A third kind: co-managers

A staff member can also be given full manager access to one location, without owning the account themselves. They sign in the same way as any employee, but land in the full management view instead of the employee portal. See Co-Manager Accounts →

1. Sign up and confirm your email. You'll be asked for your business name and type - this sets a sensible default labour cost target, which you can change any time.
2. Add your location(s) in Setup. Most accounts only need one; multi-site accounts can add as many as they run.
3. Add your staff in the Staff tab - salaried or casual, with their rate, department and leave settings.
4. Build your first week's rota in Rota - tap + on a cell to add a shift.
5. Enter your net sales for the week on the Rota tab to see your budget and labour % against target immediately.
6. Publish when you're happy - this emails every rota'd staff member a link to view their shifts.
7. Switch on what you need in Setup → Attendance & Leave - clock in/out, leave tracking, staff availability, open shifts and swaps are all off by default until you turn them on.

1. Get an invite link from your manager - either emailed to you directly, or shared as a link.
2. Open it and set a password. Your name (and email, if your manager set one) is already filled in.
3. Confirm your email - check your inbox for a confirmation link, then come back and sign in.
4. You'll land on My Shifts - see Viewing Your Rota →. If your workplace uses clock in/out, see Clocking In & Out →.

On iPhone or iPad (Safari)

1. Open the site in Safari. This only works in Safari - Chrome or another browser on iOS can't add a home screen icon.
2. Tap the Share icon - the square with an arrow pointing up, in the toolbar.
3. Scroll down the share sheet and tap "Add to Home Screen."
4. Confirm the name (or edit it) and tap Add in the top right.

A RotaIQ icon now sits on your home screen, alongside your other apps - tap it any time to open straight in.

On Android (Chrome)

1. Open the site in Chrome.
2. Tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner.
3. Tap "Add to Home screen" - on some versions of Chrome this appears as "Install app" instead; either does the same thing.
4. Confirm by tapping Add or Install.

A RotaIQ icon appears on your home screen or app drawer, just like any other installed app.

What's on it

• Budget Health - how this week's cost is tracking against your target.
• Actual Spend - cost so far today and this week, from approved attendance.
• Currently Clocked In - live, refreshes every 30 seconds, and flags anyone clocking in from outside their location's geofence.
• Leave - who's on leave today or this week, with approve/decline actions built in.
• Shift Offers - open shifts and swaps waiting on your approval.
• Staff Alerts, Timesheet Reviews, Cost Breakdown, Special Events, Minimum Wage Check, Pending Invites, Rota Status, Unfilled Shifts, Overtime Cost - each surfaces one thing worth checking without digging into a tab.
• Labour Cost Trend - only shown if you've switched it on in Setup.
• Location Snapshot - on multi-site accounts, a per-location breakdown of spend and clocked-in staff.

Customising it

Click Customize to show, hide, reorder, or reset widgets to the default layout. Your layout is saved per user - a co-manager can arrange theirs differently from yours.

Building the week

• Tap + on a staff/day cell to add a shift - it defaults to 09:00–17:00, ready to adjust.
• Tap an existing shift to edit its start/end time, break (in minutes, paid or unpaid), overtime pay/rate, and role.
• Copy/paste a single day or the whole week to speed up repeat weeks.
• Enter net sales for the week directly on this tab to see your labour % against target update live.

Warnings that keep you out of trouble

• If Staff Availability is switched on, scheduling someone on a day they've marked unavailable shows a warning you can override if needed.
• On multi-site accounts, a badge and warning appear if a staff member already has a shift at a different location the same day - so you don't double-book someone across sites without realising.

Publishing

Click Publish when you're ready to notify staff - it emails everyone with a shift that week a link to view it. Nothing goes out until you click it, and it warns you first if anyone can't be reached (no email on file, or they haven't accepted their invite yet).

Moved or deleted staff

If a shift belongs to someone who's since moved location or been deleted, it won't vanish silently - it appears in a separate red Moved / other staff section at the bottom of the grid, so you can still remove it.

