Restaurant staff management that runs on their phones
Tappflow's restaurant staff management keeps shifts, roles, and sections straight without a binder or a back-office terminal: staff clock in and out from their phones, owners and managers control access with clear roles, and per-staff table assignments make sure every guest request reaches the right waiter.
Free 30-day trial · No credit card · Cancel any time
- Clock-in and clock-out shift tracking from any phone — no time-clock hardware
- Owner, manager, and staff roles with sensible permissions out of the box
- Per-staff table assignments route each table's requests to its waiter
The floor plan lives in someone's head
Who's covering the patio tonight? Whoever remembers the pre-shift huddle. Who was actually on last Tuesday when the till came up short? Whatever the paper timesheet says, if you can find it. When sections exist only as verbal agreements, guest requests go to whoever's nearest instead of whoever's responsible, new hires shadow someone for a week just to learn who does what, and the manager spends the first thirty minutes of every shift re-explaining a plan that changed an hour ago.
Paper timesheets and he-said-she-said hours
Digital clock-in and clock-out from each staff member's own phone
Sections agreed verbally, forgotten instantly
Table assignments live in the dashboard, visible to the whole team
Everyone logging in with the owner's account
Owner, manager, and staff roles keep access matched to responsibility
Guest requests answered by whoever happens to be closest
Requests route automatically to the waiter assigned to that table
Shifts, roles, and sections — organized where the work happens
Tappflow treats your team as part of the operating system, not an afterthought. Invite staff by role — owner, manager, or staff — and each person gets the access their job needs and nothing more. Shifts are tracked with clock-in and clock-out from a phone, so hours are recorded as they happen rather than reconstructed at payroll time. Table assignments turn the night's floor plan into live routing: when a guest at table twelve taps to call a waiter or request the bill, the push notification goes to the phone of the person assigned to table twelve, not to a shared tablet everyone ignores. Managers adjust sections mid-shift as the room changes, staff mark requests handled from a mobile-first dashboard, and the whole arrangement is visible to everyone — no binder, no huddle amnesia, no expensive hardware.
Clock-in and clock-out from any phone
Staff start and end shifts from their own phones, and every shift is recorded as it happens. Payroll disputes shrink to a lookup, patterns like chronic lateness become visible early, and nobody's hours depend on a paper timesheet surviving a week next to the fryer.
Roles that match real responsibility
Owners see everything; managers run the floor, staff, and day-to-day operations; staff see their assignments and requests. Clear roles mean you can invite your whole team without handing everyone the keys — and offboarding a departed employee is one click, not a password change everyone shares.
Per-staff table assignments with live routing
Assign each waiter their tables and the platform enforces the plan: guest requests from a table fire a push notification to its assigned waiter's phone, with the table number and timestamp. Sections stop being verbal agreements and become how requests, accountability, and tips actually flow.
A mobile-first staff dashboard
Staff see their open requests on their phones and mark them handled with a tap — no central tablet at the pass, no shouting relay through the kitchen. New hires learn the system in minutes because it works like every app they already use.
Team size that scales with your plan
Team member capacity grows by tier — a handful on the free plan, scaling to ten on Pro and unlimited above — so a two-person café and a full-brigade restaurant both fit. Invitations, roles, and shift records all live in the same dashboard as your menus and tables.
How staff management works day to day
From inviting your team to routing the night's requests — set up once, adjust in seconds every shift.
Invite your team with roles
Send invitations and set each person as owner, manager, or staff. Everyone gets access matched to their job, on their own phone, with their own login.
Staff clock in as the shift starts
Each team member starts their shift from their phone, so the dashboard always knows who's on the floor right now — and payroll knows exactly what happened later.
Assign the night's sections
Managers assign tables to each waiter in the dashboard, and can reshuffle mid-shift as the room changes — the floor plan stays live instead of frozen at the pre-shift huddle.
Requests route themselves
When a table taps to call a waiter or ask for the bill, the alert goes straight to the assigned waiter's phone, and they mark it handled when it's done.
“When sections, shifts, and requests run themselves, managers manage the room — not the paperwork.”
3
roles — owner, manager, staff — each with the right access
1
phone per staff member is all the hardware you need
10
team members on Pro, scaling to unlimited above
Frequently asked questions
Everything owners ask about staff management before switching.
Owners have full control of the project, billing, and team. Managers run operations — menus, tables, assignments, and staff — without owner-level control. Staff see their own assignments and handle the requests routed to them. Everyone logs in as themselves, so access ends when employment does.
Staff start and end their shifts from their own phones in the browser — no time-clock terminal, no punch cards. Shifts are recorded as they happen, giving you an accurate, reviewable record of who worked when, ready for payroll instead of reconstructed from memory.
A manager reassigns the tables in the dashboard and routing updates immediately — the next request from those tables goes to the new waiter's phone. The floor plan is live data, so covering a break or splitting a busy section takes seconds, not a round of verbal updates.
No. Everything — clocking in, seeing assignments, receiving request notifications, marking them handled — runs in the mobile browser with web push alerts. New team members are productive the same shift they're invited, with zero IT setup.
It scales with your plan — from a small crew on the free tier to ten on Pro and unlimited on the top tier. Check the pricing section for current limits; the free 30-day trial is an easy way to run your real roster through a full week of services.
Works better together
Every Tappflow feature runs on the same tags, tables, and dashboard — turn one on and the rest are a click away.
See it live at your own tables
Set up in an afternoon, test it through a real weekend service, and keep it only if your team does.
Free 30-day trial · No credit card · Cancel any time