Patent ID: 8260703

Claim:
A method for use in an apparatus for costing a roster, the method comprising: preparing a roster and storing the roster in the apparatus, said roster comprising a work schedule or list of duties for one or more work periods, each work period being populated by one or more workers; providing award information in a database of the apparatus for each worker in the roster, said award information comprising a respective pay-rate for each worker for calculating a payroll for each of said workers in said roster; and calculating a roster wage cost in a processor of the apparatus that would result from implementation of said roster, based on said roster and said award information, wherein the roster wage cost is determined based on the roster and not the actual work performed or duties completed by one or more workers, and wherein the respective pay-rate for a respective worker in the database of award information depends on the work period populated by said respective worker, and a respective worker may be rostered in more than one of said work periods.