Build next week from the till. Keep the record the law will ask for.

Zynthio learns a demand curve from your own sales history, blends in the weather, and drafts a whole week of open shifts in one tap — while quietly recording the shift notice and cancellation evidence the Employment Rights Act’s zero-hours duties will be judged on.

14-day free trial, full-featured, no card required. The tracking runs from the moment you publish your first rota — there is nothing to switch on.

The reference period looks backwards

The Employment Rights Act’s zero-hours provisions are expected to commence around January 2027, and they bring three duties at once: offer a guaranteed-hours contract reflecting the hours actually worked over a reference period, give reasonable notice of shifts, and compensate short-notice cancellations.

All three are judged on history. An operator who starts collecting evidence on commencement day has none, because the period the rules ask about has already elapsed by then. And a cancelled shift leaves nothing behind in a rota to reconstruct: it simply stops existing.

So the tracking has to run now, in the background, alongside the rota you are already building. That is what Zynthio does — and it does it without changing a single thing about how you publish a week.

What gets recorded, automatically

• Publishing a rota stamps every assigned shift with the moment the employee was told, and the hours of notice that gave them
• Deleting, reassigning or unassigning a published shift writes a cancellation with the notice given and the hours lost
• Moving a published shift’s date or times records old and new side by side, measured to the start the employee was expecting
• Average weekly hours over your reference period, beside contracted hours, per employee
• Both figures export to CSV from the reports library, filtered by site and date range

Draft rotas are never touched. A draft is planning, not a promise — nobody was told, so nothing is cancelled, and you can rework a draft as freely as you always could.

A curve your venue produced, not a rule of thumb

Most staffing tools apply one ratio to every venue on the platform. A 120-cover trattoria doing plated service and a kiosk selling gelato get the same advice, which is wrong for both — and after a fortnight managers stop reading the number. Zynthio learns the curve from the venue itself.

Eight weeks of your own hours

Hourly sales from Toast or the native Zynthio till, bucketed by weekday and hour. A trimmed mean drops the best and worst sample, so one function or one street closure does not set the rota. Every hour carries a confidence grade based on how many weeks stand behind it.

Weather, only where it earns it

Daily rainfall per site, compared against that venue’s own wet-day and dry-day trade. Rain-sensitive venues get a bounded adjustment on wet days; venues whose trade does not move get none. The assumption is printed on the forecast in a sentence, so you can disbelieve it.

Your realised staff-per-order

Predicted trade becomes heads using what this venue has actually staffed against that trade, blended with a platform baseline that acts as a floor — so a quarter of running short does not get handed back to you as advice.

One tap, a whole week

Hourly head counts collapse into people-shaped shifts — the fewest, longest shifts that still cover every hour, split where a run would otherwise be twelve hours, with breaks drafted in on anything over six.

Cost before you commit

The preview lists every shift it is about to create and what the week costs, including employer National Insurance, holiday accrual and pension, priced at the rates your own staff are on. Nothing is written until you confirm.

Open shifts, no bypassed gates

Every drafted shift is unassigned. Nobody is rostered, so no right-to-work or mandatory-training check is skipped — they fire as normal when you put a name to a shift. Published rotas are never modified.

Where the software stops

• It is not legal advice, and it decides nothing. Zynthio reports what the record says. Whether a guaranteed-hours offer is owed, what it should contain and when it is made are decisions for you and your advisers.
• “Reasonable notice” is not yet defined in hours. The Act leaves it to regulations. Zynthio ships a seven-day placeholder you can change, and says on screen when a figure is the default rather than your choice.
• Evidence starts when tracking starts. Shifts published before the record existed show as unknown notice, counted in their own column and never folded in as if they were compliant.
• A forecast needs history. A venue with no till data gets no curve and no suggestion — a guess dressed as a prediction is worse than an empty screen. Prep, deliveries and set-up take no money, so they carry no demand signal; an opening minimum you set covers them.

Demand rota and Employment Rights Act questions

What does the Employment Rights Act change for zero-hours staff?

Three duties land together, expected to commence around January 2027. Employers will have to offer a guaranteed-hours contract reflecting the hours a worker actually worked over a reference period; give reasonable notice of shifts; and compensate short-notice cancellations and curtailments. The detail of each will be set by regulations rather than the Act itself, so the hours that count as "reasonable notice" are not yet fixed. What is already clear is that all three are judged on history.