Adding someone

• Choose Salaried (enter their annual salary) or Casual (hourly rate, automatically checked against the National Minimum/Living Wage for their age).
• Set department, pension opt-in, NI category (set automatically from age, overridable), whether they're a manager, a weekly hours cap, email and emergency contact.

Leave settings

• Choose whether their leave is measured in Days or Hours.
• For hours-based staff, choose Fixed allowance (a set number) or Accrued (a percentage of hours actually worked, with no fixed number).
• Set a start date - if it falls partway through the current holiday year, RotaIQ offers to pro-rate their allowance automatically. You can still hand-edit the resulting number afterwards.

Invites & deletion

• Send, resend or revoke a staff member's invite from their profile. If they have an email on file, RotaIQ emails the link automatically; otherwise you'll get a link to copy and share yourself.
• Inviting someone marked as a manager gives them full co-manager access to your account, scoped to their assigned location - see Co-Manager Accounts →.
• Deleted staff move to a Deleted staff list and can be restored at any time without losing their shift, leave or attendance history.

• Add a leave request for any staff member, and approve or decline pending ones here.
• Duration is worked out for you - calendar days for day-based leave, or weekdays × hours-per-day for hours-based leave, so a request spanning a weekend doesn't overstate the total.
• Each staff card shows Used vs. Remaining against their Allowance for the current holiday year. The year's boundary dates - set in Setup → Pay & Budget - are shown at the top, alongside the previous year for reference.
• For accrued-hours staff, remaining balance is calculated from either their scheduled rota hours or their actual clocked hours, depending on the Accrual source toggle in Setup → Pay & Budget.
• Balances reset automatically at the holiday year boundary - nothing to do manually when the year rolls over.

• See every clock-in/clock-out entry per staff member, by week. Edit times inline, or add a reason when correcting one.
• Approve or decline entries individually, or use Approve all for one staff member or for the whole week at once.
• Only approved hours count toward cost and payroll figures - a banner shows how many entries are still pending, so nothing gets missed.
• Every edit is written to an audit trail you can expand per entry, showing what changed, when, and why.
• A cost breakdown toggle shows gross pay, NI and pension for approved hours only.

• Link your login to your own staff record once, from the Staff tab.
• After that, this tab shows your shifts for today and the same clock-in/out widget your employees use.
• You can unlink at any time. Hide this tab entirely from Setup → Attendance & Leave if you don't need it - co-managers and employees keep their own clock-in access regardless.

Weekly Budget Report

Headline cards for staff cost (with its NI/pension breakdown), wage budget vs. your target %, and labour cost % vs. target - plus a day-by-day cost/revenue table. Export as CSV or PDF.

Annual Leave Report

Allowance/used/remaining per staff member for the current holiday year. Accrued-hours staff show "Accrued" instead of a fixed number.

Labour Cost Trend

Only shown if enabled in Setup → Pay & Budget: sales, labour cost and labour % over the last several weeks, with a "no data" message until you've entered weekly sales.

Printable rota

Print the full report or just the rota grid, straight from this tab.

General

Company name, account email, password reset, and account deletion.

Pay & Budget

• Business type - sets your default labour cost target %, which you can override manually.
• Employer NI %, pension %, and leave accrual % - UK statutory defaults are shown, and you can override any of them.
• Accrual source - whether accrued-hours leave counts scheduled rota hours or actual clocked hours.
• Your holiday year start date, and the Labour Cost Trend toggle.

Team

Custom roles with colour tags, and shift presets for the Rota grid.

Locations

Add, rename or delete sites, set a geofencing radius per location for clock-in, and switch your active location. See Locations & Multi-Site → for the full picture.

Attendance & Leave

On/off toggles for Attendance tracking, My Clock (owner), Leave tracking, Staff Availability, Open Shifts, Shift Swaps, and Unassigned Shift Warnings - all off by default until you turn them on.

• Add as many locations as you run from Setup → Locations, each with its own name and optional clock-in geofence radius.
• Staff can be assigned to one location, or marked Shared (all locations) if they work across sites.
• Switch your active location from the top of the app - the Rota, Staff list, and most Dashboard widgets always reflect whichever location you're currently viewing.
• The two exceptions are Actual Spend and Currently Clocked In on the Dashboard, which always total across every location.
• If a shared staff member already has a shift at one location, you'll be warned before double-booking them at another - see Rota →.

