BoatOn Book Maritime HRIS: Built-in Collective Agreements, Automatic Pay Calculations, Compliant Crew Management

Managing HR in a maritime company is nothing like managing HR in a standard business. Maritime collective agreements — CCN Merchant Marine Officers, CCN PEX Deck, Sedentary Staff conventions — are industry-specific. Work cycles alternate between shipboard watches and shore leave. Pay supplements vary by time of day, day type, and activity performed. The result: many operators still configure their rules manually in spreadsheets, with constant regulatory risk.

The BoatOn Book HRIS module is built to solve this at the source. It integrates a worldwide database of maritime collective agreements and automates pay and compliance calculations — without requiring planners to know the rules in detail.

A Worldwide Maritime Collective Agreement Database

This is the module's core differentiator. BoatOn has built a unique worldwide database of maritime collective agreements and legal frameworks covering multiple flags: CCN Merchant Marine Officers, CCN PEX Deck, CCN PEX Engineering, CCN Sedentary Staff Managers, and many others.

When creating a legal framework, simply select the reference collective agreement. All parameters are pre-filled automatically: working time limits (14h/day, 72h/week, 208h/month), daily and weekly rest rules, overtime supplements, night work rates, weekend and public holiday pay.

What used to take HR departments weeks to configure now takes minutes — with no risk of regulatory errors. Every parameter remains fully editable to match your specific flag, company agreement, or operating constraints.

A legal framework is then linked to specific roles (Master, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer, Officer...) and employees are enrolled. From that point, all rules apply automatically.

Work Cycles Built for Seafarers

A generic HRIS handles office schedules. A maritime HRIS handles watches.

The module supports two types of work cycles:

• Calendar cycles — for shore-based staff and fixed-schedule crews. Configure shift times day by day for each week of the cycle (Week A, Week B...), with automatic calculation of total hours and a live compliance indicator.

• Free rotation cycles (watches) — for seafarers. Build a visual Worked/Rest block sequence: for example, 14 days on board from 06:00 to 18:00, then 14 days ashore. The system checks compliance with the legal framework in real time and displays the weekly average (e.g., 38.5h/week — Compliant).

This covers real maritime rotation patterns: 2/2, 14/14, 21/21 for ferry and regular line services — without forcing seafarers into a generic office calendar.

Automatic Pay and Rest Entitlement Calculations

This is the module's core logic. All regulatory rules are configured once in the settings. Planners then simply assign employees — all calculations happen automatically.

For each activity type (day bridge watch, night watch, mooring manoeuvre, preventive maintenance...), you define a default pay rule and conditional exceptions. For example, for a night bridge watch: +125% by default, +225% on a public holiday, +275% on Sundays.

As soon as an employee is assigned to an event, the system combines their legal framework with the activity rules to automatically calculate their pay and rest day entitlements. If rules conflict, the provision most favourable to the employee applies automatically. Planners don't need to know the collective agreements: they assign names to positions, the system handles the rest.

Multi-Vessel Planning with an Assignment Board

The calendar centralises all fleet events — charters, voyages, maintenance tasks, absences — across multiple vessels and views. The monthly view displays events by vessel with multi-criteria filters (vessels, roles, event types, managers). The weekly assignment board presents a role × day × vessel grid: each row is a position (Master, Chief Officer, Crew, Head Chef...) and each cell shows the assigned crew member's initials and working hours.

This board includes a presentation mode that hides all menus to maximise screen space — ideal on a secondary monitor or TV in an operations room, on the bridge, or during crew briefings.

Creating a charter or voyage takes minutes: event type, vessel, dates, recurrence, activity, position-by-position crew assignment, full activity log. Vessel crew matrices — with required qualifications, minimum seniority, and languages — pre-fill the positions to be filled automatically.

Crew Self-Service, MLC Timesheets, and Mobile App

Every crew member accesses their personal space from the web or the iOS and Android mobile app. In seconds, they can:

• start and stop their hours counter in real time

• declare absences (paid leave, sick leave, RTT, special leave, unjustified absence)

• check their counters in real time: days taken, days remaining, requests pending approval

• export their timesheet as PDF or Excel

Timesheets comply with MLC requirements on working time and rest hours, with compliance data drawn from the configured legal frameworks. Everything is paperless, traceable, and exportable for port state control inspections.

The mobile app synchronises in real time with the web platform. On-board crews also consult and validate their CMMS maintenance tasks directly from their smartphone.

HRIS Dashboard and HR Analytics

The HRIS dashboard is a fully customisable analytics workspace. Several pre-configured widgets are available:

• Working time and absences per employee (worked days, total hours, weekly presence status)

• Personnel costs per vessel operating hour

• Rest time compliance (monthly compliance rate curve over the year)

• Planned vs actual hours per employee

Each widget is configurable: chart type (ring, curves, histogram, table, KPI...), filters (vessels, roles, managers, dates), size. Pre-configured dashboard templates are available: HRIS, Technical Monitoring, Commercial & Financial Performance, Carbon Footprint.

Native CMMS and Logbook Integration

The HRIS module is not standalone. It is fully connected with the rest of BoatOn Book.

The vessel logbook crew list is generated automatically from crew assignments. Tasks assigned to crew in the CMMS are visible and validated from the HRIS planning view. Cross-data statistics (hours by task type, vessel occupancy rate, correlation between maintenance load and staffing levels) are available in dashboards.

This is the unified Master/HR Director view: navigation, maintenance, and human resources in a single tool, with no double entry.

What This Means for Your Fleet

With the HRIS module, BoatOn Book becomes the first maritime software to cover CMMS, vessel logbook, crew management, carbon footprint, and reporting in a single tool.

• Collective agreements configured in minutes, not weeks

• Pay and rest entitlements calculated automatically with every crew assignment

• MLC and ISM compliance made easier, with exportable proof for inspections

• Multi-vessel schedules faster to build, share, and display in presentation mode

• Autonomous crews thanks to self-service access and the iOS/Android mobile app

Ready to Configure the HRIS Module?

The HRIS module is available to all BoatOn Book users. Our experts (10+ years in maritime) can configure your collective agreement, work cycles, and activities to match your specific constraints — flag, company agreement, minimum crew requirements.

To see it in action, book a demo at boaton.fr or write to paul@boaton.fr.

BoatOn Book simplifies and decarbonises vessel operations. Now it simplifies the lives of the people who keep them running.