checked on the phone and never sent or kept, and it can only ask when you open the app |
| Gate tags | A tapped gate tag names the site of your next clock-in |
| Shift pay (unsociable hours) | Unsociable hours on the entry form and the Log |
| Describe the day in words | A box at the top of a new entry: type the day, or say it through your keyboard's microphone, and the form fills in. It never saves by itself, and reads English only |
| Invoices | Invoices on Reports, in place of Send to HR, once you are set up as self-employed |
| Company ERP reminder | A tick on each Log row, and the unticked days listed when a period is sent. Self-employed, it is the Invoice reminder |
Others appear here as they are added to Muster, each saying what it does.
Two switches ask first. Nights away and shift pay are what a timesheet claims from. Switching either off says so before it happens: what you already ticked stays on your timesheet and is still claimed, but nothing new can be ticked.
One may be held on. If your employer's agreement needs a feature - nights away, where the timesheet claims them - its switch shows on, cannot be moved, and says why. Somebody self-employed is not held to it.
Location is yours alone. No preset switches Attach GPS to entries or Remind me to clock in at a site on, and no employer can require either. The switch is the consent, and the clock-out screen says in plain words what it consents to. What Muster records, and what it does not is linked under it.
Nights away: the rates
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| UK £/night | Paid for a night ticked as overnight and spent in a UK country |
| Overseas £/night | Paid for a night spent anywhere else |
| Countries paid at the UK rate | Two-letter codes, comma separated |
When your agreement states the rates, they are shown here and cannot be edited: the claim pays those. Everywhere not in the list gets the overseas rate. Jersey (JE), Guernsey (GG) and the Isle of Man (IM) are not part of the UK; add them here if your employer treats them as such. A night is one or the other, never both, and it is the country where you spend it: on a travel day, the country you arrive in. A day that flies from Manchester to Atlanta and is ticked for the night is an overseas night.
Pay figures: what you are paid
With the switch off, no money is ever calculated and nothing leaves the container. Somebody self-employed still sees How you are paid, their rate and their business here: those are what an invoice charges and prints, not pay figures. With it on:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| How you are paid | Salaried — a fixed wage, Hourly — paid for hours worked, or self-employed |
| Annual salary, gross or Hourly rate, gross | Whichever the above implies |
| Tax code | As written on your payslip. Unlocks the take-home estimate |
| Pension | None, Salary sacrifice, Taken before tax, Taken after tax |
| Pension, % of pay | |
| Student loan | Plan 1, 2, 4 or 5 |
| Postgraduate loan | On top of any of the above |
Where this is kept. Your salary, tax code, pension and loan settings live on the server in their own file, readable only by you. They are not in the database and so not in the nightly dumps. Nothing here reaches the timesheet. Take-home is an estimate until it matches a payslip.
Home and workplace
Where you live and work.
Home town. Type your home town and pick it, or, at home, press I'm at home: use where I am.
Home town. Days you work away from your home country are then recorded as stays by themselves, each named by its town, and the app stops asking where you stayed. Only the town is kept, never your exact spot, and towns are looked up on the Muster server itself. A town you pick shows Not saved yet until you press Save, so a tap abroad can't make the wrong place home. Two things it will tell you:
- A postcode is not looked up yet: type the town's name instead.
- Only towns of 5,000 people or more are listed. With GPS off, the app can't find your town for you, so type it.
Your working day
Hours, default job, when your records begin.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Start / End | Your normal working day. This is what the Standard hours button books |
| Default job | What new entries, Standard hours and Not worked today go against unless you change them. With none set, the one-tap buttons use the job you last worked |
| Weekend standard hours | What the Not worked today button offers for a day with no contracted hours, such as a Saturday. At 0 it offers 8. It does not hide the button |
| Records start | The day you began recording in Muster |
Records start is worth setting properly. Earlier days are drawn as a standard week (8.5 h Monday to Thursday, 5 h Friday, which is the 39), hatched, and counted in nothing. They never reach the timesheet or the pay figures. Without it, Muster falls back to your earliest entry and says so.
I have signed the 48-hour opt-out is here too: with it on, the week card says nothing about the 48-hour limit. The hours are counted the same either way.
Overtime rules
The week, and which column each kind of hour is claimed in.
Self-employed, this group is Your pay cycle, with two days: Period starts, the day of the month your cycle begins, and Invoice by, the day you mean to invoice it by. Invoice by is the first such day once the cycle has ended, so with a cycle starting on the 1st, 1 means the 1st of the next month; Summary counts down to it. Left as they are, your cycle is the calendar month, invoiced by the 1st. Reports' figure and Summary count by it, and New invoice opens on the cycle whose invoice is owed. Everything else here is an employer's agreement, which your invoices never price (your own overtime is under Pay figures), so it is not shown, and a change you save is yours alone. No employer's or client's agreement sets your cycle.
