Timesheet Software for UK Hospitality

There are two overtime triggers and hospitality uses both. Threshold overtime starts once someone passes a set number of hours in a day or a week. The extra shift picked up when a chef calls in sick is a threshold rule. Time-of-day overtime pays a premium for hours inside a window whatever the weekly total, which covers a late bar shift and a 6am breakfast start. Choose how it is paid: a rate multiplier such as 1.5x, or a fixed hourly rate. Rules stack into tiers, and every person is configured separately, so a kitchen porter, a sous chef and a duty manager can each have their own threshold.

Project tracking is optional and switched on already. Turn it off if you do not want it. Staff split their hours across areas as they submit: four hours front of house, three on a function. Areas nest, so a venue can sit above its own kitchen, bar and housekeeping. An area can also carry its own pay rate for the person working it: an hourly rate that applies on top of or instead of their normal rate, or a flat fee per entry for a one-off event or an outside catering job. Reports then show labour hours and labour cost per area, which is the figure you set next month's rota against.

TOIL is an optional alternative to paying overtime. Enable it if you want to offer time off in lieu instead of, or alongside, extra pay. Set a conversion rate — one hour of overtime becomes 1.5 hours of leave, for example — and overtime accrues as a TOIL balance automatically. Use it for the extra hours a venue works over Christmas, New Year and bank holiday weekends. TOIL is held separately from annual leave, so it never reduces holiday entitlement. Staff book it the way they book any other leave.

Managers approve or reject from any device: a phone at the kitchen pass, a tablet in the office, a desktop at head office. Rejections carry a written reason, so someone who logged eight hours against the wrong area knows what to correct. If a timesheet is still outstanding, a manager can send that person a reminder in one tap, and it arrives as a notification in their app. Pay totals are calculated from approved hours, so nothing is re-keyed between the venue and the payroll run.

There are two submission modes and you can use both. Clock-in mode starts a live timer when someone begins their shift, and the timer keeps running with the app closed, so a phone in an apron pocket records the full service. Form mode lets staff enter start, finish and break times at the end of the shift or the end of the week, with no terminal needed anywhere in the venue. Both work on mobile and desktop, so front of house and the kitchen can use different modes.

Each member of staff has their own hourly rate. A commis chef, a bartender and a head housekeeper all differ, and often work the same night. Pay totals are calculated automatically from approved hours, and an overtime rate per person sits alongside it. You can also hide rates and pay totals from a manager entirely: they approve hours without seeing any figures, and the pay columns drop out of their exports.

Send approved timesheets to payroll in a few taps. Export to CSV, Xero, or QuickBooks, filtered by date range and by which people you want in the file, with control over which columns are included. Break minutes, regular hours, overtime hours and gross pay are all columns. Group the file by person, by week or by area. A payroll bureau running several venues off one submission takes the grouped file.