Best Hospitality Shift Tracker App UK (2026)
Late Friday, two hours over your rostered end time, and you still don't know if you're getting paid for this. Hospitality is the sector with the highest rate of National Minimum Wage underpayment in the UK — and most workers don't realise until it's too late to dispute it.
- Hospitality has the highest rate of NMW underpayment of any UK sector — HMRC named and shamed over 200 employers in 2024
- Zero-hours, split shifts and variable hours make your payslip almost impossible to verify without your own records
- Overtime Live tracks every shift in real time — live on your lock screen, no unlocking required
- Free on iOS and Android. No account. All data stays on your phone
Why hospitality payslips go wrong
Hospitality has more variables per payslip than almost any other sector. A single week might contain: a normal weekday shift at base rate, a bank holiday run at an enhanced rate (if your employer offers one), a split shift where your break time is deducted incorrectly, and an overtime run that tips you over contracted hours partway through a Friday night. Getting all of that right on a payslip when you're on a zero-hours or variable contract requires your employer to have perfect records of your actual hours — and most don't.
The HMRC naming and shaming data backs this up. Year after year, hospitality employers — from large chains to independent venues — appear on the NMW underpayment list. The amounts are often small per shift but add up significantly over months and years of employment.
The NMW problem in hospitality
The National Living Wage for workers aged 21+ is £12.21/hr from April 2025. Every hour worked in hospitality must be paid at or above this, regardless of your contract type, tip income, or whether you're on zero-hours. The most common ways it falls short:
Overtime Live — how it works for hospitality
The core idea is simple. Before your shift starts: enter your night rate. Tap start. Your phone's lock screen shows your running earnings total — updating every second, without you doing anything. On iOS it uses Live Activities and Dynamic Island. On Android it's a persistent notification in your status bar. Either way, a glance at your phone tells you exactly what you've earned.
For nights specifically, the mid-shift rate switch is what makes it genuinely useful. If your shift crosses a rate boundary — 8pm-to-6am NHS night window ending, or midnight Saturday tipping into Sunday — one tap switches the rate. The app logs both segments separately: hours, rate, subtotal. Both segments are in your shift history at the end.
Over a month you build a complete picture: every night shift, every rate applied, every total. Put it next to your payslip. If the enhancement hours or rates don't match, you've got a timestamped record to raise it with payroll.
- Free — no subscription, one optional £0.99 to remove ads
- Lock screen Live Activities on iOS — visible without unlocking
- Android persistent notification — always in view without opening the app
- Mid-shift rate switching — tap once at the rate boundary, both segments logged
- Full shift history with start time, end time, rate and total
- All data on your device — nothing uploaded anywhere
Your Night Shift Earnings — Live on Your Lock Screen
Set your rate, start the shift, watch it count. Switch rate at any crossover boundary. Free on iOS and Android.
Zero-hours and split shifts
Zero-hours contracts are legal in the UK but they do not override your other statutory rights. Whether you're on zero-hours or a fixed contract, you are still entitled to:
- National Living Wage for every hour worked — including prep time, closing time, and any briefings
- Statutory holiday pay — accrued proportionally based on hours worked
- To be paid for every shift you work — including partial shifts and callouts that don't pan out to the expected hours
- Not to be penalised for turning down shifts — zero-hours workers cannot be treated detrimentally for refusing work
The practical challenge with zero-hours is that your expected hours are never the same week to week, which makes payslip errors easy to miss. A shift logged as 5 hours when you worked 5.5 is small individually. Across 50 shifts a year it's 25 hours of unpaid time.
If you work a split shift (e.g. 10:00–15:00, then 18:00–23:00), your break between the two segments is unpaid — but your employer cannot deduct additional unpaid time from within the working segments. Check your payslip shows the full hours for each segment, not an estimate.
Payslip errors to watch for
- Hours logged short. Your rota says one thing, your payslip shows fewer hours. Track your actual start and finish times in Overtime Live — that's your evidence.
- Unpaid prep and close. If you arrive 15 minutes before your shift and leave 20 minutes after, that's 35 minutes of unpaid work per shift. Over a year of 5-day weeks that's nearly 30 hours.
- Tips counted toward your wage. Since October 2024, service charges and tips paid through the employer's tronc must be passed to workers in full and cannot offset the base NMW. If your payslip shows tips as part of your base hourly, that's potentially illegal.
- Bank holiday not applying. Most hospitality employers don't offer an enhanced bank holiday rate — but if yours does and it's in your contract, verify it appears on your payslip for every bank holiday you worked.
Your own shift record is your only leverage in hospitality. The sector has weak enforcement and high turnover — employers know most workers won't check. Be the one who does.