Why does the tracking have to start before the duties commence?

Because the reference period looks backwards. An employer who starts recording shift notice on the day the rules commence has an empty record for the period the rules ask about, and a cancelled shift leaves no trace in a rota to reconstruct it from - it simply stops existing. Zynthio therefore writes a notice event when a rota is published and a cancellation event when a published shift is deleted, reassigned or moved, from now, alongside the rota flows you already use. Nothing has to be switched on.

Does Zynthio decide who gets a guaranteed-hours contract?

No, and it never will. It reports average weekly hours over the reference period beside contracted hours, and flags where the gap would put someone in scope of the duty as currently drafted. That is a readiness view. Whether an offer is owed, what it should say and when it is made are decisions for the employer and their advisers, and no software should be making them.

How does the demand forecast know how busy next week will be?

From the venue's own till. Zynthio reads the last eight weeks of hourly sales - Toast or the native Zynthio till - and builds a demand curve per weekday and hour, using a trimmed mean so one Christmas party or one burst main does not set the rota. It then turns predicted trade into staffing using that venue's own realised staff-per-order rather than a platform-wide ratio, because a 120-cover trattoria and a gelato kiosk do not staff the same hour the same way.

What does the weather have to do with a rota?

A wet Saturday and a dry Saturday are not the same Saturday, and averaging them together gets both wrong for any venue with a terrace or passing footfall. Zynthio fetches daily rainfall per site and compares that venue's own wet-day trade against its own dry-day trade. Where the venue is genuinely rain-sensitive, wet days in the forecast are scaled by a bounded multiplier and the page says so in a sentence. Where it is not - and plenty of venues are not - nothing is adjusted, and the page says that too.

Does the one-tap build put people on shifts automatically?

No. It creates OPEN shifts - correct days, correct times, correct kitchen and front-of-house split, breaks drafted in - with nobody on them. That is what makes it safe to automate: an unassigned shift rosters no one, so the right-to-work and mandatory-training gates are not bypassed, they simply fire later when you put a name to a shift. You see every shift and a labour cost estimate before anything is written, and it never touches a published rota.

One login, one bill, one set of sites

Every Zynthio module shares the same sites, the same people and the same reporting. Turn on what you need.

Martyn’s Law Readiness

Procedure templates, a per-site capacity and tier view, a quarterly drill record and a staff briefing.

Zero-Hours Readiness

Guaranteed hours, shift notice and cancellation payment policies, plus the rota record that evidences them.

Food Safety & HACCP

Digital daily checks, temperature logs, HACCP plans, allergen charts and EHO-ready PDF records.

Stock & Cashing Up

Stocktakes, purchase orders, delivery scanning, GP tracking and daily cashups with weekly rollups.

EPOS & Till

Connect your existing till for live sales into stock and rotas, plus the ZynthioEPOS till in build.

HACCP Plans

Build a full Codex HACCP plan online, link CCPs to daily checks and export EHO-ready PDFs.

COSHH & Risk Assessments

Substance register with data sheets and PPE, plus scored venue risk assessments with sign-off.

Audits & Mock EHO

Ten UK templates, 400+ inspector-style questions, weighted scoring and a site league table.

Staff Training

Assign courses, track completion by person and site, and issue certificates into the HR file.

Review Management

Google, TripAdvisor and your FSA rating in one dashboard with a reputation score per site.

Table Bookings

Website booking widget, live service diary, deposits and a guest CRM - no per-cover fees, ever.

Refusals Register

A digital refusals book filled from the till, ready for the licensing officer.

Cash Management

Safes, floats, banking and an append-only ledger with daily cash-up reconciliation.

Accounting Export

The daily sales journal, supplier bills and payroll journal in Xero’s own import layouts.

KPIs & Reporting

Clock-in accuracy, labour budget, salary utilisation and reputation, per site and per group.

Recipe Costing

Cost dishes from live stock prices, track GP ex-VAT and tag all 14 UK allergens.

Free GP Calculator

Cost a dish, cost a keg by the pint, or price to a target GP. No account needed, VAT handled properly.

Or start at the beginning on the Zynthio homepage, try it with sample data on the live demo, or read practical operator guides on the blog.

Start the record before you need it

Publish one rota in Zynthio and the notice trail begins. Build the next one from your own demand curve while you are there.