TimeTally - Timesheet Management AppTimeTally
Holiday tracking for the UK on-trade

Leave Management Built for Pubs and Restaurants

Track annual leave for a single-site pub, bar or restaurant through Christmas, Easter and the summer weekends. Staff book from their phone between services. Zero-hours bar staff accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours they work, salaried chefs get their full allowance from day one, and both sit on the same staff list. Replace WhatsApp messages and the paper diary with a leave management system that keeps every service covered. Timesheets are included in the same £3 per employee per month, alongside your pubs and restaurants timesheets.

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Bar staff booking time off on their phone: three days selected in September and the leave type picker below

“The app is simple to use, reliable, and makes managing holidays, absences, and staff records straightforward. The system has saved us a significant amount of administration time.”

CLI ManchesterJordan Ingoe, CLI Manchester

Staff pick their dates and you approve in one tap

Bar staff, chefs, and waiting staff select the days they want off from an interactive calendar. Their remaining holiday balance updates in real time, and the request lands on the manager's dashboard for instant approval or rejection. No more lost Post-it notes or forgotten verbal requests.

Booking time off in TimeTally: three months of dates, the leave type grid, and a submit button

  • Three months at once

    Staff can see the run-up to Christmas and the week after it on one screen

  • Tap the days you want

    Selected dates are counted as you go, weekends excluded

  • Pick the leave type

    Annual, sick, maternity, paternity, TOIL, or a type you added yourself

  • Add a reason, then submit

    The request lands with the manager with the dates and the type on it

Clear the Pending Requests Before Service

Pending requests sit in one list on the manager's dashboard. Each row shows who asked, the dates, how many days it comes to, and which leave type it is — annual leave, sick leave, or a type you added yourself. A tick approves it and a cross declines it, so a general manager can clear the queue on a phone before doors.

  • Open a request to see the full detail before deciding: the person, their job title, the leave type, the day count and any reason they added.
  • A rejection can carry a written reason. A commis chef who asked for the Saturday of a beer festival knows why, and can resubmit for a different week without starting again.
  • Every request, approval, rejection and deletion is logged, which ends the “I thought you said yes” argument on a Friday night.
  • Managers can book leave on behalf of anyone, for the member of staff who phones a request in during service.
Leave requests Get Started
Pending leave requests for a restaurant team, each row showing dates, days and leave type with approve and decline buttons

Staff request leave between services

Your team are on their feet all shift — they are not going to sit at a computer to request time off. With TimeTally's iOS app, bar staff, chefs, and front-of-house can submit holiday requests from their phone during a break or on their day off. Managers get a notification and approve with one tap.

  • One-tap approvals for managersSee the request alongside who else is already off that day, then approve or reject instantly
  • Complete audit trailEvery request, approval, and rejection is logged — no more “I thought you said yes” arguments
  • Check the rota firstBefore approving, see how many staff are already off that week to protect service levels
A member of bar staff picking days off and a leave type on their phone between services

Track Bank Holiday Lieu as Its Own Leave Type

Christmas Day, Boxing Day and Easter Monday are trading days in the on-trade, not days off. Staff who work them are often owed a day back instead. TimeTally starts with six leave types — annual, sick, maternity, paternity, national holiday and TOIL — and you add your own on top. A “Bank Holiday Lieu” type keeps those days out of the annual leave figure, so nobody has to remember who is owed what.

  • Each type is set as paid or unpaid, which covers unpaid leave for a student going home for the summer.
  • Each type either comes off the annual leave balance or sits in its own pot, so lieu days do not eat into holiday.
  • Bank holidays auto-block for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and you can turn that off for a venue that trades them.
  • If you track hours, overtime can convert to TOIL at a rate you set — a Christmas double shift given back as a day off in January.
Leave types panel showing annual, maternity, national holiday, paternity, sick and TOIL, with an add button for custom types

See front-of-house and kitchen staff availability at a glance

The team calendar shows all approved leave across your entire venue — bar, floor, and kitchen — in one view. Check it before writing the weekly rota so you never schedule someone who is on annual leave, off sick, or taking a bank holiday lieu day.

