Restaurants & venues

Built for hospitality — front-of-house, back-of-house, weekly rosters, and SMS-first availability.

Glossary

The vocabulary Clockin uses throughout the app.

FOH — Front of House

Customer-facing roles: servers, bartenders, hosts, baristas, runners. Color-coded in the schedule.

BOH — Back of House

Kitchen and prep roles: chefs, line cooks, dishwashers, prep staff. Color-coded in the schedule.

Station

A role bucket inside FOH or BOH — e.g. "Bar", "Floor", "Grill", "Pass", "Dish". Each station has its own column on the weekly schedule. Employees are assigned to one or more stations.

Shift template

A recurring weekly slot — "Bar, Friday, 5pm–11pm, 2 people needed". The AI uses templates as the demand pattern when generating a roster.

Headcount

How many people a shift template needs. Two bartenders on Friday night? Headcount = 2.

Cutoff

The weekly deadline by which employees must submit their availability. Example: cutoff = Thursday 6pm. Anyone who hasn't replied by then either gets nudged or skipped. The schedule week starts the day after cutoff.

Availability submission

What an employee texts in before cutoff: which days/times they can work next week. Clockin's AI parses free-form text ("I can do Mon and Wed nights, off Tue").

Roster

The full weekly schedule. Two states: Draft (not yet sent to staff — you can still edit freely) and Published (sent to staff via SMS/WhatsApp, locked from accidental edits).

Seniority

Optional ranking per employee (junior / mid / senior). The AI uses this to balance experience across shifts.

Weekly skip

Mark an employee as paused for a single week — they won't be asked for availability and won't be auto-scheduled. Useful for vacations.

Setup & onboarding

The 4-step onboarding wizard takes ~5 minutes. You can change everything later in Settings.

1. Business basics — name, country/region, timezone.
2. Industry & stations — pick your business type (restaurant, cafe, bar, etc.). Clockin pre-fills sensible FOH/BOH stations — edit, add, or remove as needed.
3. Shift templates — define your recurring weekly demand. For each station + day, set start time, end time, and headcount. Days with zero templates = closed/day-off.
4. Cutoff — pick the day and time of your weekly availability deadline.

Adding employees

Two ways:

• Manual add — Dashboard → Employees → Add. You enter name, phone, station(s). They're approved immediately and get a welcome SMS.
• Invite link — Share /join/[teamId] link with your team. They self-register from their phone. You then approve each one from the Employees page before they can be scheduled. This prevents random people joining your roster.

Weekly workflow

The rhythm of a Clockin week, from cutoff to published roster:

1. Before cutoff — Clockin auto-texts every active employee asking for next week's availability. Employees reply in plain English (or Hebrew) — "Mon Tue Wed nights, off Thu".
2. At cutoff — submissions lock. You see who replied, who didn't, and what each person said.
3. Generate roster — click Generate. The AI proposes a full week of assignments matching shift templates against submitted availability, balancing target hours and seniority.
4. Review draft — see the full week as a grid. Make manual edits (see next section).
5. Publish — sends each employee their personal schedule via SMS/WhatsApp with shift times, stations, and an iCal calendar link they can add to their phone.

Manual control — you stay in charge

Clockin's AI generates the roster, but it's a starting point, not a final answer. The schedule grid lets you fix the edges — that employee who's great on Friday but shouldn't close on Sunday, the new hire you want to pair with a senior — without re-running anything.

What you can do manually

• Swap one employee for another — click an assignment, pick a different available employee from the dropdown.
• Move a shift across days — drag & drop on the grid.
• Add a shift the AI missed — click an empty cell, add a new assignment.
• Remove a shift entirely — delete from the grid.
• Override availability — assign someone who didn't submit, with a warning that confirms you know what you're doing.
• Re-generate just one day — leave Monday-Thursday locked, regenerate Fri-Sun.

When to use manual vs. regenerate

• Small fixes (1–3 changes) → manual edits. Fastest path.
• Big changes (new shift templates, demand pattern shifted) → update templates, then regenerate.
• Mid-week swap after publishing → manual edit on the published roster. Affected employees get an SMS notification automatically.

Employees & invites

Approving pending joins

When someone joins via your invite link, they show up as PENDING on the Employees page. Clockin's SMS webhook refuses to process any messages from them until you click Approve. This protects you from runaway SMS costs if the invite link gets forwarded.

Multi-station employees

Most hospitality employees work multiple stations (e.g. a server who also runs the bar). Assign them to all relevant stations on the Employee detail page — the AI will then place them wherever they're needed.

FOH vs BOH derivation

An employee's FOH/BOH label is derived from the stations they're assigned to — you don't set it directly. Assign someone to Bar + Floor and they're FOH. Assign them to Grill + Prep and they're BOH.

Pausing & removing

• Weekly skip — pause for one week (vacation, sick). Auto-resumes the following week.
• Deactivate — stop scheduling them, but keep their history. Reversible.
• Delete — permanently remove. Use sparingly; their submission history goes too.

What employees can text

Employees don't need an app. Everything happens over SMS or WhatsApp. They can text:

• Availability — "Mon Wed Fri nights", "Off Tuesday", "Available after 5pm Thursday".
• Swap requests — "Can someone cover my Friday 6pm shift?" — Clockin notifies eligible coworkers.
• Info queries — "When is my next shift?", "What time Friday?".
• Cancellation — "Can't make tomorrow, sick" — flags the shift for manager attention.
• Switch team — if they work at multiple Clockin venues, texting "switch" (or "change team" / "other team") re-prompts which venue to send the next message to.