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Documentation

This is a guide to using RotaRight. It explains what each part of the app is for, and how to do the everyday tasks. If you are setting a company up for the first time, start with Getting started, then Locations, Groups, and People.

Questions or something not working? Email [email protected].

What RotaRight is

RotaRight is a staff scheduling and workforce management app. It brings your rota, staff, time tracking, payroll hours, availability, and labour costs together in one place.

Managers can build and publish schedules, manage staff across different locations and teams, handle cover and shift swaps, track clock-ins and worked hours, and compare labour costs against revenue.

Employees can see when they are working, clock in and out, request open shifts, arrange cover or swaps, submit their availability, and manage their own details.

RotaRight works in your web browser and is also available as a mobile app — particularly handy for checking shifts and clocking in and out on the go.

Google Play · App Store

Getting started

Create your password

  1. Open the invite email.
  2. Follow the link to create your password.
  3. Choose a password and confirm it.

Until your password is created, the invite cannot be used to enter RotaRight. If the link has expired, use Forgot password on the sign-in page with the same email address.

Sign in

  1. Open RotaRight.
  2. Enter your email and password.
  3. Choose Sign in.

First setup for a new company

A new company starts with one admin, already listed in People, and no locations, groups, or shifts. Set it up in this order:

  1. Add at least one location.
  2. Add groups if you use them, and assign them to the locations where they are used. Groups are optional.
  3. Add people and assign their locations and groups. Creating them sends their invite.
  4. Build a week on the schedule and publish it.

Check Settings when you're ready to configure things like hourly rates, clock-in rules, and notifications.

Roles

Everyone has one access level. It controls which parts of RotaRight they can access and what they can manage.

Admin

Admins have full access to the company and everything in RotaRight.

Manager

Managers manage the locations and groups they are associated with.

Employee

Employees use RotaRight for their own work rather than managing the company.

Home

Home is your day-to-day view. What you see depends on your role.

All users

Managers and admins

You also see:

Home is also where your in-app notifications appear. A green dot highlights something new, first on Home, then on the relevant section and row, so you can see what needs your attention.

Use the location filter at the top when you want to focus on a particular location.

Tap a row to see more or take any available actions. Managers and admins can approve or decline requests from Pending approvals.

Locations

A location is a place your team works, such as a shop, office, or venue. RotaRight uses locations to keep each workplace and its staff organised.

Open People, then Locations. Admins can create locations. Managers can edit locations they are associated with, but cannot create or delete them.

Add a location

  1. Choose Add location.
  2. Enter the location name.
  3. Search for the address, town, or postcode and set the pin.
  4. Set the clock-in radius. If location is required for clocking, people must be inside this area to clock in or out. Admins can turn this requirement on or off in Settings.
  5. Add shift presets for shifts you use regularly, such as “Morning 9:00–5:00”. These make creating shifts on the schedule quicker.
  6. Choose the groups that are used at this location.
  7. Save.

Edit or delete

Open a location to change its name, address, clock-in radius, shift presets, or groups.

Only admins can delete locations.

Groups

A group is a team within your company, such as Bar, Kitchen, or Management. Groups are optional, and the same group can be used at more than one location.

Groups are associated with both locations and people. The groups available for a person depend on the locations they are assigned to. For example, if someone works at Bath, you can assign them to groups that are used at Bath.

Add a group

  1. Open People, then Groups.
  2. Choose Add group.
  3. Enter a name and choose a colour. The colour is used throughout the schedule, so using distinct colours for groups at the same location makes the rota easier to read.
  4. Save.
  5. Assign the group to the locations where it is used and the people who belong to it.

Managers see groups associated with their locations, as well as groups they belong to. They can create groups and edit the groups they are associated with. Only admins can delete groups.

People

People is your staff directory. Use the filters to find people by location, group, access level, employment type, or active status.

