TimeTally - Timesheet Management AppTimeTally

Timesheet Software for UK Pubs & Restaurants

TimeTally records the hours your bar, kitchen and floor staff work. Staff log each shift from their own phone, and a lunch service and a dinner service on the same day are two separate entries. A shift that finishes after midnight totals correctly, and unpaid breaks come off the total. The licensee or general manager approves the week from a phone, and approved hours export to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV. From £3 per staff member per month.

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Pub timesheet showing a week of shifts with start and finish times, breaks and the area worked
Bar staff clocked in on their phone with the shift timer running

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

CLI ManchesterJordan Ingoe, CLI Manchester
On the floor

Log a Lunch Shift and a Dinner Shift on the Same Day

A split shift is two entries on one date, each with its own start time, finish time and break. Logging a day takes under a minute in a phone browser. There is no split shift mode to switch on — a restaurant time clock that holds one entry per day is the thing somebody ends up rounding by hand.

TimeTally timesheet entry screen showing shift hours and break tracking

  • Two Entries on One Day

    11:00–15:00 and 17:00–23:00, each with its own break

  • Shifts Past Midnight

    18:00 to 02:00 totals eight hours

  • Automatic Break Deduction

    Unpaid break minutes come off the shift total

  • Bar or Kitchen Tagging

    Hours are recorded against the area that used them

Approve a Week of Shifts From a Phone

A general manager approves or rejects each week from a phone, a tablet or a desktop. The week arrives already totalled: regular hours, overtime hours, any time off in lieu banked, and the total. Approved and exported are tracked as separate states, so a week signed off at the end of the bar cannot go through the payroll run twice.

  • Each day is one line with its start time, finish time, hours and pay. Open a day to see the break, the second shift, and the area the hours went to.
  • Rejections carry a written reason. Someone who logged a shift against the wrong area, or forgot the break, knows what to correct.
  • Hide rates and pay totals from an admin entirely. They approve the hours without seeing a figure, and the pay columns drop out of their exports too.
  • Set the timesheet period to one, two or four weeks. A pub paying every other Friday submits and approves on that rhythm.
Pay figures can be hiddenOne, two or four week periods
Timesheet approvals Get Started
An approved week of pub shifts in TimeTally showing regular hours, overtime, TOIL and pay for each day

Every Member of Staff's Hours in One List

The timesheet screen lists everyone who worked that week with their total hours and whether they have submitted yet. A general manager can see who still owes a sheet without asking round the bar, and work down the list from a phone.

  • Step between weeks with the date arrows. Each row shows the person, the department they are grouped under, and their hours for that week.
  • Approve All signs off every outstanding sheet for the week in one action. Anything that needs checking gets opened and approved on its own.
  • Export the same week from the same screen, filtered to the people or the department you are paying — the kitchen on its own, or the whole team.
  • Send a reminder to one person in a single tap. It arrives as a notification in their app. Nothing is chased automatically; you choose who gets one.
Phone, tablet or desktopReminders are sent by hand
Manager view on a phone listing each member of staff, whether they have submitted, and their hours for the week

Cost Bar Hours Separately From Kitchen Hours

Most pubs know their total labour cost and few know how it splits. TimeTally puts an area on the timesheet line, so the bar, the kitchen, the floor and a function room come out as separate hours and separate money in the same report. That is the number you set next month's rota against.

  • One day can split across areas. Four hours on the floor and three in the kitchen is one day with two allocations.
  • Areas nest. A kitchen can sit under the pub and a function room under the kitchen, and the totals roll up on their own.
  • An area can carry extra pay for whoever works it: an uplift per hour, or a flat fee for a one-off function. The money goes to the member of staff.
  • The feature is on by default and can be switched off. A one-room bistro that does not want the dimension never sees it.
TimeTally's Projects panel, where each area you create carries its own pay rate

What a Manager Sees When a Week Comes In

A short loop of the manager's calendar. Every member of staff has a row, with the department they are grouped under beside their name, and the month runs across it day by day. Below it sit a Timesheet Requests panel and a Time-off Requests panel. A submitted week arrives in the queue with the name and the hours on it, the manager approves it, and the row clears.

