For roster managers
Roster & payroll
Roster in the header is where consult and text-support shifts are rostered, chased, signed off and turned into payroll hours. It replaced the separate Tutor Roster website; the tutors, subjects and sign-ins are the ones the portal already has.
Who can open it
Owners and admins, and anyone an admin has added by name on the Access tab, such as Academic Coordinators. The org chart does not open it: being a Team Leader or Head gives you Reporting, not the roster. Everyone else does not see the tab, and the server refuses them even if they type the address.
Granted people can do everything on the roster except the Access tab itself, which only owners and admins can change.
How it is organised
| Tab | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Roster | The fortnight, day by day. Click a shift for its details, tutor, sign-off and history. Add shift makes one shift per tutor you pick, plus any open shifts you ask for, or a recurring shift. |
| By tutor | The same fortnight per person: their shifts and hours, how many are waiting on a yes, and a message to paste to them. |
| Recurring | Every weekly or fortnightly shift definition: change its details or tutor from a date, set temporary cover, stop it, or delete it while nothing has run. |
| Payroll | Hours per tutor for the fortnight and the two CSV downloads, available once every scheduled shift is signed off. |
| Access | Owners and admins only. Who has been given roster access, and by whom. |
Fortnights and weeks
Fortnights follow the pay calendar, the same Monday anchor the reconciliation exports use. Move with ‹ Today ›; the title is the date range, and the line under it says whether it is this, an upcoming or a past fortnight, which teaching weeks it spans, and All times in Melbourne. All times are Melbourne wall-clock time, for Queensland subjects too.
Each week is headed with its Contour teaching week, read from the teaching calendar rather than counted from the fortnight, and its rostered hours. The calendar holds a week per state, so if Victoria and Queensland fall out of step the header names both, and a fortnight in a break has no teaching week and is headed with its dates alone.
Every shift covers consults and text support together, so there is no type to choose.
Finding what needs attention
The chips above the calendar are lanes, each with a count. Tap one to see only those shifts; tap it again to go back to All shifts.
| Lane | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Needs tutor | Nobody is covering it: no tutor, or the tutor declined or has left the directory. | Assign someone from the shift's drawer. |
| Awaiting RSVP | A tutor is on it and has not said yes. | Chase from By tutor; Confirm when they reply. |
| Needs LMS update | A consult whose learning-portal booking has not been checked against the shift. Cancelled consults stay here until the booking is removed too. | Fix the portal, then tick LMS synchronised. |
| Needs sign-off | The shift has finished and nobody has recorded what happened. | Sign off, singly or in bulk. |
| Double booked | The same tutor is on two live shifts that overlap that day. | Move or reassign one of them. |
| Cancelled | Cancelled shifts, kept on the calendar so tutors see them in the sent roster. | Restore if it was a mistake. |
Beside the lanes: a search box (Search tutor, subject, date or notes…), a state filter (All states, Victoria, Queensland, VSE, South Australia) when there is more than one state, and a subject picker. Clear filters appears once anything is set.
- Sign off N past shifts appears when the shifts on screen include finished ones nobody has signed off, and signs off exactly those.
- Confirm + LMS · everyone (N) confirms every pending RSVP and records the LMS tick for every tutor in the fortnight, whatever the filters, after asking first.
Reading a shift card
The card's left edge is the subject's colour. It shows the time and a status icon (needs a tutor, awaiting RSVP, confirmed, signed off or cancelled), the subject, the tutor, and tags where they apply: 30m break (any unpaid break), changed (this week's times differ from its recurring shift) or moved from a date, inactive, clash (double booked), Needs a tutor, and LMS synced or Needs LMS update.
The shift drawer
Click a shift to open it: when it runs, its subject, any unpaid break, and whether it is One-off or Repeats weekly / fortnightly.
If someone else changed the shift while you had it open, your save is refused rather than overwriting theirs: This shift changed while you were editing…
Cancel or delete?
Cancel keeps the shift on the roster marked as cancelled, so tutors see the change in a sent roster, payroll ignores it, and it can be restored. Delete removes it entirely and is only offered for one-off shifts that have not been signed off. A shift that belongs to a recurring shift cannot be deleted: cancelling it is what stops it, and the recurring shift will not make it again. To remove a whole series, use Stop repeating or Delete on the Recurring tab.
Adding shifts
Add shift opens one form in three parts:
- What: the subject.
- When: the date, start and end (to the minute: English consults start at 4:40pm), the Unpaid break, and Repeats: One-off, Every week or Every fortnight, with an optional Until for a recurring shift.
- Who: tick as many tutors as you want, one shift each. Open shifts to fill later adds up to five more copies with nobody on them, which sit under Needs tutor until someone is assigned. They have already said yes confirms a one-off straight away.
The end has to be after the start and the break shorter than the shift. A recurring shift has to start today or later; use one-off shifts to back-fill a past date.
Unpaid breaks
Where tutors take a break in the middle of a shift, set Unpaid break in minutes rather than rostering two shifts with a gap. VSE consults run 3pm to 8pm with half an hour off, so the shift reads 3pm to 8pm on the roster, which is what tutors need to see, and pays 4.5 hours. The break is taken off whatever window is signed off, so a tutor who started late still took their break.
