A bar staff roster app for late closes, late licences and busy weekends

In a late bar, the roster is planned backwards from the close. Thursday might be a normal 11.30pm finish, Friday and Saturday run to 2.30am on a late licence, and the last person out locks up at quarter past three after the glasses, the floors and the cash. The early bar shift on Saturday afternoon is easy to fill. The Saturday close is the one everyone wants to swap.

Bar teams are young, part-time and move around. Students, people with day jobs, a few career bar staff who hold it all together. Availability lives in a group chat, swaps happen behind the bar, and the roster on the office wall is out of date by Friday.

Closing times shape the whole week

Citizens Information gives the normal hours for drinking on the premises as:

A Special Exemption Order, applied for at the local District Court, lets a licence holder serve outside those hours, with 2.30am the latest. Proposals for longer opening hours haven't become law as of October 2026, so plan to the hours you actually hold. Our guide to pub licences and opening hours has the detail.

The rest rules that late closes collide with

Eleven hours between shifts. The Organisation of Working Time Act gives 11 consecutive hours' rest in every 24. If someone finishes at 3.15am on Saturday, they can't start before 2.15pm on Sunday. Put them on a 12 o'clock Sunday shift and you've broken the rule before the doors open.

Weekly rest. 24 consecutive hours off in every seven days, following a daily rest period.

Breaks. 15 minutes after more than 4½ hours worked, 30 minutes after more than 6 (which can include the first 15). A break can't be saved for the end of the shift, which is exactly when a late bar is tempted to put it.

Night work. Night time is midnight to 7am. Someone who normally works at least 3 hours in that window is a night worker, with an 8-hour average limit in each 24 hours and a right to a free health assessment. Your regular late closers may qualify.

Sending people home. If you call someone in and they don't get the hours they expected, they're due a minimum payment of three times the national minimum hourly rate, €42.45 at €14.15 an hour, each time. Rostering to the night you'll actually have beats over-rostering and cutting.

How ShiftComplete builds a bar roster

ShiftComplete is a roster and operations app for hospitality. It runs in the browser on any phone, so your team logs in from a link. Nothing to install.

Availability on their phone. Staff mark days as available, partial or off weeks ahead, with a note ("day job, can't start before 6pm", "home for the weekend 14th"). No more collecting it in the group chat.

Events for the big nights. Late licence on Friday and Saturday, a DJ Thursday, a rugby international on the screens, a private party upstairs. Add the event to the day and the draft carries the extra cover. Day notes tell everyone what's on ("Late licence to 2.30, door staff from 10pm").

A fair share of closes. Weight the people you want on, such as your best cocktail bartender for Saturday or a duty manager for every late close, and ShiftComplete builds a draft roster in seconds, spread fairly so the same three people don't close every weekend. Then drag shifts around until it works.

Areas you name. Set up Main Bar, Cocktail Bar, Upstairs, Floor, Door, Glass Collecting. Each person can have up to four time blocks in a day, each with an area.

Publish once. The roster goes to every phone under My rota and can be emailed on publish. It's dated and the same for everyone, which helps when you need to show staff got their hours in good time. Our guide to roster notice and changes explains the 24-hour rule.

When the close runs late: clocking in and out

Late nights rarely finish on the minute. Switch on clocking in and out and staff clock in and out on their phone or a shared tablet behind the bar. Managers see hours worked against the roster and can download hours as a spreadsheet with a total per person. So when Saturday's 3am finish becomes 3.40am, you have the real finish time, which also tells you when that person's 11 hours' rest actually ends.

A 2am close still counts as today

ShiftComplete's checklists treat a 2am close as part of the same trading day, so the closing checklist ticked after midnight lands on Saturday's record, not Sunday's. Checklists can differ by weekday: Friday and Saturday add the late-licence checks. Every tick is named and timestamped, with a photo if you want one. Incidents, from a broken glass injury to a customer fall, are logged with a photo, severity and status, and maintenance jobs (the ice machine, the glass washer) stay on the dashboard until they're resolved. Temperature logs for the bottle fridges and keg coolers sit in the same app.

A weekend at a city-centre late bar (an example)

Picture a late bar with two floors, a late licence on Friday and Saturday, and 26 staff.

• Availability is in by Tuesday; four students are home for a weekend.
• Events: late licence both nights, a rugby international on Saturday at 5.30pm, a 30th upstairs on Friday.
• The manager weights a duty manager onto both closes and the two strongest cocktail bartenders onto Saturday.
• The draft shares the closes across eight people. She moves the Saturday closers off the Sunday 1pm shift and publishes.

What it costs

€1.99 per active staff member per month. Every feature included, no per-site fee, no contract. A 26-person bar pays €51.74 a month. The first 60 days are free with no card, and set-up takes about five minutes. You can book a free 15-minute set-up call too.

Built inside our own hospitality group

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

"The rota stopped being a Sunday-night argument the week we switched over. The chef stopped being the only person who knows what's in the kitchen. And the EHO turn up to a screen, not a box file." Graeme Kirkham, Owner, The Lounge Oswestry & Knock & Snitch

Who it's for

• Late bars and venues that trade on Special Exemption Orders.
• Cocktail bars and music bars with mostly part-time teams.
• Bar managers who are tired of rebuilding the weekend after every swap.
• Groups with a few bars and staff who cover across them.