Hospitality rota software that costs the week while you build it
Drag shifts onto the week and the wage bill moves as you go, with employer NI and the under-21 rate worked out properly. You see wages as a share of expected takings before the rota goes out. The rota and every staff file are part of the £100 a site.
Your own login to our four-site demo group, in your inbox in about a minute, for 14 days. Nick rings everyone who tries it.
The rota at the Bramblewood Arms, our demo pub
See what next week costs before you publish it
Find out on the Wednesday that next week is £600 over, while there is still time to take a shift out.
Drag-and-drop shifts
Live UK labour cost forecast
Wet, food and rooms forecast
Change history
Rota sign-off, if you want it
Wage costs stay private
Your wage percentage before the rota goes out
Watch 27 seconds of two shifts dragged onto next week at the demo pub, the cost and the payroll percentage moving as they land, employer NI and the under-21 rate included. Then sign in and drag some yourself.
What the film shows
- Next week’s rota at the Bramblewood Arms: wages come to 22.7% of forecast sales so far.
- Callum is 19: five more hours add £63.55 in wages and nothing in employer NI.
- The same shift for Idris, who is over 21, adds £9.53 of employer NI as well.
- The week now comes to 23.0% of forecast sales, and nobody sees the new shifts until you publish.
Who answers to whom, and who covers when the head of department is off
Draw the structure once, and holiday approvals, failed-check alerts and what each role can see all come off it. Staff see their own week on their phone.
Holiday requests find the right manager on their own
The org chart sets the route when the request goes in: head of department, their assistant, then up the chain to head office if it runs out.
No requests stuck with a leaver
Cover gaps show while you can fill them
Staff check their own balance
Hiring, from the offer to the first shift
Hospitality hires and loses people quickly, and the paperwork slips. Here the whole run is one pipeline, and the candidate does their half from a link on their phone, with no account needed.
The offer, and whether they’ve opened it
The contract, terms already filled in
The starter form, typed once by them
Right to work, flagged before it lapses
References
First shift, permissions already set
Everyone who has said yes, and what is still outstanding
Nobody finds a missing right-to-work check on the morning it was needed: blocking items must be done before a first shift, and each row shows a starter’s first day and progress.
The staff file you will be asked to produce
Most HR work comes after the hire, when somebody wants proof a policy was read or a leaver can no longer sign in.
Probation end dates that prompt someone
Proof a policy was read
Training with expiry dates
A document store for each person
Leavers, closed properly
Archive, then anonymise
Why the rota belongs with the bookings
A restaurant rota written apart from the bookings is a guess: with 140 covers booked for Sunday and 40 for Tuesday, neither day should be staffed from memory.
In one system the labour forecast sits beside the covers forecast, and the org chart that routes holiday requests also decides who hears about a fridge out of range.
One staff list makes Hendra One staff management software for restaurants, pubs and hotels as well as hospitality rota software, with one record per person from the offer, through right to work records, to the day they leave. For hospitality staff scheduling in the UK, the labour cost forecasting applies employer National Insurance, its thresholds and the under-21 zero band, where a spreadsheet rota tends to overstate what younger staff cost.
Rotas, holidays and HR come in the same flat £100 per site per month as the booking system, the guest CRM and compliance records.
Rota and team questions
Does the rota show what the week will cost?
Yes, as you build it. The forecast uses UK employer costs including National Insurance thresholds, and it applies the under-21 zero employer NI band correctly, which is where most spreadsheet rotas overstate the cost of younger staff.
Can rotas be signed off before staff see them?
Yes. Sign-off is configurable: off, one stage or two, with each stage naming a role from the org chart at site or head office level. Approvers are emailed, and head office gets a list of what is still pending.
How are holiday requests routed?
Approvers are derived live from the org chart: head of department, then their assistant, then up the chain, escalating to a head office role if it runs out. Because it resolves at request time, a leaver never needs their queue reassigned.
Does it keep right-to-work records?
Yes. There is a right-to-work register with document expiry tracking, alongside a staff document store, contract version history and countersigning, all with an audit trail.
Can we run recruitment and onboarding in it too?
Yes. There is an onboarding pipeline covering offers, contracts and starter forms, with candidate-facing links that need no account, references, probation endings and a leavers process.
Does a new starter need an account before they can fill anything in?
No, and that is deliberate. The offer, the contract signature and the starter form all work from a single-use link they can open on a phone. The account is only created when they are ready to start, at which point their role from the org chart decides what they can see.
What happens to the onboarding paperwork once they have started?
It stays on their staff record. The signed contract keeps its version history, the right-to-work documents keep their expiry dates, and the starter form details populate the record rather than being retyped. Nothing has to be filed anywhere separately.
The rest of Hendra One
All of it is in the same £100 a site.
Try it on four busy sites
Leave your details and we’ll email you your own login to Bramblewood Inns, a demo group of four sites with a full diary, rotas, guest list and compliance records. Use every screen as your team would for 14 days, and Nick will ring to see how you are getting on.