Add a person

  1. Open People and choose Add person.
  2. Enter their first name, last name, and email. Each person must have a unique email address.
  3. Choose their access level: Employee, Manager, or Admin. Managers can create employees and other managers, but not admins.
  4. Choose Hourly or Salaried. New hourly employees start with the company's default hourly rate, which can be changed for that person. Salaried employees have an hourly rate of £0.
  5. Set a start date if needed. A start date hides that person from the schedule before they begin.
  6. Choose the locations they work at and their default location. The default is the location initially selected in location filters as they move around RotaRight.
  7. Choose their groups and default group. Only groups available at their selected locations can be assigned. The default group sets their avatar colour and is automatically selected when adding them to a shift, making schedules quicker to build.
  8. Choose Create user.

Creating the person sends them an email inviting them to create their password. Closing the sheet without Create user does not save. If the invite expires, open the person and choose Resend invite, or they can use Forgot password.

Edit, deactivate, or delete

Open a person to change their details, locations, groups, employment information, or access level.

Managers can manage employees and other managers they have access to. Admins can manage everyone.

Personal details, emergency contacts, and bank details are managed by each person from their own Profile. Approved unavailability is also shown here so managers can see when someone cannot work.

Schedule

Schedule is where managers and admins build and manage the rota. Choose a location and move between weeks using the date controls.

Employees can view the published schedule for their locations. They can see the name, time, group, and location of published shifts, including other people's shifts. They cannot open the shift editor, so they cannot see shift notes, including their own, or another employee's hourly rate. They also cannot see draft shifts, labour costs, or the schedule totals.

Viewing the schedule

Use the location and group filters to choose what you want to see.

Switch between By user and By group to organise the schedule by individual people or by team.

Choose Standard or Compact view to change the amount of space each shift takes up. Compact view is particularly useful for companies with lots of shifts or groups that want to see more of the rota at once.

In By user view, periods when someone has approved unavailability are shown with a grey background. You can still select the cell and add a shift if needed.

The row headers show totals for each person or group. Totals at the bottom of the schedule show the hours and labour cost for each day and the whole week.

These totals use worked hours when they are available; otherwise they use scheduled hours. The switch is for the whole day. Once any shift that day has both a clock-in and a clock-out, that day uses worked hours. Shifts still in progress are left out until they clock out, so their scheduled hours are not added in. Revenue follows the same hierarchy: Actual revenue is used when available; otherwise Predicted revenue is used. This is the same calculation used on the Revenue page, so the figures naturally move from planned to actual as the week progresses.

Select a day heading to open more information about that day, including totals broken down by group. The day information uses the same worked-over-scheduled and actual-over-predicted hierarchy.

Use the date controls to move between weeks. Select the date to return to the current week.

Add a shift

  1. Choose an empty space on the schedule or the add control.
  2. Set the start and end time, or choose one of the location's shift presets.
  3. Choose a person, or Open shift if nobody is assigned yet.
  4. Choose a group, or No group. The person's default group is selected automatically where possible.
  5. Add notes if needed.
  6. Choose Draft or Published.
  7. Add the shift.

When choosing a person, RotaRight shows their approved unavailability. You can override this if you still want to assign the shift. You cannot assign someone to two overlapping shifts. Shifts that only touch, such as one ending at 2pm and the next starting at 2pm, are allowed. Only a real overlap is blocked.

If the end time is the same as or earlier than the start time, RotaRight treats it as an overnight shift ending the following day.

You can also repeat a shift across other days when creating it.

Draft and published

You can build the schedule using drafts, then choose Publish to publish draft shifts together. You can choose the date range you want to publish.

Edit or delete a shift

Open a shift to change its times, person, group, notes, or status.

Managers and admins can also enter or correct the clock-in and clock-out times on a shift. This can be used if someone forgot to clock in or out, or to correct times that have already been recorded.

To move a shift to another date, delete it and create it on the new day.

Deleting a published shift removes it from the live schedule but keeps a record in Activity. Deleting a draft removes it completely.