All Departments
Jun 2026
M
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F
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M
T
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AR1

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

JK2

James Kelly

Front of house

PS3

Priya Shah

Kitchen

MP4

Maya Patel

Front of house

TW5

Tom Wilson

Bar

Timesheet Requests

3
AR

Amelia Roberts

37h 30m · Week of Jun 15

JK

James Kelly

38h 30m · Week of Jun 8

Time-off Requests

2
PS

Priya Shah

3d · Annual Leave

MP

Maya Patel

2d · Sick Leave

AR

Amelia Roberts

Monday 15 June · 09:00

AR

0h 00m

09:00 – 17:00

Break
End Done

Timesheet submitted

Week of Jun 15

AR

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

Week of Jun 15, 2026

Mon15
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Tue16
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Wed17
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Thu18
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Fri19
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Submit Timesheet Submitted

Payroll Export

Week of Jun 15, 2026 · 5 employees

Employee
Reg. pay
Overtime
Total
AR

Amelia Roberts

37.5h

£281.25

—

£281.25

JK

James Kelly

40h

£300.00

£22.50

2h

£322.50

PS

Priya Shah

32h

£240.00

—

£240.00

MP

Maya Patel

38h

£285.00

—

£285.00

TW

Tom Wilson

40h

£300.00

£45.00

4h

£345.00

Total · 5 employees

£1,406.25

£67.50

£1,473.75

Confirm Export Exported!

How a Pub Week Runs in TimeTally

Four points in the week. Between them TimeTally is a phone in an apron pocket.

  • Monday: publish the rota

    Build the week from saved shift templates and publish it. Everyone gets the same version at the same time, rather than a photo in a group chat. See rota planning

  • Through the week: log each shift

    Staff clock in and out with a live timer, or write the shift up at the end of it. Whichever the venue picks, a split shift is two entries on one day

  • Sunday: approve the week

    The manager approves or rejects from a phone, with a written reason on anything sent back. How approvals work

  • Payday: export the hours

    Export approved hours to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV, filtered to the dates and the people in that particular run

Pubs, Bars and Restaurants Running a Single Site

TimeTally suits an operator who knows everyone's name: one site, one staff list, and a general manager who is on the floor. If you run a hotel, an events business, or several venues off one payroll, the hospitality timesheet page is the better fit.

Wet-Led & Community Pubs

Timesheets for pubs and bars

A licensee, two or three supervisors, and a rota that changes with the fixture list. Staff log their own hours from their phones. You can see the week's wage bill before it reaches payroll, and a late Saturday is paid at the rate you set for late Saturdays.

  • Late-night and weekend rates
  • Cover and swaps in one place
  • Weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly runs
Independent Restaurants

Restaurant employee time tracking without a terminal

Front of house and the kitchen brigade sit on one staff list with two sets of hours. A head chef, a commis and a runner each get their own hourly rate and their own overtime threshold. Nobody stands at a wall-mounted clock — the shift is logged on the phone in the apron.

  • A rate and an overtime rule per person
  • Kitchen and floor hours costed apart
  • Pay hidden from whoever approves
Gastropubs & Dining Pubs

One team across two services

Lunch, a gap, then dinner is the normal shape of the day. TimeTally records it as two entries on one date with one total. Kitchen hours stay separable from bar hours, so you can see where the wage percentage went.

  • Split shifts as standard
  • Bar, kitchen and function split
  • Totals update as the shift is typed
Bars & Late-Night Venues

Hours that finish after midnight

A close that lands at a different time every night, shifts that run into the next calendar day, and door staff who work one night in three. A shift from 20:00 to 02:30 totals correctly, and the part of it inside your late window is paid at the late rate without anyone splitting it by hand.

