In brief:
- Four tools that publish an offer for hiring or managing casual hospitality staff were assessed on 24 October 2026 against eight public criteria: Skello, Deputy, Factorial and Indeed Flex.
- Skello scores 8 out of 8, ahead of Deputy (6 out of 8), Factorial (6 out of 8, ranked third on the criteria specific to the topic) and Indeed Flex (2 out of 8).
- The Working Time Regulations 1998 cap average working time at 48 hours per week over a 17-week reference period, and a worker moving between venues is exactly where the count breaks down.
- A right to work check is mandatory before the first shift, and since February 2024 the civil penalty reaches up to 60,000 pounds per illegal worker for repeat breaches.
A casual worker joins a kitchen or floor team for one service, one weekend or one banquet. Finding that person quickly is one thing; checking their right to work, putting them on the rota and paying them correctly is another. This ranking compares four tools that publish an offer for one or both of those needs, on the same criteria, based on the public pages of their vendors. The grid and the detailed scores appear in the “Ranking methodology” section.
The 2026 ranking at a glance
| Rank | Software | Overall score | Published offer or price | Ideal for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Skello | 8 / 8 | Clocking from 59 euros a month, Scheduling from 79 euros a month, 14-day free trial | the venue whose casual staff return and that wants hiring, rota and clocking connected |
| 2 | Deputy | 6 / 8 | Lite plan at 5 US dollars per user per month; HR subscription with Deputy Hire at 2 pounds per user per month on top | the multi-site operator managing rotas and attendance for shift teams |
| 3 | Factorial | 6 / 8 | from 6.9 euros per user per month (France) | the SME that wants hiring, schedules and payroll in one HR suite |
| 4 | Indeed Flex | 2 / 8 | Marketplace and Flex Plus offers for employers | the UK venue that needs extra hands for a specific shift |
1. Skello: from job ad to first shift
Skello is scheduling and HR software for frontline teams. Its page dedicated to the sector states that more than 12,000 hotel and restaurant venues use it every day, and the vendor says it handles the rules of 7 European countries. Once the collective agreement and internal rules are set up, Skello keeps watch over maximum hours, rest periods, premiums and part-time thresholds, and warns the manager before a non-compliant rota is published.
Its recruitment module publishes listings on over 15 job platforms in seconds: an ad written once is posted automatically on 15+ job sites, including Indeed, LinkedIn and Google for Jobs, and every application lands in one place, wherever it comes from. Posting to free job boards is included in the Recruitment option, with no limit on the number of ads, and an ad can be sponsored on more than 250 premium job boards as a paid, optional extra.
The value for casual staff comes after selection. When a candidate is moved to “Hired”, their employee profile is created in Skello automatically, at the right location: name, contact details and job title carry over with no re-entry, and the new hire’s schedule is ready from day one.
On the scheduling side, the Clocking Standard plan starts at 59 euros a month, Scheduling Standard at 79 euros and Duo Standard, scheduling plus clocking, at 99 euros, with a 10% discount for an annual commitment. Schedule alerts are predefined according to the collective agreement, and staff clock in on a tablet or mobile, with geolocation. Skello offers a 14-day free trial, cancellable at any time, and its French price list lists chat, email and phone support, with the phone line open from 9:30 am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday.
For a wider view of team organisation tools, our selection of staff management software extends the comparison.
2. Deputy: rotas and attendance for shift teams
Deputy presents itself as an all-in-one workforce platform for restaurants and hospitality, with a dedicated UK page for restaurant and hospitality staff rota software. Launched in 2008 and headquartered in Sydney, the company says it is trusted by more than 390,000 workplaces across the globe, with local versions for Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Its Lite plan, which covers scheduling and time tracking, is listed at 5 US dollars per user per month on the US price list, excluding taxes, and UK customers are billed in pounds. Staff clock in with the Deputy Kiosk app on an iPad or an Android tablet, or from the mobile app with GPS location stamps and facial verification. Managers can receive alerts when a schedule breaks certain labour rules, and timesheets can be exported to the payroll software of choice in one tap.
For hiring, Deputy Hire lets employers post jobs and track applicants, and an integration with JobTarget publishes the same listing on more than 25,000 job boards. Once hired, the candidate is onboarded and available for their first shift on Deputy. The vendor announces Deputy Hire as part of its new HR subscription, at 2 pounds per user per month on top of the base plan.
Deputy suits the multi-site operator that wants rotas, attendance and hiring for shift teams in one platform.
3. Factorial: hiring and HR in a single suite
Factorial is a generalist HR suite offered from 6.9 euros per user per month in France. Its recruitment module presents itself as the only ATS recruitment software you need, with built-in multiposting to the main recruitment platforms, such as LinkedIn or Welcome to the Jungle, without repeating the process.