Templates

Templates are reusable weeks of shifts for a location. They are useful when your rota follows a similar pattern from week to week.

Open Templates from the Schedule. The template editor needs a computer. It is not available on a phone.

Apply a template

When applying a template, you can choose whether to:

You can also repeat the template across multiple weeks.

Before applying a template, RotaRight checks that the resulting shifts are valid. For example, if applying it would give someone overlapping shifts, the template will not be applied and RotaRight will show the problem.

Manage templates

The template editor works much like the Schedule, but is for building and editing reusable templates rather than actual dated shifts.

You can create a blank template, copy shifts from an existing week, rename or duplicate templates, and edit the shifts inside them.

Changing a template does not change shifts that have already been applied to the Schedule.

Master edit

Master edit is an admin tool for viewing and updating lots of people or shifts at once. You can make changes directly in RotaRight or download, edit, and upload a CSV spreadsheet. Master edit needs a computer. It is not available on a phone.

People

Open People, then choose Master edit.

You can edit details including names, email, access level, employment type, hourly rate, start date, locations, groups, and active status. You can also delete multiple people at once.

One of the quickest ways to set up a new company is to add your staff in bulk. Download the CSV, add as many new people as you need, then upload it again. New people are created in the same way as if you added them individually in RotaRight, including sending each person their invite email.

Each existing person has a unique Reference. Do not change this value. It is how RotaRight knows which existing person a row belongs to. You can change any of the other editable values while keeping the Reference the same.

Leave the Reference blank when adding a new person. RotaRight will not create another person if their email address is already in use, protecting against accidental duplicate uploads.

Uploading a CSV

RotaRight checks your CSV before anything is saved. This includes column headings, required fields, formatting, locations, groups, emails, access levels, and other values.

After uploading, you get a chance to review everything before saving:

RotaRight explains any errors it finds. Nothing is saved at the upload stage, so you can look through exactly what has changed, correct any mistakes, and only choose Save when you're happy with everything.

Shifts

Open Schedule, then choose Master edit.

You can view and edit shifts across the selected date range, either directly in RotaRight or by downloading and uploading a CSV.

Each existing shift has a unique Reference. Do not change this value. It is how RotaRight knows which existing shift a row belongs to. Leave the Reference blank when adding a new shift.

You can change details including the date, person, start and end times, group, clock-in and clock-out times, notes, and whether the shift is draft or published. Leave the person blank for an open shift. The date cannot be changed after the shift has been clocked in and out.

RotaRight checks the changes before saving, including for problems such as overlapping shifts.

Open shifts, cover, and swaps

Employees can request open shifts, find cover for their own shifts, or swap shifts with someone else. Managers and admins make the final decision.

Open shifts

Published shifts without anyone assigned appear under Open shifts on Home for eligible employees.

  1. Open the shift.
  2. Choose Request shift.
  3. The request is sent to a manager or admin for approval.
  4. Once approved, the shift is assigned to you.

You can cancel your request while it is still pending.

Find cover

If you cannot work one of your shifts:

  1. Find and open the shift under Your schedule on Home, then choose Find cover.
  2. Choose a person to ask directly. Only people at the same location who are free at that time appear. If the shift has a group, they must belong to that group too. If it has No group, anyone at that location who is free can be chosen.
  3. If you cannot find someone, leave No cover selected.
  4. Choose Request cover.

If you choose a specific person, they accept or decline first. If they accept, a manager or admin makes the final decision. Either person can cancel while it is still pending, including after the other person has accepted.

No cover selected does not turn the shift into an open shift straight away. The request goes to a manager or admin with nobody chosen. Until they approve it, the shift stays yours and there is no second person who can cancel it. If they approve it, the shift becomes unassigned. Eligible people can then request it, and that request needs its own approval.

The request and its current status are shown with the shift under Your schedule on Home and update as it moves through the approval process.