  • Overnight shifts calculated correctly
  • Premium windows that wrap midnight
  • Casual staff added and removed by month
Get Started

Set Premium Rates and Turn On Shift Swaps

Two settings an admin controls: what the late hours are worth, and whether staff can arrange their own cover. In most venues both are handled in a group chat and settled again at payday.

Pay a premium for late nights, weekends and bank holidays.

TimeTally has two overtime triggers and you can run both. A threshold rule starts the higher rate once someone passes a set number of hours in a day or a week — the shift picked up when a chef calls in sick. A time-of-day rule pays a premium for hours inside a window whatever the weekly total, which is what a bar shift running past last orders needs.

Windows wrap past midnight, so 22:00 to 02:00 is one band rather than two, and a shift straddling the close is split at the right minute. Stack tiers inside a window if the first hour is not worth the same as the third, and pay each tier as a multiplier or as a flat hourly rate.

A weekday can carry its own overtime configuration and its own ladder of tiers, so a Sunday or a bank holiday opening is priced differently from a Tuesday. If you would rather give the time back than pay it, time off in lieu banks the extra as leave at a conversion rate you set, held separately from the annual allowance.

Let staff swap or give away a published shift.

Once the rota is published, a member of staff can ask a named colleague to trade shifts, or to take one with nothing back. The two are recorded as different requests rather than inferred from a conversation nobody can find a fortnight later.

A swap only takes effect when a manager approves it. It joins the same queue as everything else, and the date and any clash are checked again at approval rather than at the moment of asking, so a request left sitting for a week cannot double-book anyone. Both rotas change together. Swaps can be switched off entirely if you would rather all cover came to you first.

You can also let staff see who else is rostered with them on a day. That setting is off until you turn it on, because a rota carries notes that are not everybody's business.

Why it matters

Why Pubs and Restaurants Need Accurate Timesheets

TimeTally is a timesheet tool. It is not an EPOS, a stock system or a tronc scheme. What it keeps is the hour record that payroll, the minimum wage sum and every working-time question in a pub or restaurant depend on.

Hours in the on-trade rarely fit a fixed weekly pattern. A bartender works 11 till 3 and then 5 till close on the same Saturday. A chef finishes at midnight and is back for a delivery at nine. A kitchen porter works one week and not the next. A 17-year-old on the floor cannot legally work the hours the rest of the team does. That is why the hours get written on the back of a docket and typed up wrong on Monday.

The Working Time Regulations 1998 cap average weekly working hours at 48 over a 17-week reference period and require 11 consecutive hours of rest between shifts. In a pub the rest rule is the one that bites: a 1am close followed by a 10am cellar delivery is nine hours, not eleven. Anyone on a shift longer than six hours is also entitled to an uninterrupted 20-minute break, and the duty manager is usually the person least likely to have taken one.

Staff under 18 who are over school leaving age work to stricter limits: a maximum of 8 hours a day and 40 a week, with no 17-week averaging to smooth out a busy fortnight, a 30-minute break once they pass four and a half hours, and 12 hours of rest between working days. Pubs and restaurants employ more young workers than almost any other sector. TimeTally records what a young worker actually worked. It does not police the cap for you, but you cannot check the cap without the times.

For payroll, the National Living Wage is £12.21 from April 2025 for workers aged 21 and over, and the test is total pay divided by total hours. Twenty minutes of cashing up that nobody recorded, or a break deducted that was never taken, moves that figure. Tips do not rescue it. Under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, tips, gratuities and service charges must be allocated fairly and the records kept for three years, and none of it counts towards the minimum wage. TimeTally holds the hours half of that sum and nothing else.

Every member of staff also accrues 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday from their first day, casual and seasonal staff included. Where hours change week to week, TimeTally can accrue leave from the hours actually worked rather than from a fixed allowance; the rate is set per organisation and defaults to 12.07%. Requests, balances and the team calendar are covered on the pub and restaurant leave management page. This page is about the hours.

UK Compliance
UK Compliance

What TimeTally Records, and What It Does Not Do

TimeTally is a timesheet tool, not a compliance system. It does not monitor rates, flag breaches or administer anything. It holds the record that each of these obligations is checked against. Here is exactly how far that goes.