• Once switched on in Setup, employees (or you, on their behalf) can declare recurring weekly days they're unavailable, or a one-off date range - optionally with specific hours and a note.
• Scheduling them anyway on the Rota shows a warning badge and a confirm-before-assign prompt - you can still override it if you genuinely need to.

• Open Shifts: mark an unassigned shift as "open" and every eligible staff member is emailed. The first person to claim it still needs your approval before it's confirmed as theirs.
• Shift Swaps: an employee already assigned a shift can offer it to a colleague to take over - again, nothing changes hands until you approve it.
• Both flow through the Shift Offers widget on the Dashboard, where you approve or decline them.

• An optional hourly email to you (and any co-managers) listing every published shift still unassigned 48 hours before it starts.
• Only published rotas count - a draft rota's gaps aren't real yet, so they're not included.
• Switch it on from Setup → Attendance & Leave.

What they can do

• View and edit the rota, add/edit/delete staff, publish rotas, approve or decline leave, and add events and sales figures - scoped to their assigned location.

What they can't do

• Change company settings - name, NI/pension rates, holiday year, locations.
• See or switch to other locations - they're locked to the one they're assigned to.
• Access the onboarding wizard.

1. Open your invite link. Your manager either emailed it to you or shared it directly.
2. Set a password (at least 8 characters). Your name - and email, if your manager set one - is already filled in for you.
3. Check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link in it.
4. Come back and sign in with your email and the password you chose.

• Only published rotas show here - grouped into Today, This Week, This Month, and Coming Up.
• A banner appears whenever your manager has changed the rota since you last checked.
• A bell icon collects anything new - leave decisions, rota changes, and shift-offer outcomes - so you can see at a glance what's changed.
• A History section keeps your past shifts, separate from what's upcoming.

Location checks

Some locations check that you're actually on site before letting you clock in, using your phone or browser's location. If it's set to advisory only, you'll just see a note; if it's enforced, clocking in from too far away will be blocked with a message telling you the distance.

If location permission isn't working

If your browser has blocked or denied location access, you'll see help specific to your device and browser - including separate guidance for Safari on iPhone/iPad and on desktop, since Safari doesn't always report its permission state reliably.

Overnight shifts

If your shift crosses midnight, clocking out still finds your open entry correctly - you won't be stuck unable to clock out just because the date has changed.

• Set a start date, end date, leave type (annual, sick, unpaid, or other), and an optional note, then submit.
• If your leave is measured in hours, weekends are excluded from the calculation automatically - a Monday-to-Friday request counts five days' worth of hours, not seven.
• New requests show immediately as Awaiting manager approval.
• Your balance card shows Total (or Accrued), Used, and Remaining, for the current holiday year set by your manager.

• Weekly: toggle any day of the week you're recurringly unavailable - optionally restricted to certain hours instead of the whole day, with a note if useful.
• One-off: pick a specific date range instead, with the same optional hours and note. You can have several of these at once.
• If your manager schedules you anyway, and if a shift on My Shifts collides with a day you've marked unavailable, you'll see a warning with a one-click shortcut to request leave for that day instead.

Claiming an open shift

See "Available to claim" for shifts your manager has opened up. Claim one and it moves to Your claims - awaiting manager approval. If someone else claims it a moment before you, you'll be told it's already gone rather than the app pretending it worked.

Offering one of your own

On any of your own upcoming shifts, choose Offer this shift and add a note. It appears under Your offers with a status - waiting for a colleague, awaiting manager approval, approved, or declined. You can cancel it yourself as long as it's still open and unclaimed.

• Your manager can send this link as soon as you're on the rota - no account or password required to view it.
• It shows My Shifts and a read-only Leave summary (no request form, just history and balance) and your shift History.
• It doesn't include Clock in/out, Availability, or Open Shifts & Swaps - those need a real login.
• Bookmark it - it's meant to be a link you can revisit any time before setting up your own account. When you're ready, use Accepting Your Invite →.