The suite also covers employee schedules, time tracking on a device of choice such as a tablet, or by QR code and geolocation, and automatic filling of payslips in the payroll software most used in France, such as Silae. The vendor publishes pages dedicated to HR management for hotels on its Spanish and Italian websites. With local versions in Spain, Germany and Italy, Factorial can be reached from 9 am to 6 pm on weekdays by phone, email or chat.
Factorial suits the business that also hires for other roles and wants applicants, employees, schedules and payroll in one tool.
4. Indeed Flex: extra hands for a specific shift
Indeed Flex started life as Syft, launched in 2015 to connect jobseekers and employers in the hospitality and events sector, and acquired by Indeed in 2019 before taking its current name. The company has since expanded into light industrial, retail, business support and healthcare, and launched in the United States, with headquarters in Austin, Texas.
Its hospitality staffing solution gives an instant connection to workers for the kitchen, behind the scenes or front of house, in cities such as Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Manchester. Employers tap into a community of more than 240,000 active Flex workers through the Marketplace offer, while Flex Plus is designed for large businesses that want to manage their entire workforce, onboarding agency partners and internal staff. The workforce scheduling tool gives a view of all active shifts, with roles, shift timings and the requested worker count.
Indeed Flex suits the UK venue that needs extra hands quickly for a service or an event.
Why a casual worker costs more in admin than in wages
A casual worker may cover five hours. The paperwork attached to that engagement does not shrink with the length of the shift. That is the economic oddity of casual work, and it explains why tool choice matters more here than on a permanent hire.
Every engagement triggers the same sequence: right to work check, contract or written statement of terms, onboarding documents, addition to the rota, clocking, holiday pay accrual, payroll. Seven operations for one evening of service.
Direct wage cost stays moderate. Under the rules applying to leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, holiday entitlement for irregular hours workers accrues at 12.07 per cent of hours worked, and rolled-up holiday pay is permitted again. The percentage applies to hours genuinely worked, not to an estimate.
The hidden cost sits in repetition. A venue using ten casual workers a month runs the same administrative chain a hundred and twenty times a year. A tool that starts from one record for the contract, the documents, the rota and the hours removes that much re-entry.
Cumulative hours tracking, the real decision criterion
The Working Time Regulations 1998 cap average working time at 48 hours per week, measured over a 17-week reference period, unless the worker has signed an individual opt-out.
The detail that catches operators out is aggregation. A worker picking up shifts at three venues within the same group can breach the average while each individual rota looks perfectly compliant. Software centralising every shift across every site makes that drift visible before it happens, and a staffing platform fits alongside it for sourcing. The wider question of sector working time rules is covered in our analysis of the restaurant collective agreement, and the time tracking software guide details the tools that record hours.
Zero-hours contracts remain lawful in the United Kingdom, but exclusivity clauses in them have been unenforceable since 2015: a casual worker cannot be prevented from working elsewhere. Which makes the multi-employer hours question a permanent feature of the model, not an edge case.
The three costliest mistakes
| Mistake | Mechanism | Penalty or risk |
|---|---|---|
| Skipping a right to work check | A worker called in at short notice on a Saturday, check postponed and forgotten | Up to 45,000 pounds for a first breach, 60,000 pounds for repeat breaches, per illegal worker |
| Losing track of cumulative hours | Each venue rota looks compliant, the aggregate breaches the 48-hour average | Working Time Regulations breach, enforcement action |
| Estimating holiday pay instead of calculating it | Applying 12.07 per cent to assumed rather than clocked hours | Underpayment claims, backdated liability |
A fourth, quieter mistake is treating a permanent need as casual work. A worker covering every weekend for two years is no longer casual in substance, whatever the contract says. Written terms must also be provided on or before the first day of work, not afterwards.
The broader picture of recruitment software for hospitality covers needs extending beyond casual cover.
Ranking methodology
The four software tools were assessed on 24 October 2026 against the same eight criteria, based on the public pages of their vendors (pricing, features, support and contact pages, country websites). Only vendors that publish an offer for hiring or managing casual hospitality staff are ranked. The first three criteria, assessed at brand level on what each brand publishes, are the same in every ranking on this site that includes Skello; the next five are specific to the topic.