Working Time Regulations

Every hour is recorded, including the ones after midnight. That gives you the data behind the 48-hour weekly average over a 17-week reference period, the 11 hours of rest between a late close and an early start, and the 20-minute break on any shift over six. Our working hours calculator and break time compliance calculator do the arithmetic. TimeTally does not watch for breaches or alert you to one — the record is the product, the judgement stays with you.

National Minimum Wage

The National Minimum Wage test is total pay divided by total hours, and in the on-trade it is usually unrecorded time that breaks it: cashing up, a handover, a break deducted that nobody took. TimeTally does not calculate NMW compliance for you. It gives each person their own rate — check yours with the hourly rate and overtime pay calculators — and an hour record accurate enough to run the sum against.

Under-18s Behind the Bar

Young workers over school leaving age are capped at 8 hours a day and 40 a week with no averaging, need a 30-minute break past four and a half hours, and 12 hours of rest between working days. TimeTally records exactly what a 17-year-old on the floor worked and when, so the check is possible. It does not enforce the cap and will not stop a shift being logged that breaches it.

Tips Act Record-Keeping

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 requires tips, gratuities and service charges to be allocated fairly and the records kept for three years, and none of it counts towards the minimum wage. TimeTally has no tips field, no tronc and no way of allocating a service charge. A tronc is a separate scheme with its own troncmaster and its own records, and a timesheet tool is the wrong place to keep them. We would rather say so than sell you a workaround.

Holiday Entitlement

All UK workers get 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday from day one, casual and seasonal staff included. The pro-rata holiday calculator covers part-timers and mid-year starters. Sickness is one of the leave types seeded in every new account, so a shift lost to illness is recorded rather than remembered, and the statutory sick pay calculator works out what you owe. Requests and balances live on the pub and restaurant leave page.

HMRC Record-Keeping

HMRC requires employers to keep records of hours worked for at least two years, and minimum wage records for six. TimeTally stores every entry with its timestamps and its full approval history, so what you hand over is an export rather than a carrier bag of rota printouts. A wider view of the obligations is in our guide to leave tracking software and the working time material below.

Simple, Transparent Pricing

One price. Every feature. No surprises.

£3/employee/month

Billed monthly, incl. VAT. Cancel anytime.

Split shifts — two or more entries on the same day
Late-night, weekend and Sunday overtime rates
Rota, shift templates and staff-to-staff swaps
Bar, kitchen and floor hours costed separately
Export to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV for payroll
Get Started
Book a Demo

In short

What is a restaurant time clock?

A restaurant time clock is how staff record the start and end of a shift, so the hours can be paid correctly and checked against working time rules. TimeTally does this for UK pubs, bars and restaurants from £3 per staff member per month. It works two ways. Clock-in mode starts a live timer that keeps running with the phone in an apron pocket. Form mode lets someone write the shift up at the end of it. Either way, a split shift is two entries on one day, a shift finishing at 02:00 totals correctly, unpaid breaks come off the total, and the hours can be tagged to the bar or the kitchen. Managers approve the week from their own phone. Approved hours export to Xero, QuickBooks or CSV. It is restaurant employee time tracking and the pay record underneath it. It is not an EPOS, not a rota for the wall, and not a tips ledger.

Price
£3 per staff member a month
Logging
Live timer, or write the shift up
Split shifts
Two entries on one day
Tags to
Bar, kitchen, floor, function
Does not do
Tips, tronc, EPOS or stock

Frequently Asked Questions

How does TimeTally handle split shifts?

Staff log more than one entry on the same day. A typical pub split shift — 11am to 3pm for lunch service, then 5pm to 11pm for dinner — is two entries on that date, each with its own start time, finish time and break. The day totals both, and so does the week. There is no separate split shift mode to switch on; it is simply multiple entries per day.

Can TimeTally record a shift that finishes after midnight?