These are stored on the server, not on this device. A phone and a laptop disagreeing about what counts as overtime is not a preference; it is a wrong timesheet. They are normally set by HR. You can change your own: it saves, says Saved. Contracted hours and overtime bands are normally set by HR, and the change goes in the audit log with what it was before. Somebody else's rules, and the employer's agreement, stay HR's.
Each row says where its value came from, because a figure that cannot name the agreement it was computed under is indistinguishable from one computed under somebody else's. The line at the top of the group says which source the current values came from.
If the rules could not be loaded (with no signal, say), the group says so, shows nothing that isn't them, and saves nothing. Close it and open it again to retry.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Applies to | Only shown if you may write the organisation's rules. Everyone writes the employer's agreement; Just me records a difference in your own contract |
| Week standard hours | Hours above this in a Monday–Sunday week are overtime. 39 by default |
| Over the week | The column on the TS-100 those hours are claimed in |
| Sunday | Every Sunday hour, whether or not the week passed the threshold |
| Bank holiday | The column a worked bank holiday's hours are claimed in when the lieu switch below is off. On, as shipped, its normal day goes to plain rate and the hours past it to the x2.0 column instead |
| Travel counts toward the week | On: travel hours push you toward the threshold and are paid at whatever the week earns. Off: they leave the week and are claimed separately in Travel x1.0 |
| Sunday travel | Travelling on a Sunday can be worth less than working on one. Leave this as the Sunday column unless the agreement carves it out |
| Period starts | The day of the month the payroll period runs from; 11 means the 11th to the 10th. 1 to 28, because a boundary that moves in February is not a boundary |
| Claim by | The day of the month the claim is due |
| Invoice by | Self-employed, in place of Claim by: the day of the month you invoice the cycle by |
| Working a bank holiday also earns a day in lieu | See below |
| Contract hours | What you are contracted to work each day. A weekday with no entry is assumed at contract, so the week is not read as short |
Period starts is not free. HR's workbook has one sheet per period, and days outside that sheet have nowhere to be written. Change it and the export still runs, and says so at the top, loudly.
The lieu switch
The form states no multiple for a worked bank holiday, so this is a choice rather than something Muster knows.
- On (the default): the day splits at your normal day, the contract hours for that weekday, as HR pays it. The normal day is claimed at plain rate and still counts toward the 39, the hours past it are claimed in the x2.0 column, and a day is reported as owed. It is never written to the timesheet: lieu claims go through your employer's HR system, and the guidance says they should not be made on the timesheet. Add it to your entitlement yourself; nothing else will remind you.
- Off: every hour is claimed in the Bank holiday column above (Bank Hol unless it is changed), none of it enters the week, and no day is owed.
The switch is the timesheet's own rule, not a note beside it: turn it off and the next export claims the day the other way. See How your hours are paid.
Display
How it looks, which language, and which clock the times are shown in.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Language | Kept with your account, so it follows you to another phone or a laptop |
| Daylight theme | A light screen for working outside. Not automatic: a phone's dark mode follows the clock, not the weather |
| Show times in your account's zone | Off: times are shown on this device's clock. On: they are shown on the clock your account keeps |
A language marked provisional has not yet been read by a native speaker. The Reset to English button here is never translated, so it stays legible when nothing else on the screen is.
Account
Who you are signed in as.
Your name, your account's time zone, and, if you are HR or an administrator, a link to the console.
Name on your payslip is saved with Save settings, like any field: exactly as payroll spells it, because it is the name on every timesheet you send. Self-employed, it is not shown: you send no timesheet, and your invoices carry Your name from your business details.
Forget token on this device signs this device out and removes the token from it, after asking. Your entries are on the server and are untouched; sign in again with your username and password. Anything still waiting to sync stays on the phone and is sent once you sign in on it again; see Getting back in.
Change your password opens a sheet that asks for your Current password and the new one twice. The new one needs at least 8 characters, and the ones guessed first are refused, as they are when you first make it. When it changes, your other phones are signed out and need the new password; this one stays signed in, and a token your admin issued is never touched. Eight wrong current passwords in fifteen minutes and the change waits; with no signal nothing is changed and the old password still works.
Forgotten your password? This sheet cannot help, because it needs the current one. Ask your admin to set a new one in the console; see Getting back in.
Help
The user manual, and which version this is.
User manual opens this manual in your phone's browser, so whatever you were doing in Muster stays as it was. It is in English. Under it is the version your phone is running, such as Muster 1.89.0 · build 499: say it when you report a problem.