How WagePilot works, in depth

The staff app

The one screen your team taps every shift: install it, find your way around the tabs, slide to clock in and out, take a break, and watch your pay count up live.

Your rota

Read your own schedule week by week, confirm you’ve seen a shift, pick up open shifts going at your sites, and hand a shift you can’t work to the team.

Cover & swaps

Pick up open shifts, accept a teammate’s cover or swap offer, and offer your own shifts to the team or one person, with your manager keeping the final say.

Your availability

Tell your manager which days and times you can work, mark the days you prefer, and block the ones you can’t, so the rota fits when you are free.

Your earnings

Your pay history on your phone: this or last week and month, a shift-by-shift breakdown, statements as PDF or CSV, and a way to flag anything wrong.

Booking time off

See your holiday balance, book time off in a few taps with your balance checked live, and track or cancel requests, including hours-based allowances.

Your profile

Your pay rate, hours, sites and start date in one place, plus password changes, switching workplaces, and downloading or requesting deletion of your data.

Notifications

Rota changes, shift reminders, holiday decisions, cover offers and messages: in one feed, with push alerts to your phone so nothing important gets missed.

Geofenced clock-in

How staff clock in from their own phone with a one-off GPS check, why it stops buddy-punching, and the truth about what is and is not tracked.

Clocking in from the app

The staff home screen: slide to clock in or out, take a break, pick your site, and watch your live earnings tick up.

Clock-in rules

Choose which clock-in methods your team can use (GPS, QR or manual) and control who can see pay rates.

QR clock-in: sign-in flyers & scanning

Print a QR sign-in flyer for each site so staff can clock in, out or on a break with a scan: the dependable route when GPS is weak.

Kiosk mode

Turn a tablet you already own into a clock-in kiosk: staff tap their name and type a PIN, with a manager exit code keeping them out of the rest of the app.

Locations & geofences

Add a site, drop a map pin, set the geofence radius staff must be inside to clock in, and set per-site coverage targets and labour budgets.

Checklists

Opening, closing, cleaning and patrol checklists for any site. Staff complete them on their phone, even offline; records can be amended, never edited.

Site access: codes and keys

Share door, alarm and key-safe codes only with the right staff, log every reveal, and keep a register of who holds which key, with prompts when someone leaves.

Rota builder

Build the week on a drag-and-drop grid, copy last week, get conflict, working-time and holiday-clash warnings, then publish so staff see shifts instantly.

Shift swaps & cover

Approve or decline the open-shift claims, cover requests and swaps your team raises, with you keeping the final say, so cover stops living in a group chat.

Live board

Who is clocked in at every site, what each person is earning, overtime and late alerts, clocking someone out, and your live labour cost.

Today & cost

A single screen for today's shape: who is scheduled, who is in, projected labour cost, cost by site and person, and labour as a percentage of sales.

People & profiles

Add staff one by one or by CSV, filter the directory, and manage pay, payroll ID, roles, sites, kiosk PINs and documents from each profile.

Staff documents and right to work

Right-to-work, ID and certificates with expiry dates in one place. Staff upload their own, and right-to-work copies are kept for the legal period.

Pay & overtime

Owner-only pay rules from business to site to person: overtime, bank-holiday, Sunday and night premiums, breaks, role rates and scheduled rises.

Holiday & accrual

Fixed allowance or 12.07% accrual under reg 15B, days or hours, pro-rata for part-timers, bank holidays, year-end carry-over, fit notes and one approval inbox.

Sleep-in shifts

Pay sleep-ins as a flat allowance, record time woken to work at the normal rate, approve them on Timesheets and export them to your payroll.

Young and school-age workers

With dates of birth set, WagePilot checks rotas and hours against under-18 and school-age limits, tracks child work permits and flags issues.

Audited timesheets

Review, fix and approve each week from one screen, with exception chips on every row and a reason recorded for every change.

Payroll close: the weekly run

A guided run for each pay period: clear what blocks payroll, approve clean shifts, close and export. Owners can override with a logged reason.

Exceptions

Late starts, no-shows, missed breaks, working-time limits and pay problems across the team, each one acknowledged or dismissed with a note.

Activity log

Every edit, approval, setting and pay change across your organisation, with who made it, when, the reason and the before and after values.

Shift correction requests

Staff can flag a wrong shift and propose the right times with a reason. You see the pay difference, then accept or decline, and the decision is logged.

Payroll export & integrations

Download approved hours and pay estimates for Xero, Sage, BrightPay or QuickBooks, and download any past batch again, unchanged.

Holiday approvals & balances

Approve or decline leave with clash warnings, see who is off, track balances and holiday liability, and close the leave year.

Records, retention and evidence pack

Build a printable evidence pack for an HMRC wage enquiry or a dispute, download a monthly compliance pack, and export all your organisation's data.

Premium days

Add days like Christmas Eve that you pay extra on. They use your bank holiday rate in estimated pay, without changing anyone's holiday entitlement.

Tips & tronc

Pool tips for a site, share them by hours or evenly, and keep the records the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 asks for.

Reports & analytics

Labour cost, hours and overtime for any period, broken down by site, department and person, with comparisons, CSV exports and a compliance pack.

Branding & white-label

Put your logo, colours, fonts, theme and corner style on the employee app and kiosk, with a live preview, and on Scale, fully white-label it.

Feature modules

Switch features like the live board, tips, messaging and payroll export on or off, and choose scheduled shifts or open clock-in for your business.

Messages

Direct messages, group channels and announcements in the app, with reactions, @mentions, delivery ticks and search, so nothing gets lost in a group chat.

Settings

Owner-only: business details, new-hire defaults, breaks, holiday rules, shift swaps, modules, school holidays and data-protection controls.

Plans & free tier

The four plans, the "flat per site, never per head" model, why Free is the trial, annual billing, and what each plan unlocks.

Billing & payments

Every control on the Billing page: your plan, the price breakdown, billing cycle, upgrading, switching or downgrading plans, and the Stripe portal.

Data, privacy & GDPR

Owner-only data-protection console: export everything, handle your team’s access and erasure requests, the retention notice, and closing your account.

Your data (as an employee)

How staff download their own data and request deletion from the employee app: self-service export, the erasure request, and what’s kept by law.

Security

Encryption, secure billing through Stripe, role-based access, the kiosk lock, and the auditable history behind every change.

Get help & support tickets

How to reach the WagePilot team from inside the app: open a ticket, set priority, track its status, reply in the thread, and reopen a closed ticket.