Yes. A shift from 8pm to 2am is calculated as six hours, not as a negative. Overnight shifts are handled throughout, including for overtime: a premium window such as 10pm to 2am wraps past midnight as one band, so the hours either side of the close are split at the right minute rather than by hand.

Can I pay a higher rate for late nights, weekends or Sundays?

Yes, and in two different ways. A threshold rule starts the higher rate once someone passes a set number of hours in a day or a week. A time-of-day rule pays a premium for hours falling inside a window whatever the weekly total, which is what a late bar shift needs. You can stack tiers within a window, pay each as a multiplier or a flat hourly rate, and give a particular weekday its own configuration — so a Sunday or a bank holiday opening can be priced differently from a Tuesday.

Can staff swap shifts with each other?

Yes, once the rota is published. A member of staff can ask a named colleague either to trade shifts or to take one with nothing offered back — the two are recorded as different requests. A swap only takes effect when a manager approves it, and the date and any clash are re-checked at that moment rather than when the request was made, so a request left sitting cannot double-book anyone. Swaps can be switched off entirely if you would rather all cover came through you.

Can I see what the kitchen costs separately from the bar?

Yes. Hours are tagged to an area — bar, kitchen, floor, a function room — and a single day can be split across more than one, so four hours on the floor and three in the kitchen is one day with two allocations. Areas nest, so a kitchen can sit under the pub, and the totals roll up. Reports show hours and cost per area. The dimension is on by default and can be turned off if you do not want it.

Can I set a different pay rate for every member of staff?

Yes. Each person has their own hourly rate and their own overtime rate, so a head chef, a commis and a runner can all differ while working the same service. Pay is calculated from approved hours. You can also hide rates and pay totals from a particular manager entirely — they approve the hours but never see a figure, and the pay columns drop out of their exports too.

Does TimeTally track tips or run a tronc scheme?

No. TimeTally has no tips field, no tronc administration and no way of allocating a service charge, and we would not suggest using a timesheet as a substitute for one. Under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 tips must be allocated fairly and the records kept for three years, which is a separate scheme with its own troncmaster and its own paper trail. What TimeTally holds is the hours, which matters because tips never count towards the National Minimum Wage — the wage sum is run against recorded hours alone.

Does TimeTally work for staff under 18?

It records their hours exactly as it records anyone else's, which is what makes the check possible. It does not enforce young worker limits for you: an under-18 over school leaving age is capped at 8 hours a day and 40 a week with no 17-week averaging, needs a 30-minute break past four and a half hours, and 12 hours of rest between working days. TimeTally will not refuse a shift that breaches those, so the responsibility for the rota stays with you.

Do staff need to download an app?

No. TimeTally runs in any mobile browser, so a new starter can log a shift on their first Saturday without installing anything on their own phone. There are native apps on the App Store and Google Play for anyone who prefers one. With the turnover the on-trade runs at, not having a setup step per person is the point.

Does TimeTally work for seasonal and casual staff?

Yes. Add people for a busy season — Christmas, a festival week, the summer garden — and remove them when it ends; you only pay for the staff active that month. Casual and zero-hours workers accrue statutory holiday from their first day under UK law, and where hours vary week to week TimeTally can accrue leave from the hours actually worked, at a rate that defaults to 12.07%.

Can I run a fortnightly pay period rather than a weekly one?

Yes. A timesheet period can be one, two or four whole weeks, so a pub paying every other Friday submits and approves on that rhythm instead of stitching two weekly sheets together. Overtime thresholds still apply per calendar week inside the period, so a four-weekly sheet does not manufacture overtime that was never worked.

Still have a question? See all FAQs

Explore TimeTally

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Related Resources

Guides and tools for UK pubs, bars and restaurants

Hospitality Timesheet Software

For hotels, events and operators running more than one venueLearn more

Rota Planning and Shift Swaps

Build a service rota from templates and publish it to the teamLearn more

Track Employee Hours Legally

UK legal requirements for tracking staff hoursRead guide

Working Time Regulations Guide

Complete guide to WTD compliance for UK employersRead guide

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