Your shift remains unchanged until a named cover is fully approved. Once approved, the shift is reassigned and you receive a notification.

Swap shifts

If you want to exchange shifts with another person:

  1. Find and open your shift under Your schedule on Home, then choose Swap shift.
  2. Choose a person. Only people at the same location who are free at that time appear. If your shift has a group, they must belong to that group too. If it has No group, anyone at that location who is free can be chosen.
  3. Once you choose a person, Which shift becomes available and shows that person's shifts. Choose the shift you want to swap with.
  4. Choose Request swap.
  5. The other person accepts or declines the swap. If they accept, it goes to a manager or admin for final approval.

The request and its current status are shown with the relevant shift under Your schedule on Home and update as it moves through the approval process. Either person can cancel a pending swap, including after the other person has accepted but while it is waiting for manager approval.

The shifts remain unchanged until the swap is fully approved. Once approved, the shifts are exchanged and you receive a notification.

Approvals

Managers and admins see requests that need their decision under Pending approvals on Home.

More than one employee can request the same open shift. Once one request is approved, the shift is assigned to that person and all other pending requests for that shift are automatically declined.

RotaRight checks that the resulting schedule is valid before a request can be completed, including preventing overlapping shifts.

Availability

Availability lets employees tell managers when they are unavailable to work. Requests can be regular, such as every Tuesday evening, or one-off, such as a particular appointment or holiday.

Add or remove availability

From Availability on Home, choose Add.

Choose between:

Add a note if needed, then submit the request.

The request appears on Home with its current status. Employees can also remove their existing availability from this same section when it is no longer needed.

Approval

New availability requests are sent to a manager or admin for approval. Managers and admins can review them under Pending approvals on Home and approve or decline them.

Once approved, the unavailability appears on the Schedule. In By user view, unavailable periods are shown with a grey background, making them easy to spot when building the rota.

Approved unavailability does not remove or change existing shifts. Managers and admins can still schedule someone during an unavailable period if necessary, but RotaRight shows the unavailability when choosing that person so it is not missed.

Regular availability continues each week until it is changed or removed. One-off availability only applies to the dates and times requested.

Clocking in and out

RotaRight records when employees actually start and finish work. These times are used to calculate worked hours in Payroll and to show managers who is on time, late, or may have forgotten to clock.

Clock in and out

Your next shift appears under Punch clock on Home.

When clocking is available, choose Clock in to start your shift and Clock out when you finish.

Admins can set how early employees are allowed to clock in and how late they are allowed to clock out. For example, if early clock-in is set to 15 minutes, the Clock in button becomes available 15 minutes before the shift starts.

If the custom early clock-in or late clock-out allowance is not enabled, RotaRight uses a 10-minute allowance by default.

These allowances help prevent people accidentally recording significantly more time than they were scheduled to work.

Location checks

If your company requires location for clocking, you must be within the location's clock-in radius when you clock in or out.

Your location is only checked at the moment you clock in or out. RotaRight does not track your location in the background.

Each location's address and clock-in radius can be configured from Locations. Admins can turn the location requirement on or off in Settings.

Reminders and late clocking

If notifications are enabled, employees can receive:

Managers can also receive notifications when someone is late clocking in or appears to have forgotten to clock in or out. These use the same grace period.

Notification preferences can be controlled by the company in Settings and by each user from their Profile.

Today's activity

Managers and admins can follow the day's clocking under Today's activity on Home. It shows who is clocked in, still scheduled, finished, late, or appears to have missed a clock.

Timing stays in the normal colour until someone is outside the grace period. After that:

Yellow starts at 10 minutes only when the grace period is the default 10 minutes.

If someone forgets to clock in or out, a manager or admin can open their shift on the Schedule and enter the correct time manually. They can also correct times that have already been recorded.

Payroll and automatic approval

Recorded clock-in and clock-out times are used to calculate the shift's worked hours in Payroll.

