TUTORIALS/ GUIDE 14 · YOUR TEAM AND ROTA LAST UPDATED 2026-09-02

GUIDE 14 OF 15·6 STEPS·8 MIN·5 SCREENSHOTS

Run your team and rota

Invite the people who run your room — four clear roles, no per-seat charges — then drag the week’s rota together, publish it, and let everyone carry their own shifts in their pocket.

Every click shown— written from the product

STEPS
6
TIME TO FINISH
8 min
TEAM ROLES
4 roles
GUIDE 14 / 15 · SIX STEPS

The team

roles, shifts, hours — sorted4 ROLES · DRAG ROTA · PAYROLL EXPORT SETTINGS → TEAMFIG. 14 PHOTO · DADA DESIGN / PEXELS

The rota is where a restaurant’s week actually gets decided. TableSpark keeps it in the same place as service itself: invite your people once, give each the right role — there are four, and no per-seat charges — then drag the week together, publish it, and every team member carries their own shifts, hours and days off in their pocket.

Settings → TeamService → Servers → Rota

STEP 01/ 06i

Invite your team

Open Settings and click Team. Under Add a team member, type their email, pick a role from the dropdown — Server, Editor, Admin, or (for owners) Owner — and press Add. The page says exactly what happens next: “We’ll email them an invitation — they join your team only when they accept it.” Until then the invite sits under Pending invitations with a status pill, where you can resend or cancel it. The card wears its pricing on its sleeve: No per-seat charges — team members come with the Growth and Full plans, however many you add.

There’s a second door for the common case: on the Service console’s Servers view, an Invite a server field sends the same invitation with the role already set — handy mid-shift when a new starter appears.

The Your team card: members listed with free-text job titles (Restaurant Manager, Runner, Sommelier, Head Waiter) and role dropdowns, the Add a team member form, and the No per-seat charges badge
FIG. 01The team card — job titles are yours to word; roles decide what each person can open.
STEP 02/ 06ii

What each role can do

Four roles, one sentence each — and the Settings page prints the same summary at the foot of the team card. Server works the Service floor day to day: seats guests, takes orders, appears on the rota. Editor does all that and edits content — the menu, hours, pages. Admin manages settings and the team itself: inviting, changing roles, and the owner-grade Settings sections. Owner adds the money: plan and billing are owner-only, and only an owner can promote or remove another owner — with a guard that refuses to leave a restaurant ownerless.

The job title next to each name — Head Waiter, Sommelier, Runner — is a free-text label, separate from the role. It’s what shows on the rota, so name people the way your room actually talks. And one floor-level permission is yours to tune: the Discount permission card below the team list ticks which roles may apply a discount to an order during service. Owner is always ticked — locked, deliberately.

The Discount permission card: checkboxes per role for who may apply an order discount, with Owner ticked and locked
FIG. 02Who may discount an order — a per-role switch, with the owner never lockable out.
STEP 03/ 06iii

Build the rota

The rota lives where service lives: open the Service console, click the Servers icon in the top nav, then the Rota tab. A Day / Week switch picks your canvas; Lunch, Dinner, Double and Close are one-tap shift presets. The grid itself works the way your hands expect: tap a lane at the time you want and a shift opens already set to that hour; drag a shift sideways to change its time, up or down to change who works it; hold Alt to copy; ⌘Z undoes. An Open shifts lane holds work that isn’t assigned to anyone yet.

Nothing reaches the team until you say so: shifts draft in private, the counter shows what’s published against what isn’t, Copy last week reproduces a standing pattern in one click, and Publish drafts makes the week real — at which point each person is notified and their acknowledgement ticks appear on the chips. The colour legend runs the shift’s whole life: Confirmed, Awaiting confirm, Declined, Late, Sick, No-show, Open shift, Draft. The people you’re rostering are the same people the live floor assigns to sections at service time.

The rota's day view: month calendar on the left, time-axis lanes per person with role-labelled shift chips and acknowledgement ticks, Day/Week and preset controls, Copy last week and Publish drafts, and the eight-state colour legend
FIG. 03A published day — every chip a shift, every tick an acknowledgement, and the legend explaining every colour.
STEP 04/ 06iv

Read the hours

Next to Rota sits the Hours tab — the week added up per person: shifts and days worked, worked time, breaks, and the paid total that payroll actually cares about, with a weekly average alongside. An average running hot is flagged in red — a 56.8-hour week stands out before it becomes a problem. The page states its own accounting honestly: published shifts only, no-shows and declined shifts pay nothing, breaks are unpaid, and open shifts sit outside everyone’s totals. Tap any row for the day-by-day breakdown.

The Hours tab: per-person shifts, worked time, breaks and paid totals with weekly averages — one flagged red — range chips from This week to Last month, and Payroll CSV and Export Excel buttons
FIG. 04Worked, breaks, paid — and the one average that needed noticing, flagged without being asked.
STEP 05/ 06v

Export payroll

Pick the range — This week, Last week, Fortnight, 4 weeks, This month or Last month, with the exact dates printed beside the chips — then Payroll CSV for the bookkeeper’s import or Export Excel for a spreadsheet with the same totals. What you export is exactly what the Hours tab shows: published shifts only, breaks unpaid. Payroll stops being an argument about who remembers what.

STEP 06/ 06vi

Their own rota, in their pocket

Every team member gets a view that is only theirs: My rota, linked from the Service console’s top nav and made for a phone. It lists their published shifts day by day with times, role labels and breaks, plus My hours and Days off tabs — and the page closes with the promise that matters: “Your managers publish the rota — you see it the moment it goes live.” Each person sees their own shifts and their own totals; the full grid stays with managers.

The My rota view: a team member's own week of published shifts with times and breaks, and the My hours and Days off tabs
FIG. 05One person’s week — published shifts, own hours, days off, nothing that isn’t theirs.

Next · read the numbers

Put the week on the wall

Invite your people, drag one week together, publish it — and let everyone carry their own copy.

Open Team settings Next: see what’s working