Help Center

QuickSpice uses passwordless magic link authentication. Enter your email address on the sign-in page and you'll receive a secure link in your inbox. Click it to sign in. No password needed. The link expires after 15 minutes for security.

Check out the New Employee Guide for a quick tour of everything you can do: viewing your schedule, checking tips, requesting time off, swapping shifts, and more. Sign in with the same email address your workplace has on file and a sign-in link will be sent to your inbox.

Request access from the homepage by entering your name, email, and restaurant name. Once approved, your company is created automatically and you can sign in as the Org Admin. From there, connect your Toast POS to import your locations and employees.

Locations are imported automatically from your POS when you connect Toast. Each location operates independently for scheduling, time tracking, and tips but shares the same employee pool and company settings. You can review your locations under Operations → Company Overview.

There are two ways:

(1) Connect your POS (Primary): Go to Company Settings → POS Connection and enter your Toast API credentials. All your employees, locations, and job titles are imported automatically. These employees can be scheduled, appear in payroll, and participate in tip pools.

(2) Add User: Go to the Team page and click "Add User". This is for external people who need read access but are not part of the restaurant operations (accountants, regional managers, consultants). They can log in and view data, but cannot be scheduled or appear in payroll since they have no POS time entries.

QuickSpice has four roles, each additive (higher roles see everything below them):

• Staff: View own schedule, badge times, tasks. Submit time-off requests and shift swaps. Fill out forms.
• Manager: All staff features plus create/publish schedules, approve requests, view hours, pay, and tips, view form submissions. Scoped to their assigned locations.
• Admin: All manager features plus documents, form templates, configure tips, and review employee certificates. When assigning the Admin role, you choose their location scope: all locations or a specific subset.
• Org Admin: All admin features plus payroll, audit logs, data archives, POS configuration, certificate type configuration, company settings, billing.

Roles set the defaults. Org Admins can additionally turn off specific capabilities per person, per location. See "Can I customize what a manager or admin can do?" under Account & Security.

QuickSpice integrates directly with the Toast POS REST API. Connect once with your API credentials and your employees, locations, time entries, and order data sync automatically. No file uploads, no nightly imports — data is always live and current.

Go to Company Settings → POS Connection (Org Admin role required). Enter your Client ID and Client Secret and click Connect. QuickSpice validates the credentials instantly, imports all your locations and employees, and you're ready to go in under 10 seconds.

For a visual walkthrough with screenshots, see our step-by-step guide.

When you connect your Toast credentials, QuickSpice automatically discovers all your locations, employees, and job titles. There is no manual mapping step — everything syncs instantly. New employees hired in Toast appear automatically the next time a manager views the Team page.

Data syncs live from Toast every time you load a page. There is no scheduled import — employee lists refresh on page load, and time entries are always pulled fresh from Toast in real time.

Common causes:

• Employee was recently hired in Toast: Navigate to the Team page — QuickSpice syncs from Toast automatically when a manager loads the employee list.
• Toast API credentials expired: Check Company Settings → POS Connection to verify your connection status.
• Employee was terminated in Toast: Terminated employees are automatically removed from active views.

Go to Scheduling → Schedules (Manager+ role). Select a week and location, then use the drag-and-drop builder to add shifts. You can view by day or by week. Click on any cell to add a shift, set the employee, start/end times, and optionally assign tasks from your task templates.

Once your schedule is ready, click the "Publish" button at the top of the schedule view. This immediately notifies all affected employees via email. Published schedules appear on each employee's "My Schedule" page.

Schedule templates let you save a week's schedule pattern and reuse it. Go to Templates → Schedule Templates to create or manage templates. When building a new week, you can apply a template to pre-fill shifts, then make adjustments as needed.

Yes! Use the "Copy Week Forward" feature in the schedule builder. This copies all shifts from the current week to the following week, creating unassigned draft shifts, preserving job title assignments, times, and task assignments.