Normally, managers or admins review these worked hours on the Payroll page and approve them.

Admins can enable Auto-approve worked hours in Settings and specify an Auto approve window. If an employee clocks in and out within this window around their scheduled shift times, their worked hours are automatically approved, so there is no need to approve them manually on the Payroll page.

While automatic approval is turned on, this same window is the grace period for missed clock-in and clock-out reminders. If that setting is off, those reminders use 10 minutes.

If their clocking falls outside the Auto approve window, the hours are left unapproved for a manager or admin to review.

Payroll

Payroll brings together scheduled hours and actual worked hours so managers and admins can review and approve them before payroll is processed.

Choose a date range and location to view the period you want to work with.

Viewing payroll

Switch between:

Payroll shows scheduled and worked hours, hourly rates, and calculated pay. Totals at the bottom show the overall hours and labour cost for the selected period.

Worked hours come from recorded clock-in and clock-out times. If a time is missing or incorrect, a manager or admin can correct it from the shift before approving the hours.

Approving worked hours

Managers and admins can approve worked hours individually or use Approve all to approve all outstanding worked hours in the selected period.

If Auto-approve worked hours is enabled in Settings, some worked hours may already have been approved automatically. Hours that are not automatically approved remain available for a manager or admin to review.

Download

Download payroll as a CSV file for use in payroll or accounting software.

Two hour formats are available:

In the By shift export, the decimal column is called Hours. In the By user export, it is called Total Hours.

Total pay is calculated from the decimal hours × hourly rate.

Use the text format when you want an easy-to-read record, and the decimal format when you want to use the hours in calculations.

Deactivated people still appear in Payroll if they have worked hours within the selected period.

Revenue

Revenue helps managers and admins compare labour costs against expected and actual revenue, so you can see whether staffing levels are in line with your targets.

Choose the week and location you want to view. The week grid needs a computer. On a phone, Revenue shows one day at a time.

Revenue and labour costs

For each day, you can enter:

Predicted revenue, actual revenue, and target labour percentage can all be repeated across other dates to make entering figures quicker.

Admins can also set a default target labour percentage in Settings.

Current labour percentage

RotaRight automatically calculates the current labour percentage using the most relevant figures available.

For revenue, it uses Actual revenue when entered. If there is no actual figure yet, it uses Predicted revenue.

For labour cost, it uses worked hours when they are available. Otherwise, it uses the scheduled hours. The switch is for the whole day. Once any shift that day has both a clock-in and a clock-out, that day uses worked hours. Shifts still in progress are left out until they clock out, so their scheduled hours are not added in.

This means the percentage naturally moves from a forecast towards the real result as the week progresses.

The percentage is highlighted against your target:

For example, with a target of 25%, 18% would be green, 22% yellow, and 27% red.

Totals at the bottom give you an overview of revenue, labour costs, and labour percentage across the whole week.

Schedule

Revenue information is shared with the Schedule. Updating predicted revenue, actual revenue, or target labour percentage here also updates the figures shown on the Schedule page, and vice versa.

This lets you use predicted revenue while building the rota to check planned staffing costs, then add actual revenue later to see how the final labour percentage performed.

Notifications

RotaRight has three types of notifications: in-app notifications on Home, push notifications, and email notifications.

In-app notifications

In-app notifications are always available and do not depend on the company's push or email settings.

New activity is highlighted with a green dot on Home, then on the relevant section and individual item. This lets you see what has changed or needs your attention without a separate notifications page.

Once you leave Home, these notifications are cleared because you have seen them. Punch clock alerts remain if they are still relevant — for example, if you still need to clock in.

Notifications for other locations are only cleared when you have viewed that location on Home. If Home is filtered to a different location, unseen notifications elsewhere remain until you view the relevant location.

Company controls

Admins have two company-wide notification controls in Settings:

When either is disabled, users keep their personal preferences, but notifications of that type are not sent. This means an admin can turn them back on later without everyone having to configure their preferences again.

