Employee Scheduling Software for Hospitality & Restaurants
Create Restaurant Staff Schedules 75% Faster
HotSchedules reduces managers’ time to create, communicate, and manage employee work schedules. Trusted by over 2,000,000 users across 150,000 locations.
- Cut costs, not corners with demand-driven scheduling
- Built in scheduling compliance management
- Integrate your scheduling seamlessly with your existing POS
Workforce Management Built for Restaurants
Managing a restaurant workforce means balancing schedules, tracking hours, navigating compliance, and keeping teams aligned — all at the same time. Fourth’s workforce management solutions are purpose-built for the restaurant and hospitality industry, giving operators the tools to reduce labor costs, improve schedule accuracy, and stay compliant with ever-changing regulations. From front-of-house to back-of-house, Fourth connects scheduling, time and attendance, compliance, and tip management in a single platform. Whether you run five locations or five hundred, Fourth gives your managers time back and your business the visibility it needs to run efficiently every day.
Explore Fourth’s Workforce Management Software Capabilities
Lose the sticky notes, voice mails, and random text messages.
Communicate with your staff how they want, from their phone—no more last-minute calls to the store and no more hard-to-manage spreadsheets.
Start scheduling the easy way and take control of your labor budget with HotSchedules.
Reduce labor spend by 3-5%. 1
1. Fourth Enterprise Data
Build happy teams
Give your team members the flexibility they want, the communication tools they need, and the benefits they deserve.
Modernize operations
Embrace AI-driven solutions to automate tedious yet critical tasks so managers can get back to the work they love.
Overcome tight margins
Start planning your expansion by decreasing labor spend, increasing sales, and improving customer OSAT scores.
Demand-driven scheduling
Never suffer the consequences of under- or overstaffed shifts.
With Fourth’s employee scheduling software, managers can easily create optimal employee schedules based on accurate demand forecasts, compliance legislation, and your unique labor rules.
How it works
Set your labor rules
Generate your demand forecast
Deploy optimized and compliant schedules
Give employees schedule flexibility
Schedule your restaurant staff faster online
Create schedules faster, approve shift swaps, and reduce scheduling errors—all with the tap of a button right from your phone. No matter the size of your operation, HotSchedules gives your restaurant the mobile scheduling tools to manage your workforce the way they want to be managed.
- Reduce scheduling errors, shortages, and overages.
- Any schedule changes automatically update employee schedules
- Get overtime alerts, weather alerts, and forecasting tools
- Simplify scheduling with a drag-and-drop interface
- Keep time off, PTO, availability, and hours in one centralized spot
- Approve or deny shift transactions in one click
Text, message, and email groups by department, company-wide, or individually
Making schedule changes? Just text your team. Need a shift covered right now? Yep, you can do that, too. No more bulletin boards, phone calls, sticky notes, or lost vacation requests—it’s all centralized in the app.
- Mobile messaging hub for better communication among team members
- Broadcast messages across stores before employees can view their schedules
- Syncs with Google Calendar
- Handle shift swaps and schedule changes from your phone
- Make company-wide announcements
Shift swaps, schedule changes, and emergency notifications sent and approved from your phone
Changes to the schedule can’t be avoided, but with HotSchedules, employees can request to swap, release, and pick up shifts right from their mobile devices. The work schedule and roster are instantly updated with a manager’s approval. Changing a schedule has never been so easy.
- Release a scheduled shift right from your phone
- Notify others when you want to pick up a shift
- Swap shifts between employees, then send to manager for approval
- Any schedule changes automatically update the schedule
- Notify employees on their app
Protect your business
You didn’t sign up to be a lawyer, so it’s time to blacklist “compliance” from your to-do list. With our automated compliance management system built directly into our scheduling solution, you can save your managers time, minimize your risk of non-compliance, and protect your company’s wallet and reputation.
Save 2% in penalty pay. 1
1. Fourth Enterprise Data
Stop chasing data
Siloed data is wasted data. With employee scheduling software, quickly identify staff rota scheduling and labor trends at the individual, regional, and national level by making workforce management data accessible and digestible.
Our custom KPI dashboards make it easy to access popular reports like:
- Sales & labor costs
- Labor variance
- Proforma
Integrate with your point-of-sale (POS)
Integrate labor, sales, guest, and historical data through multiple POS system integrations. Enforce clock-in/clock-out times and eliminate duplicate schedules. With POS-generated labor and sales data, your employee schedules will be more accurate than ever.