  • Front-of-house and kitchen together

    See leave across every team in one calendar so you can plan cover for busy Friday and Saturday evening services

  • Peak season planning

    See who is already approved off over Christmas, Easter, and summer before agreeing to more holiday requests

  • No more rota surprises

    Check the calendar before publishing the rota to avoid scheduling staff on days they have approved leave

  • Fair and transparent

    First come, first served — everyone can see remaining capacity, removing favouritism from the process
Three month team calendar showing how many pub and restaurant staff are booked off on each day

Every leave scenario a pub or restaurant has to handle

Tap a card to read the detail.

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Watch a Leave Request Go From Phone to Approved

A short loop of the leave screens. A member of staff taps three days, picks Annual Leave and submits. The request then appears in the manager's time-off queue, is opened for the detail, and is approved.

Back

Book Time Off

Jul 2026

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Aug 2026

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3 days selected· excl. weekends

Family holiday, flights booked ✈️

Submit Request Submitted

Leave Allowance

18

days left

Annual Leave Balance

18 days

Annual Leave Used

7 days

All Departments
Jun 2026
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AR1

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

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James Kelly

Front of house

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Maya Patel

Front of house

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Priya Shah

Kitchen

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Tom Wilson

Bar

Timesheet Requests

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Tom Wilson

37h 30m · Week of Jun 1

Time-off Requests

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Maya Patel

3d · Annual Leave

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Priya Shah

5d · Annual Leave

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Maya Patel

Front of house

Pending Approved
Annual Leave
3days

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Thu, Aug 14

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Notes

Family holiday, flights booked

Approve Approved
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Why leave management is harder in pubs and restaurants

Hospitality teams face leave challenges that most industries never deal with. TimeTally is built to handle all of them. If you run a hotel, an events business, or several venues off one payroll, the hospitality leave management page is the better fit.

Three staff rows across a fortnight, each with a different pattern of worked days, booked annual leave and sickness
Contracts

Zero-hours contracts

Many pub and restaurant workers are on zero-hours contracts. Their holiday entitlement must be calculated on average hours worked — not guessed. Use our zero-hours holiday calculator alongside TimeTally to get it right every time.

  • Set a person's accrual method to hours worked and leave builds up as their timesheets are approved
  • The rate defaults to 12.07% and you can change it per organisation or per person
Peaks

Bank holiday working

Christmas Day, Easter, and summer bank holidays are your busiest days. Staff who work them need lieu days tracked separately from annual leave. TimeTally lets you create custom leave types for bank holiday lieu.

  • Add a Bank Holiday Lieu type and choose whether it comes off the annual allowance
  • Bank holidays auto-block for the country you pick, and you can switch that off for a venue that trades them
Turnover

High staff turnover

Hospitality has one of the highest turnover rates in the UK. New starters and leavers need their entitlement pro-rated accurately for the days they actually worked. TimeTally calculates mid-year entitlements automatically.

  • Entitlement is pro-rated from each person's start date, so a September starter is not given a full year
  • A leaver's used and remaining days are on the record when you work out their final pay
Patterns

Split shifts and part-time patterns

A lunch shift and a dinner shift on the same day is one working day, not two. Glass collectors, students and seasonal cover all work patterns that a whole-day-only holiday system cannot price correctly.

  • Contracted hours are set for each day of the week, so a Friday and Saturday server is not costed like a five-day chef
  • Leave can be booked in hours or half days, which a split shift needs
  • The right number of hours comes off the balance for the day actually taken
Get Started

The Two Leave Settings a Licensee Actually Changes

Most of TimeTally works out of the box. These two are worth ten minutes on the day you set it up, because they are the two that pubs and restaurants get wrong.

Zero-hours accrual

Accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours each person works.

Set a person's accrual method to hours worked and TimeTally stops giving them a fixed number of days. Leave is added every time one of their timesheets is approved, at a percentage of the hours on it. If a timesheet is rejected, the accrual it created is reversed.

The rate is 12.07% by default. That is the figure for irregular-hours workers under the rules that apply to leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, and it comes from 5.6 weeks divided by the 46.4 working weeks in a year. You can change it, per organisation or for one person.

The accrual method is set per employee, not per venue. A salaried head chef can take the full allowance upfront on the same staff list as a glass collector accruing hour by hour.

