Rota software built for hospitality, not for offices

Build the week against a live labour budget, publish it to your team's phones, clock them in inside a geofence, and turn the whole thing into an approved timesheet. One system from the rota to the payroll export.

14-day free trial, full-featured, no card required. The demo lets you sign in as a manager or as a staff member.

The spreadsheet does not know anything

Most UK venues still build the rota in a spreadsheet, print it, pin it to the wall, and then spend the following week working out who actually turned up. It is a fine drawing tool and a terrible management tool. The spreadsheet does not know your labour budget. It does not know Chloe asked for the Saturday off three weeks ago. It does not know that fifty-one hours for a kitchen porter is a conversation. And it certainly does not become a timesheet.

So the same numbers get typed three times: once into the rota, once into the timesheet, once into payroll. Every retype is a chance to be wrong, and the wage bill is usually the second biggest line in the P&L after cost of sales.

What Zynthio does with the same week

From an empty week to an approved timesheet

Building the rota

The rota editor is a week grid you drag shifts onto. As you build, it shows who is available and who is already on holiday, holds the week against a labour budget you set, and costs it live — wages plus employer National Insurance and employer pension, so the figure on screen is what the week actually costs rather than the wage bill alone. If you have an EPOS connected, Zynthio reads your sales history and suggests staffing hour by hour against forecast demand, so the Tuesday is not carrying a Friday's kitchen.

Approve first, publish second

A rota moves through a workflow rather than just existing: draft, submit, approve or reject, then publish. Publishing is what makes it visible to staff, so an area manager can review a site's week before anybody sees it — and unpublish it if the week changes. Save a standard week as a template, and auto-build will populate a fresh week from your templates and staff availability in one action, ready for you to fix rather than start from a blank grid.

Shift swaps and open shifts, without the group chat

When somebody cannot make a shift they offer it from their own rota — either to a named colleague, or into an open pool anyone who can cover it may claim. The colleague answers first, then it comes to a manager, and you can switch on auto-approval for swaps between people in the same role so the routine ones never reach you at all. Staff also block out one-off dates in advance, which shows on the rota grid before you write the week rather than as a message the morning after.

Open shifts go to the people who can actually work them, and every swap and claim is checked against your hour limits before it can go through: set a maximum weekly hours figure and a minimum rest gap between shifts, and a swap that would breach either is refused with the reason attached. Leave them blank and nothing is enforced. The Working Time Regulations figures are 48 hours and 11 hours; the settings are yours to set, not ours to assume.

Clock-in with a geofence

Staff clock in from their own phone or a shared device on the pass. Each site can carry a geofence: a location geocoded from the site address, and a radius you choose. Per site, you decide whether being outside that radius blocks the clock-in outright or simply flags it — a flagged clock-in records the distance and lands on a review queue, which is a far more useful conversation than "were you actually here". Managers can add attendance by hand, correct an event, and close a shift somebody forgot to end.

Timesheets, tronc and the payroll export

Approved attendance becomes a timesheet. Timesheets are generated for a period, edited where a clock-out went wrong, approved individually or in bulk, and exported for payroll with a sign-off step you can reopen if something surfaces late. There is a day sign-off flow so a manager closes each trading day with outstanding issues resolved, and full tronc distribution — points per position, pools, distribute, reopen — for tips. Zynthio produces the export and the cost analysis; it is not a payroll bureau and does not file with HMRC.

UK rules, built in rather than bolted on

Holiday for irregular-hours and part-year staff accrues at 12.07% of hours worked, the statutory method for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, while fixed-hours part-timers keep their pro-rata 5.6 weeks (Harpur Trust v Brazel). Staff can see their own accrued balance instead of asking. Holiday pay for variable-hours staff uses the reference-period averaging method. Hourly-paid holiday requests are capped at the 48-hour Working Time Regulations ceiling. Right to Work checks are recorded against the employee with an outstanding-checks list, so nobody quietly completes onboarding without one.

Onboarding, contracts and training on the same record

New starters onboard themselves: send an invite, they enter their own personal, bank, emergency and right-to-work details on their phone, and you approve it against a side-by-side comparison with what you already had rather than retyping anything. Contracts generate from templates and are signed electronically with a verifiable signature record. The same employee record carries training — video, PDF and text modules, a minimum-duration timer on courses that need one, an end-of-course quiz with a pass mark, and a PDF certificate — plus anonymous staff surveys if you want to know what your team actually thinks.

Rota and scheduling questions

Can staff see their rota on their phone?

Yes. Once a rota is published, staff sign in on the web or in the Zynthio mobile app to see their week, request holiday, view their documents and clock in and out. Zynthio also pushes a reminder half an hour before a shift starts, a nudge if someone has not clocked in five minutes after their start time, and a prompt to clock out at the end. Managers get a no-show alert if a shift simply goes unstarted.

How does holiday accrual work for irregular-hours and part-year staff?

Zynthio accrues holiday at 12.07% of the hours actually worked for irregular-hours and part-year staff, the statutory method for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024 under the Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/1426), which inserted regulation 15B into the Working Time Regulations 1998. Staff on fixed hours keep 5.6 weeks pro rata after Harpur Trust v Brazel, so Zynthio holds them on an annual entitlement pro-rated for their start date, and every balance updates as timesheets are approved.

Will Zynthio stop me rostering someone over 48 hours a week?

It flags it. Zynthio raises compliance warnings on a rota before you publish it, and caps holiday requests from hourly-paid staff at the 48-hour Working Time Regulations ceiling. Treat the flag as a prompt to check rather than a legal ruling: the 48-hour limit is an average over a 17-week reference period, and workers can opt out of it in writing, so the right answer depends on the individual contract.

Does Zynthio run my payroll?

No, and it is worth being clear about that. Zynthio produces approved timesheets, a payroll export and the labour cost analysis behind it, including employer National Insurance and employer pension contributions so you can see the true cost of a week. It does not file Real Time Information with HMRC, does not produce P45s or P60s, and does not connect to a pension provider. You hand the export to whoever runs your payroll.

Does geofenced clock-in actually stop people clocking in from home?

You choose. Each site gets a geofence: a location, geocoded from the site address, and a radius you set. If you enable enforcement, a clock-in from outside that radius is refused outright. If you leave enforcement off, the clock-in is allowed but flagged with the distance recorded and a notification sent, and it lands on a review queue for a manager. Most operators start in flag-only mode for a few weeks, look at what it catches, then decide.

Related guides

Practical guides from the Zynthio team on this part of running a venue.

Written statement of particulars: hospitality's day-one gap

Every worker is owed a written statement of particulars on or before their first day, yet hospitality routinely issues it weeks late or not at all.

National minimum wage compliance: the hidden pay traps

National minimum wage compliance often fails by accident: deductions, unpaid briefings and rounded clock-ins quietly breach the legal floor.

Controlling labour costs without cutting service quality

Controlling labour costs is about matching hours to demand, not blanket cuts. Here is where UK hospitality operators usually get it wrong.

Holiday and working time compliance in UK hospitality

Holiday and working time compliance rules changed for part-year staff in 2024. Here is what hospitality employers now need to get right.

More operator guides on the Zynthio blog. How we write them: editorial policy.

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.

Build next week's rota in Zynthio

Start a full 14-day free trial on every site, or open the demo and sign in as a manager to build a rota and as a staff member to see how it lands.