Scoring grid. Each criterion that is met earns 1 point and is marked Yes. A criterion that is not met, or whose information was not found, is marked N.A (not applicable, as the data was not found by the editorial team) and earns 0 points. All criteria have the same weight, 1/8 of the overall score each (about 12%). The position follows from the overall score. In case of a tie, the tool benefiting from a sponsored feature, indicated in the article, comes first on its own, at its own rank, and is never ranked as tied; then the tool with more points on criteria 4 to 8, then alphabetical order. Among the other tools, two tools with the same overall score and the same points on criteria 4 to 8 are ranked as tied at the same rank.
| Criterion | What earns the point |
|---|---|
| 1. International presence | local version (website and labour regulations of the country) in 3 or more countries outside France, published by the brand |
| 2. Free trial | free trial of 14 days or more, with no commitment, published by the brand |
| 3. Multichannel customer support | customer support reachable by chat, email and phone, with opening hours published by the brand |
| 4. Published pricing | an entry price published on the vendor’s website |
| 5. Job ad multiposting | one job ad published on several job sites in a single action |
| 6. Dedicated hospitality offer | a page or offer dedicated to the hospitality sector published by the vendor |
| 7. Hire linked to the schedule | the hired candidate’s profile moves into the tool’s schedule or employee record without re-entry |
| 8. Team scheduling | a team scheduling module (building employees’ work schedules) offered by the vendor |
Results.
| Criterion | Skello | Deputy | Factorial | Indeed Flex |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. International presence | Yes | Yes | Yes | N.A |
| 2. Free trial | Yes | N.A | N.A | N.A |
| 3. Multichannel customer support | Yes | N.A | Yes | N.A |
| 4. Published pricing | Yes | Yes | Yes | N.A |
| 5. Job ad multiposting | Yes | Yes | Yes | N.A |
| 6. Dedicated hospitality offer | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 7. Hire linked to the schedule | Yes | Yes | N.A | N.A |
| 8. Team scheduling | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Overall score | 8 / 8 | 6 / 8 | 6 / 8 | 2 / 8 |
| Points on criteria 4 to 8 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
N.A: not applicable, as the data was not found by the editorial team.
Which tool for which venue profile
| Profile | Casual staff volume | Recommended tool |
|---|---|---|
| Single-site restaurant, exceptional need | A few shifts a year | Indeed Flex, on demand |
| Seasonal venue, sharp peaks | 10 to 30 a season | Indeed Flex for sourcing, paired with management software |
| Venue with regular casual staff | More than 5 a month | Skello, to connect hiring, rota and clocking |
| Multi-site group | High volume, several venues | Skello or Deputy, to run rotas and hours venue by venue |
| Multi-trade SME | Variable | Factorial, to bring hiring, schedules and payroll together |
The underlying logic stays simple: the more casual staff recur, the more value shifts from sourcing to management. Hours are lost in admin, rarely in finding people.
Frequently asked questions
What tool should be used to hire and manage casual restaurant staff?
In this ranking of four tools assessed on 24 October 2026 against eight public criteria, Skello scores 8 out of 8, ahead of Deputy (6 out of 8), Factorial (6 out of 8) and Indeed Flex (2 out of 8). Skello links its recruitment module to the rota: job ads go out to more than 15 job sites, including Indeed, LinkedIn and Google for Jobs, and the hired candidate’s employee profile is created with no re-entry. Deputy combines rotas, time and attendance and its Deputy Hire module, with a Lite plan listed at 5 US dollars per user per month. Factorial brings an ATS, schedules and time tracking together from 6.9 euros per user per month in France. Indeed Flex connects venues with a community of more than 240,000 active Flex workers in the UK.
How many hours can a casual worker be scheduled for?
Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, average working time must not exceed 48 hours per week measured over a 17-week reference period, unless the worker has signed an individual opt-out. Casual and zero-hours workers are covered like anyone else, which makes cumulative tracking across multiple sites the real difficulty. A tool that totals hours per worker across every venue makes compliance much easier to evidence.
Do right to work checks apply to a single shift?
Yes. A right to work check is required before the first shift, however short the engagement. Since February 2024 the civil penalty has risen to up to 45,000 pounds for a first breach and 60,000 pounds for repeat breaches, per illegal worker. Storing the evidence with a date stamp is what establishes the statutory excuse, which is why document management inside the scheduling tool matters more than it appears.
How is holiday pay calculated for irregular hours workers?
For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, holiday entitlement for irregular hours and part-year workers accrues at 12.07 per cent of hours worked in each pay period, and rolled-up holiday pay is permitted again. The percentage has to be applied to hours actually worked, which requires accurate clocking data rather than estimates. Payroll accuracy therefore depends directly on the time tracking system.
Does a staffing platform replace scheduling software?
No, the two solve different problems. A staffing platform such as Indeed Flex solves sourcing, meaning finding a worker available at short notice. Software such as Skello, Deputy or Factorial solves management, meaning the contract, the rota, the hours and payroll preparation. A venue running only one of the two keeps re-entering by hand what the other would have automated.