One limit worth stating plainly. TimeTally accrues the entitlement; it does not calculate holiday pay from a 52-week average of earnings. That average is a payroll calculation and stays with your payroll. Check a figure with the zero-hours holiday calculator.

Leave year and carryover

Start the leave year on your own trading year, then decide what carries.

The leave year runs January to December unless you change it. Set any reset date you like and the year starts the day after it, which suits a venue running April to April or one that resets after the Christmas trade.

Carryover is off by default. Turn it on and you can cap the number of days that carry, and set an expiry so carried days are used in the quiet weeks after New Year rather than in the middle of August.

Negative balances are off by default too. Turn them on, with a limit, for the new starter who joins in November and wants a week at Christmas before they have earned it.

How leave years, carryover and balances work

Correct holiday entitlement for every contract type

A head chef working five days, a part-time waitress on three shifts, and a zero-hours glass collector all have different holiday entitlements. TimeTally calculates the right figure for each person based on their working pattern, including mid-year starters and leavers.

Use our zero-hours holiday calculator to check entitlements for irregular-hours staff, or the pro-rata holiday calculator for part-time employees. TimeTally handles both automatically once you set up each employee's working pattern.

UK law reminder:zero-hours and irregular-hours staff are entitled to paid holiday. For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours workers accrue it at 12.07% of the hours they work. TimeTally applies that rate for you: set the accrual method to hours worked, keep 12.07% or set your own figure, and each approved timesheet adds leave to that person's balance. TimeTally does not work out a 52-week average of pay — holiday pay rates stay with your payroll.

An employee's leave allowance card showing 13.2 days left, with the annual leave balance and the days already used
UK compliance

Holiday Compliance for a UK Pub or Restaurant

TimeTally is a leave tracking tool, not a compliance system. It keeps the record that every one of these obligations rests on. Here is what the data supports in the on-trade, and what it does not do.

Statutory Entitlement

Every worker in a UK pub or restaurant gets 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, which is 28 days for someone on a five-day week. You set the full-time allowance for your venue; TimeTally starts at 25 days plus 8 bank holidays, and an admin can change either figure. TimeTally then works out each person's share of it from their working pattern and their start date. It does not decide the statutory figure for you.

Irregular Hours and 12.07%

For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period. That is the rate TimeTally applies when a person's accrual method is set to hours worked, and it is editable. Zero-hours is normal in the on-trade, so this is usually the first setting a licensee changes. The zero-hours holiday calculator checks a figure by hand.

Bank Holidays

There is no right to a paid day off on a bank holiday in the UK, which is why the on-trade trades them. TimeTally uses the correct bank holiday set for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, blocks them out automatically unless you turn that off, and lets you decide whether they sit inside the annual allowance or on top of it. Days worked in lieu go on a custom leave type of your own.

Sickness Cover

Sick leave is one of the six leave types TimeTally seeds, so a chef ringing in at 4pm is recorded rather than remembered. Absence patterns are visible across front of house and kitchen. TimeTally does not calculate or pay Statutory Sick Pay — use the statutory sick pay calculator for that, and the sick leave tracker for how absence recording works.

Records You Can Produce

Every request, approval, rejection and deletion is stored with a timestamp and the person who made it. Balances, entitlement and days taken are held per employee per leave year. If a former member of staff disputes their final holiday pay, the record of what they booked and what they had left is there rather than in a diary behind the bar.

What TimeTally Does Not Do

It does not calculate holiday pay from a 52-week average of earnings — that is a payroll job. It does not chase anyone automatically: there is no scheduled reminder, only a manual nudge you send to one person. And there are two access levels, admin and employee, with no per-department or per-section level in between, so anyone you make an admin sees the whole venue's leave.

Simple, Transparent Pricing

One price. Every feature. No surprises.

£3/employee/month

Billed monthly, incl. VAT. Cancel anytime.

Zero-hours holiday tracking
Bank holiday lieu day management
Unlimited custom leave types
Timesheet tracking included
Get Started

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In short

What is leave management software for a pub or restaurant?

