The rota, the hours and the holiday in one place
Build the week, publish it, and let the hours come from staff clocking in. Unlimited users on every plan, because a rota priced per head punishes the teams hospitality actually has.
A rota is easy until it changes
And it changes every week, usually on a Friday
The rota lives in a spreadsheet
One person owns the file. It gets printed on Friday, photographed, and sent round. By Tuesday three shifts have changed and the photo in everyone's phone is wrong.
You pay per head for it
Rota tools charge £2.50 to £6.50 a user. A fifty-person team, half of them part-time students who work six shifts a month, costs more than the rest of your software put together.
The rota does not know who is trained
Nothing stops you putting somebody on a Saturday night when their food hygiene certificate lapsed in March, or rostering a seventeen-year-old past ten at night. You find out when somebody checks.
Hours are reconstructed from memory
Payroll week starts with a manager working out who actually turned up, from a paper clock-in book, a group chat and their own recollection of who left early.
A rota that knows who is trained, and hours that count themselves
Paddl builds the week, publishes it to the people on it, and turns their check-ins into a timesheet you approve and export. Because it sits next to your training records and your compliance tasks, it can warn you about a shift before you publish it, and it can give a temperature check to somebody who is actually in the building.
Build a week without building it again
Copy last week, or save a shape you use often as a template and apply it. A template holds the times, the teams and the areas, so a standard week is one click rather than forty. It knows the clocks change, and it will not build the same shift twice if you apply it again.
Warnings before you publish, not after
Paddl already knows who is trained, whose certificates are current, who is under 18 and who is on approved leave. Drop somebody onto a shift they should not be on and it says so. It warns rather than blocks, because sometimes you have agreed it with them in person.
Publishing is a promise, and it is timed
Nothing reaches staff until you publish. When you do, everybody rostered gets one notification for the week rather than one per shift. Every change after that is recorded with how much notice it gave, which is the thing the Employment Rights Act cares about.
Hours that come from check-ins
Staff clock in from the app against the shift they are on. Timesheets are built from that overnight and show the day-by-day breakdown, including anything flagged: a no-show, a missing break, a shift somebody worked without being rostered. Approve the week in one action.
Holiday worked out properly
Statutory 5.6 weeks, capped at 28 days, with the 12.07 per cent accrual for irregular-hours and part-year workers that most systems either skip or get wrong. Approving a request shows the balance it leaves and the shifts it clashes with, before you decide rather than after.
Swaps that do not need you
Somebody who cannot make a shift offers it, with a note saying why. Colleagues who could actually take it are the ones told, not everybody at the site. When one claims it, you get a decision to make rather than a problem to solve.
What changes
The difference between a spreadsheet and a rota with a memory
How venues use it
A pub with a rotating student team
Twenty-odd staff, most of them part-time, several of them under 18. Per-user pricing punishes exactly this shape of team, and the under-18 rules are the ones easiest to breach by accident. Both are handled: unlimited users, and a warning when a shift would break the rules for a young worker.
A hotel running several departments
Housekeeping, kitchen, front of house and maintenance all on one grid, filtered by team. Publish the whole week at once and each person gets told about their own shifts, not everybody else's.
A group with sites in more than one town
Each site keeps its own week, its own timesheet period and its own notice target. A manager sees the sites they are responsible for and nothing else, and the same is true of leave requests, which are special-category data when somebody is off sick.
The week payroll is due
Approve the timesheets, then export. The file carries hours, pay rates as they stood on the day, and tronc if you run it. Rates are frozen onto each line when the timesheet is built, so a pay rise in April does not quietly restate what March cost.
Somebody hands in a holiday request
It arrives as a decision with the answer attached: how much holiday they have left, what approving it leaves them with, and which shifts it clashes with. Declining takes a reason, which is what stops a decline arriving as a bare no.
A shift nobody has picked up
A published shift with nobody on it is offered to the staff who could cover it. If it is still empty two days out, the manager is told before it becomes the morning nobody arrives.
A worker checking their own hours
They see the week day by day, what was approved, and why a day is short if it is. An adjustment carries the manager's reason, so a quiet correction is something they can query rather than something they only notice on the payslip.
Proving you gave enough notice
Every publish and every change is recorded with the notice it gave against your target. That is the report to open when somebody asks whether short-notice changes are a pattern or a bad fortnight.
Frequently asked questions
What is rota software?
It is the system that takes a working week from a blank grid to everybody knowing when they are in, and then to a payroll figure at the end of it. In practice that means building shifts, publishing them so staff can see them, recording who actually turned up, and handling the holiday, swaps and availability that change the plan. Paddl does all of that in the same place as your compliance records, which is what lets it warn you before you roster somebody whose training has lapsed.
How much does Paddl's rota cost?
It is included at £69 per location per month, with unlimited users. Rota tools normally charge per head, from about £2.50 to £6.50, so a fifty-person team costs £125 to £325 a month before you add anything else. The difference is widest in hospitality precisely because the teams are large and part-time.
Can staff see their shifts on their phone?
Yes. Staff see their own week in the app, clock in against the shift they are on, check their hours, book time off, set the days they cannot work and offer or claim swaps. Managers can approve leave and swaps from the app too, so a request that arrives on a Sunday does not wait for somebody to find a laptop.
Does it handle holiday entitlement?
Yes, including the part most systems get wrong. Statutory entitlement is 5.6 weeks capped at 28 days for somebody on fixed hours, but irregular-hours and part-year workers accrue at 12.07 per cent of the hours they actually work, and that figure moves every week. Paddl tracks both, and shows a manager the balance a request would leave before they approve it rather than after.
Can Paddl replace RotaCloud or Deputy?
For most hospitality businesses, yes. Building, publishing, timesheets, payroll export, holiday, swaps and availability are all covered. What the specialists do that Paddl does not is demand forecasting from till data, automatic shift generation and workforce rules written around union agreements. If those are why you bought one, keep it.
Does the rota know about training and certificates?
Yes, and this is the part a standalone rota tool cannot do. Because training records, certificates and the rota are in one system, dropping somebody onto a shift can check whether the role needs a certificate they do not have, whether theirs expires before the shift, whether they are under 18, and whether they are already on approved leave. It warns rather than blocks, because a manager who has agreed something in person should not be stopped by software.
How much notice do I have to give for a shift change?
There is no single statutory notice period in the UK, but the Employment Rights Act sets the framework and reasonable notice is what tribunals and employees expect. Paddl records the notice every change gave against a target you set per site, defaulting to seven days, and the change report shows the pattern rather than individual incidents. Cancelling a shift at short notice repeatedly is the thing that becomes a problem, and this is what makes it visible.
Does the rota work offline?
On the app, mostly. Cellars and walk-ins are where the signal goes, so requesting leave, setting availability and offering a shift all work with no connection and send when the phone finds signal again. Claiming somebody else's shift deliberately does not queue: it is a race, and replaying it an hour later could tell somebody they picked up a shift that went to a colleague.
Ready to stop printing the rota?
Start your free 30-day trial and build next week in Paddl instead. Unlimited users, however big the team. Card required.
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