- Integrate labor, sales, guest, and historical data
- Sync/Push HotSchedules to POS and vice versa
- Use historical data to optimize schedules and provide better forecasting
- Enforce clock-in/out times with our employee clocking system and eliminate duplicate schedules
“HotSchedules has definitely been instrumental in freeing up time for management to be more involved on the work floor to ensure the operation is going well, including customer service.”
Frank Crawford, Corporate Training and Education, Braum’s
HotSchedules
Slash admin time, drive profitability, and empower your employees with HotSchedules, the hospitality industry’s #1 workforce management solution.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does employee scheduling software help me stay compliant?
Not all scheduling software prioritizes compliance. At Fourth, however, our in-house compliance team works directly with our product teams to ensure the latest federal, state, and local regulations are configured directly into the platform. That means as managers schedule, they’ll receive real-time alerts around overtime, Fair Workweek, minor labor law violations, and more. And by integrating scheduling with time-tracking and attendance, managers also receive real-time alerts for late clock-ins, missed breaks, overtime, etc., to take quick action and prevent costly penalties.
How does employee scheduling software help lower labor spending?
Labor is not only one the largest expenses a business faces but often one of the most unstable expenses from over or understaffing shifts. With accurate demand forecasting and labor optimization technology, you’ll have the necessary insights to create schedules based on customer demand. And when demand is staffed properly, labor budgets go down and sales go up.
Why do employees love Fourth’s scheduling app?
Employees want more control of their schedules, a safe place to share feedback, and easy ways to communicate with managers and team members. With Fourth’s workforce management solution, this is all possible. Ranked the #1 business app, employees can easily message managers and co-workers without sharing phone numbers. They can swap, drop, and pick-up shifts in a few taps, creating a flexible work environment. And with our anonymous employee surveys, there’s always an opportunity to share feedback on anything from menu updates to policy changes.
What measurable results can I expect from using HotSchedules?
HotSchedules delivers four headline results: 3% profit margin improvement, 5% reduction in labor costs, 75% reduction in scheduling time, and 30% increase in retention. One customer — Candice Barnett, Sr. Director of Off-Premises Dining Operations — reported markets achieving 2 full percentage points in labor savings after full operator buy-in.
How much faster can managers build schedules with HotSchedules?
HotSchedules reduces scheduling time by 75% on average — and for some operators, the results go further. Braum’s cut scheduling time by 85%, freeing managers to step away from their desks and refocus on the floor for customer service and day-to-day operations.
How widely is HotSchedules used in the industry?
HotSchedules is the hospitality industry’s #1 workforce management solution, trusted by more than 2 million users across 120,000 locations worldwide.
How does demand-driven scheduling work?
The process runs in three steps: (1) labor rules are configured during implementation — e.g. 2 servers and 1 bartender for every $2,000 in Friday sales; (2) AI forecasting generates a demand forecast and auto-creates house shifts to meet it; (3) Auto Schedule assigns employees to those shifts based on availability, skill level, and labor laws — producing an optimized, compliant schedule in seconds.
How accurate is Fourth’s AI labor forecasting compared to manual scheduling?
Moving from manual calculations to AI forecasting improves schedule accuracy by up to 75%, by analyzing sales history, guest count trends, and external data points.
What data does Fourth’s forecasting use to predict staffing needs?
The forecasting engine draws on labor rules set during implementation, historical sales and guest count data pulled from your POS, and external data inputs — auto-generating house shifts that align staffing to expected demand for each time period.
Can managers approve or deny shift requests on mobile?
Yes. Managers receive shift swap, drop, and pickup requests directly on their mobile app — including any compliance warnings — so they can make informed approval decisions on the go in a single tap.
How does team communication work in HotSchedules?
HotSchedules includes a mobile messaging hub where managers can send messages to individuals, departments, or the entire company — without anyone sharing personal phone numbers. Managers can broadcast messages across stores before employees view their schedules, and all communication is centralized in the app.
How do shift swaps and releases work for employees?
Employees can release or swap shifts in the HotSchedules mobile app by selecting the shift and providing a reason. Managers receive all requests in a centralized location for one-tap approval. Automatic shift pickup can also be configured so open shifts are filled without manual intervention.