Go to Templates → Task Templates to create reusable task checklists (e.g., "Opening Duties", "Closing Checklist"). When creating a shift in the schedule, you can assign task templates. Employees see their assigned tasks on the "My Tasks" page and can check off items as they complete them.

Badge times (clock in/out records) are fetched live from Toast every time you view the Time Tracking or Tips page. There is no import delay — data is always current. If an employee clocks out in Toast, it appears in QuickSpice immediately on the next page load.

The Time Tracking page (Manager+ role) offers:

• Daily view: See all badge times for a specific day and location
• Weekly view: See each employee's total hours for the week
• Anomaly detection: Schedule vs. Actual comparison highlights no-shows, early/late clock-ins

QuickSpice automatically detects and flags:

• Meal break violations: In California, a 30-minute meal break is required for shifts 6 hours or longer, started no later than the 5th hour. Shifts over 10 hours require a second 30-minute meal break before the 10th hour. Managers can waive a violation when the employee voluntarily chose to skip their break. What's owed shows as premium hours (one per workday in California). Payroll pays each premium hour at that week's regular rate, which includes service charge wages.
• Split shift premiums: When an employee works two shifts in one day with a gap of an hour or more between them. Whether you actually owe the premium depends on the employee's total daily earnings compared to minimum wage. See the "How are split shift premiums calculated?" question below for the full breakdown.
• Short shift warnings: Shifts under minimum duration
• Overtime: Daily (over 8 hours), weekly (over 40 hours), double-time (over 12 hours), and 7th consecutive day

California allows employees to voluntarily waive certain meal breaks through a standing election. QuickSpice supports two types:

5-6 Hour Election (First Break) For shifts between 5 and 6 hours, the first meal break can be waived. This is managed by admins only. Go to Documents & Forms > Meal Break Elections to enable it for an employee. You must attest that the employee has signed the waiver election form (which can be created and assigned using QuickSpice Forms) and provide the date it was signed. The election takes effect from that signed date forward. Employees can view their status on their Profile page and contact their manager to opt out.

10-12 Hour Election (Second Break) For shifts between 10 and 12 hours, the second meal break can be waived, provided the employee took a valid first break before the 5th hour of their shift. Employees opt into this themselves from their Profile page. No admin action is needed. The election takes effect from the date they sign.

Important details:

• Elections only apply to shifts on or after the effective date. Past violations are not retroactively waived.
• Waived violations and split shifts where wages already exceed the premium floor appear under "Checked, nothing owed" in time tracking, with a $0 amount, and are not counted as violations.
• Elections can be revoked at any time. For 5-6 hours, an admin disables it. For 10-12 hours, the employee revokes from their profile.

A split shift is when an employee works two or more shifts in one day with a gap of at least one hour between them. In California, New York, and DC, you may owe the employee extra pay.

But it's not automatic. The premium depends on what the employee earned that day:

1. Add up all hours worked that day, plus one extra hour
2. Multiply that number by the location's minimum wage to get the threshold
3. If the employee's total daily earnings are already above that threshold, no premium is owed
4. If earnings fall below the threshold, the premium is the difference (capped at one hour of minimum wage)

Higher-paid employees often don't qualify because their regular wages already exceed the threshold. The premium really comes into play for employees earning close to minimum wage.

When you're building the schedule, QuickSpice flags split shifts as a heads-up so you can plan around them. The actual dollar calculation happens later in time tracking and payroll, where we have the real wage data.

QuickSpice is read-only for time entries. Badge times come directly from Toast and cannot be edited in QuickSpice. If a correction is needed, it must be made in Toast directly.

For documentation and approval purposes, QuickSpice supports Time Change Requests. A manager can submit a request noting what needs to change, the employee reviews and signs off via a form, and the approved request serves as the paper trail. The actual time correction is then applied in Toast by the manager.