Leave management software for a pub or restaurant records who has booked time off, how much holiday each person has left, and who is already off before a manager approves the next request. TimeTally does this for UK single-site pubs, bars and restaurants from £3 per employee per month. Staff book from the iOS app or any browser, in hours, half days or full days. Managers approve or reject in one tap, with a written reason on anything sent back. Salaried staff take their allowance upfront, and zero-hours staff accrue at 12.07% of the hours they work as their timesheets are approved. Bank holidays block out automatically for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and days worked in lieu go on a leave type you create yourself. Timesheet tracking is included in the same price.

Price
£3 per employee a month
Booking
iOS app or any browser
Zero hours
12.07% of hours worked
Units
Hours, half days, full days
Includes
Timesheets at no extra cost

Frequently Asked Questions

Do zero-hours pub and restaurant workers get paid holiday entitlement?

Yes. All workers, including zero-hours bar and kitchen staff, are legally entitled to paid holiday — 5.6 weeks a year for someone working a fixed week. For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours workers build entitlement at 12.07% of the hours they actually work rather than from a fixed number of days. TimeTally has that rate built in. Set a person's accrual method to hours worked, keep the default 12.07% or set your own figure, and every approved timesheet adds leave to their balance. TimeTally does not calculate a 52-week average of pay — that is a payroll calculation — so use our zero-hours holiday calculator if you want to check a figure by hand.

How does TimeTally help manage leave requests during Christmas, New Year, and other peak periods?

TimeTally gives managers a team calendar that shows all approved leave in one view. During peak hospitality periods like Christmas, New Year, Easter, and summer weekends, you can see exactly how many staff are already off before deciding on new requests. This makes it easier to maintain adequate cover for every service and to treat all leave requests consistently and fairly.

How do bank holidays affect holiday entitlement for pub and restaurant workers?

Pub and restaurant staff who work on bank holidays may be entitled to a day off in lieu or additional pay, depending on their contract. TimeTally lets you create a custom 'Bank Holiday Lieu' leave type so staff who work Christmas Day, Easter Monday, or any other bank holiday can book their lieu day separately from annual leave. You can configure whether bank holidays are counted inside the annual allowance or added on top of it, and TimeTally uses the correct bank holiday set for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Can I calculate pro-rata holiday entitlement for part-time bar and kitchen staff?

Yes. You set the full-time allowance for your venue — the default is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays, which is above the statutory 28-day minimum — and TimeTally works out each person's share of it from their working pattern. A kitchen porter working three days a week gets the right proportion for a three-day week. Mid-year starters and leavers are pro-rated from their start date, so you always know the exact entitlement for every member of staff.

How do staff in my pub or restaurant submit leave requests?

Staff submit leave requests through the TimeTally iOS app or the web browser. They select their dates, choose the leave type, and submit in a few taps. Managers receive a notification and can approve or reject with one tap. This works well for hospitality staff who are rarely near a computer during their shift — they can request leave between services or on their day off.

Is TimeTally affordable for a single-site independent pub or restaurant?

Yes. TimeTally costs just £3 per employee per month with no setup fees, no minimum contract, and no hidden costs. A pub with 12 staff would pay £36 a month for a proper leave management system that includes timesheet tracking at no extra charge. There is a free 14-day trial so you can test it with your team before committing.

How do we handle time off in a restaurant with split shifts?

Time off in a restaurant is booked by the day, not the shift, so a member of staff taking a Saturday off is off for both the lunch and dinner service. Front of house (FOH) and kitchen sit on the same team calendar, so a licensee can see whether losing a chef and a bartender on the same night leaves the service short.

Still have a question? See all FAQs

Related Resources

Calculators and guides for pub, bar and restaurant operators

Zero-Hours Holiday Calculator

Work out accrued holiday for irregular-hours bar and kitchen staffOpen calculator

Pro-Rata Holiday Calculator

Entitlement for part-time patterns and mid-year starters and leaversOpen calculator

Absence Management Software

Absence patterns and reporting across front of house and kitchenLearn more

Sick Leave Tracker

Record a chef ringing in sick and see the pattern behind itLearn more

Statutory Sick Pay Calculator

Check SSP for a member of staff who is off sick, which TimeTally does not payOpen calculator

Pubs & Restaurants Timesheets

The hours side of the same £3, and where zero-hours accrual comes fromLearn more

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Better leave management for your pub or restaurant.

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