Picking a VSE subject fills in 30 minutes for you, and the form says so and says what the shift will pay. That only ever happens on a new shift you are adding, and a number you typed yourself is left alone. Set it on a recurring shift and every occurrence inherits it. A signed-off shift cannot have its break changed without unlocking it, because the break decides pay.
Subjects, including the ones that are not subjects
The subject picker is the portal's subject list, grouped by state and folded to families, so VCE Methods appears once rather than as 1/2 and 3/4. Three desks are not Monday subjects and exist for the roster alone: VIC High School Maths and QCE Maths, where one tutor covers a whole stream for an evening, and Weekday essay marking. They are deliberately not editable from the screen, because a subject invented on the roster would be invisible to enrolments and billing; ask an engineer if a fourth is needed.
Which tutors are offered for a subject is worked out, not stored: their reporting line's department, plus the classes they have been rostered on since 120 days ago.
By tutor
One card per tutor rostered in the fortnight, showing their shifts in it. A state, subject or search filter narrows the cards too, and their hours and message then cover only the matching shifts, so clear the filters before copying a message. Each card has their email, phone and payroll ID (or No payroll ID), their shifts with RSVP and LMS state, their rostered hours, and:
- Confirm pending and Confirm + LMS for just that tutor.
- Copy message: Hi Sam, your shifts for 21 Sep to 4 Oct 2026: … Can you confirm you're good for these? Reply with any you can't make.
- Details: their Payroll ID (from Rippling, unique across tutors) and roster-team notes, such as No Tuesdays, prefers online. Their subjects are shown but not edited here.
Sending the roster
The app sends nothing to tutors itself. Copy roster gives you the fortnight as text to paste wherever tutors read it, following the state filter. Mark as sent records that you did, with an optional note such as Posted in #tutors. From then on the line beside the fortnight reads Sent … by … and counts the changes tutors would need to hear about (N changes since, resend), so you know when to send it again.
Recurring shifts
The Recurring tab lists every definition, grouped by subject, with Active or All (to include stopped ones). Each row shows when it runs, the unpaid break, how often it repeats, the first date, when it ends, the default tutor and the next occurrence. While it has an upcoming occurrence:
- Change details from a date: times, break, how often, notes.
- Change tutor from a date. Set an Until date for temporary cover; after it, the default tutor is back.
- Stop repeating from a date. Upcoming shifts from then are removed; ones that have run stay as history.
- Delete, only while nothing has run yet. Every generated shift goes with it.
Every change takes effect from the next occurrence on or after the date you pick, and is refused if it would reach a shift that has already run or been signed off. Weeks that were changed by hand keep their own tutor and cancellations. This and following from a shift's drawer is the same change made from the calendar.
Signing off
- A shift finishesOnce its end time has passed it appears under Needs sign-off. A shift that has not happened yet is never asked for.
- Someone records what happenedTick who attended; change the paid start and end only if someone was late, left early or it ran over; or say who covered it. A cover gets their own signed-off shift and the rostered tutor is recorded as a no-show. An empty shift can be signed off as Nobody worked this shift.
- The shift is frozenIts booking, tutor and attendance cannot change without Unlock, which needs a reason. The LMS tick can still be set.
Payroll
The Payroll tab shows hours only, never dollar amounts: payable hours, provisional hours (not signed off yet), no-shows, shifts finished and awaiting sign-off, and shifts that have not happened yet, then hours per tutor with their payroll IDs. Payable hours already have any unpaid break taken off.
The two downloads, Download payable CSV and Per-tutor summary CSV, open only when every scheduled shift in the fortnight has run and been signed off, including open slots, and the payroll checks pass. Until then the tab says why: how many shifts have finished and need signing off, as distinct from how many have not happened yet, with a link straight to them. Cancel a shift that will not run rather than leaving it. The download re-checks at the moment it is made and refuses if a shift was unlocked in between. Tutors with no payroll ID export with a blank ID, and the tab lists them.
The state filter narrows the screen only; the downloads always cover the whole fortnight. The tab records when it was last exported and by whom.
The hand-off to payroll today is the CSV download. There is no automatic push to Rippling, no in-app approval of covers or swaps, and no Monday cut-off lock yet.
Access
Owners and admins only. Give access to any active tutor, coordinator or staff member in the directory, with an optional note (Academic Coordinator, covering for X), and Remove them later. Campus Experience accounts are not offered in the list. A change applies on the person's next request; they may need to reload the portal to see the Roster tab. The tab also lists the owners and admins, who always have access. Every grant and removal is recorded.
Tutor availability
The roster does not read tutors' availability: the tutor pickers are not filtered by it. The link runs the other way. Anyone with a consult shift in the last 90 days or the next 28 is also asked about the consult-shift blocks when they fill in their availability, and admins (and, once Availability opens, everyone else) can use Find a tutor there to see who is free for a slot.
Built and maintained by YattaRewritten for the Tutor Portal · 25 Sep 2026 · v3.0 · Written for the Tutor Portal at tutor.contour.com.au.