Security emails are separate. For example, users will still receive an email when their password is changed regardless of the company's notification settings.

Personal push notifications

When company push notifications are enabled, each user can choose the push notifications they want from Profile.

Reminders

Activity

These notifications are for managers and admins:

Schedule and requests

Push notifications also require notification permission on the device. If permission has been denied at device level, RotaRight cannot display them even when they are enabled in Profile.

Email notifications

Email notifications are deliberately more limited and are used for important changes to your scheduled work.

When enabled, RotaRight sends an email when a shift is assigned, updated, cancelled, or you are removed from it.

These are the same types of changes covered by the Shift changes push notification, with email providing an additional notification for these higher-importance schedule changes.

Users can control their own shift-change email preference from Profile, provided company email notifications are enabled.

Activity

Activity gives admins a history of important actions across the company. Use it to see what happened, when it happened, who performed the action, and who or what it affected.

Open Settings, then Activity feed.

Activity covers Users, Shifts, Open shifts, Swaps, Covers, and Availability, as well as clocking and payroll activity.

Filtering activity

Use the filters to narrow down the history you want to see:

The numbers beside the filters show how many matching activities there are, making it easy to narrow down a large history.

How much detail is recorded

The amount of information available depends on the type of activity.

For most records, RotaRight knows when something was created or updated and who performed the action, but does not keep a complete before-and-after history of every individual field. For example, Activity may show that a shift was updated without showing every value that changed from its previous value.

More important operational events contain more specific information. Clock-ins and clock-outs, for example, record the relevant clocking activity.

Requests can also have several stages. RotaRight can show when a request was submitted or updated by an employee and when it was later reviewed by a manager or admin. This means the Activity feed can reflect the different actions a cover, swap, open shift, or availability request passed through before its final approval or rejection.

Activity and approvals

Activity is a historical record rather than an approvals page. It is useful for looking back at what has happened across the company.

Requests that currently need a manager or admin decision appear under Pending approvals on Home instead.

Profile

Profile is where you manage your own account, personal information, and notification preferences.

Open your profile from the profile icon in RotaRight.

Personal details

You can view and update your own:

You can also change your email address. It is used for your RotaRight account.

Work information

Profile shows your company information, including your access level, locations, groups, employment type, and hourly rate.

These details are controlled by a manager or admin rather than from your own Profile. If something is incorrect, ask a manager or admin to update it from People.

Notification preferences

You can choose which available push and email notifications you want to receive.

These preferences work within the company-wide notification settings. If your company has disabled push or email notifications, your preferences are kept but those notifications will not be sent.

Password and account

You can change your password from Profile.

You can also log out of RotaRight or use the Support section if you need help.

Settings

Settings contains company-wide options and is available to admins only. Changes here affect how RotaRight works across the company.

Company

Set or update your company name and other company-wide defaults.

You can also set the default hourly rate used when creating new hourly employees. The rate can still be changed individually for each person.

Set the default target labour percentage used for Revenue. Individual days can have a different target when needed.

Clocking and worked hours

Configure the rules used when employees clock in and out:

While automatic approval is turned on, the Auto approve window is also the grace period for missed clock-in and clock-out reminders. If that setting is off, those reminders use 10 minutes. Once someone passes the grace period without clocking, the relevant employee and manager notifications can be triggered if enabled.

Worked hours outside the Auto approve window are not automatically approved and remain for a manager or admin to review in Payroll.

Notifications

Admins can turn push notifications and email notifications on or off across the whole company.

These are master controls. Users keep their individual preferences in Profile, but cannot receive that type of notification while it is disabled at company level.

Security emails, such as password-change emails, are not affected by these controls.

Activity

Open Activity feed from Settings to view the company's history of important actions and changes.

You can filter the history by category, location, action, who performed it, who it affected, and date. See Activity for more detail.