Staff clock-in app for hospitality

Paper timesheets go wrong in the same ways every week. Someone forgets to sign out after a late close. Someone writes 5pm when they walked in at quarter past. On Monday you're piecing together who worked what from the rota and memory before the hours go to payroll.

A staff clock-in app fixes the basics: a time recorded when someone starts and finishes, next to the shift they were rota'd for, ready to hand over at the end of the week.

What a clock-in app should do for a venue

For a pub, café, restaurant, bar or hotel, a clock-in app earns its place if it does four things well:

• Quick to use at the start of a shift. Staff arrive in a rush. Clocking in should take seconds on their own phone or a tablet by the door.
• Hours next to the rota. A list of clock-in times is only half the picture. You want to see planned against actual for each person and each day, so you notice the shift that ran an hour over or the person who left early.
• Hours out, ready for payroll. At the end of the week you need total hours per person in a format your payroll person can use, without retyping.
• In the same app as the rota. If clocking in sits in a separate system, someone ends up matching names and dates by hand.

How clocking in works in ShiftComplete

Clocking in and out is a setting you switch on for your account. Once it's on:

Staff clock in on their phone or the shared tablet

Staff clock in and out on their own phone, or on the shared tablet you keep in the venue (behind the bar, on the pass, by the staff door). There's nothing to install: ShiftComplete runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or computer, and there's also an Android app.

Managers see hours worked against the rota

The hours each person actually worked sit against the rota you published. A bartender rota'd 6pm to close who clocked out at 1:30am shows up clearly, so you can deal with it that week, not at the end of the month.

Hours download as a spreadsheet, with a total per person

When it's time for payroll, download the hours as a spreadsheet with a total per person and pass it to whoever runs your payroll. ShiftComplete doesn't run payroll itself and has no direct payroll link, so the spreadsheet is the hand-over.

What it doesn't do

We'd rather you knew up front: there's no GPS tracking, no geofencing and no facial recognition. Staff clock in on their phone or the shared tablet and managers check the hours against the rota. In a venue where the manager can see who's on shift, that's often enough. If you need location or biometric checks, see the price comparison below.

Phone or shared tablet: which suits you?

Staff phones suit venues where people start in different places or at staggered times, such as a hotel with housekeeping, reception and breakfast. Nobody queues at a device.

A shared tablet suits a single entrance and a team that arrives together, such as a café opening at 7am. It's also the answer for staff who'd rather not use their own phone at work.

Plenty of venues use both. In ShiftComplete the shared tablet does double duty: it's also where staff log fridge temperatures and tick off opening and closing checklists.

Comparing clocked hours with the rota

The rota is the plan; clocked hours are what happened. Looking at the two together each week helps you:

• Spot creeping labour cost. Ten minutes over on every shift across a team of 15 adds up fast. ShiftComplete shows labour cost while you build the rota; clocked hours tell you whether the week stayed on plan. Our guide to labour cost percentage explains how to set a target.
• See who's really working regular hours. Useful for holiday pay and for anyone on a zero-hours contract. See our guide to zero-hours contracts in hospitality.
• Settle disputes with facts. "I stayed till close" is easy to check when the clock-out time is there.

Working time and break records

Clocked hours are a practical record of when people actually worked, which matters for a few UK rules:

• Working time records. In Great Britain, regulation 9 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 says employers must keep records adequate to show they've complied with the limits, such as the 48-hour average week (normally averaged over 17 weeks) unless someone has opted out in writing, and keep them for two years. The regulations allow any reasonable format.
• Minimum wage records. GOV.UK says it's the employer's responsibility to keep records proving they pay the minimum wage, and those records must be kept for at least 6 years.
• Breaks and rest. Adults working more than 6 hours a day are entitled to one uninterrupted 20-minute break, and to 11 hours' rest between working days. Young workers get 30 minutes if they work more than 4.5 hours and 12 hours' daily rest. Northern Ireland's rules on rest breaks follow the same lines (see nidirect).

Clocked start and finish times make long days and short turnarounds easy to spot, which is where break and rest rules usually bite in hospitality: the late close followed by an early open. Plan breaks on the rota, then use our free staff hours and rest break checker to test a week. For the full rules, read our UK working time guide for hospitality. You remain responsible for meeting the rules; the app helps you keep the records.

What a clock-in app costs

Some rota apps include clocking in, some charge extra. Here's what a 15-person venue would pay a month at list price on monthly billing, as of November 2026:

Each is priced differently: ShiftComplete at £1.49 per staff member, Planday at £2.99 per user billed in bundles of five, Deputy at £3.25 per user, Shiftbase at £26 for six staff plus £3.50 each, and RotaCloud in staff bands. If you need geofencing, biometrics or a payroll link, Deputy, Planday or Shiftbase may be worth the higher price. Our guide to how much rota software costs in the UK compares more apps for teams of 10, 20 and 40.

Pricing and trial

ShiftComplete is £1.49 per staff member per month, with clocking in and every other feature included. No per-site fee, no contract, and you can remove staff any time. For 100+ staff, talk to us.

It's free for 60 days with no card needed to start. Set-up takes about five minutes, and you can book a free 15-minute set-up call if you'd like a hand switching on clocking in and getting the tablet set up.

What an operator says

ShiftComplete was built inside Kirkham Hospitality, our own hospitality group, which runs The Lounge in Oswestry and Knock & Snitch.

"The rota stopped being a Sunday-night argument the week we switched over." Graeme Kirkham, Owner, The Lounge Oswestry & Knock & Snitch

Read the Kirkham Hospitality story.

Who it suits

• Pubs, cafés, restaurants, bars and hotels moving off paper timesheets or a signing-in book.
• Owners and GMs who want hours worked next to the rota, not in a separate system.
• Venues that hand hours to a bookkeeper or accountant for payroll and want a clean spreadsheet each week.
• Groups with more than one venue, who want a group dashboard and area-manager roles under one login.