QuickSpice has a built-in payroll system. Payroll is Organization Admin only. An org admin configures the column layout and location mapping once in Payroll Config, then generates payroll by selecting locations and a date range. The system calculates hours, overtime, tips, and compliance costs automatically. Review the results, finalize, and download an Excel file ready for your payroll provider. No limits, no extra cost.

A tip pool takes all tips earned at a location (credit card tips, cash declared, service charges) and splits them among eligible employees based on rules you define. You choose which job titles participate, how much each role gets, and whether to split by hours worked, percentage, or points.

Each location can have multiple pools (e.g., a "Front of House" pool and a "Bar" pool). An employee can only be in one pool per location. Configure your pools under Admin > Configure Tips.

QuickSpice supports three distribution methods:

• Hours-based: Tips divided proportionally by hours worked (most common)
• Job title percentage: Each role gets a fixed percentage of the pool (e.g., Servers 60%, Bartenders 30%, Runners 10%). Within each role, tips split by hours worked.
• Point-based: Each role is assigned a point value, and tips are divided proportionally by total points. Within each role, tips split equally among employees.

Any method can optionally enable check-based distribution, where tips are allocated per individual transaction based on who was clocked in at the time (hours-based pools weight each check by hours worked that day). Multiple check-based pools can coexist, and a check-based pool can be used alongside standard or percent-of-sales pools at the same location.

Four source types can feed into tip pools:

• Card tips: Credit/debit card gratuities from your POS
• Cash declared: Cash tips declared by employees
• Auto-gratuity: Automatic gratuity charges (e.g., large party surcharges)
• Service charges: Charges added to bills (e.g., banquet fees). You configure what percentage goes to employees vs. the house.

On the Tips page (Manager+ role), select a date to see how tips were distributed across your team. The breakdown shows each employee's share based on your pool configuration, hours worked, and the distribution method you chose.

Employees can be configured as non-pooled, meaning they keep their own individual tips. Their card tips, cash declared, and auto-gratuity are tracked separately.

Service charges are wages, not tips, so they count toward the regular rate of pay used for overtime and for meal and reporting-time premiums.

Each workweek, service charge wages are spread over all hours worked to get a per-hour amount. Half of that is owed on every overtime hour (daily and weekly overtime alike) and all of it on every double-time hour.

An employee with no overtime hours in a week earns no service charge premium for that week, apart from the late service charge adjustment below.

Late service charges for an earlier week raise that week's regular rate: that week's line adds the difference on its premium hours.

QuickSpice still distributes service charges and auto-gratuity by your pool configuration, but it reports the result on its own Service Charge Wages column and computes the overtime premium on a Service Charge OT Premium column. That column also carries late top-ups of meal and reporting-time premiums when a late service charge raises the regular rate of an earlier week. Every surface that shows the money (the Tips page, My Badge Times, attestations, payroll) shows the tips side and the wages side as two figures.

Setting it up: in Payroll Settings, map the Service Charge Wages column. Ask your payroll provider whether it blends overtime on that earning code; map the Service Charge OT Premium column too: provider overtime blending does not compute the late meal and reporting-time top-ups it carries. Payroll review warns when either column is unmapped while the dollars exist.

Meal premiums in two columns: by default the Meal Break Penalty Rate column already includes the service charge part, so Meal Break Penalty x that rate is the full premium. If your provider needs the service charge part on its own line, map Meal Break Penalty Base Rate and Meal Premium Add-on instead. The add-on is always paid on top of the hours x base rate. Payroll Settings adds and removes the meal columns together, so the pair is never split up.

Sources:

• 29 CFR 531.55: a compulsory service charge is not a tip, even when distributed to employees
• 29 CFR 778.208 through 778.210: bonuses and other remuneration in the regular rate; late-paid amounts reopen the week (778.209)
• IRS Revenue Ruling 2012-18: automatic gratuities are service charges and distributed service charges are wages
• California DLSE Enforcement Manual 49.2.4: production bonuses divide by total hours worked with a half-time premium
• Alvarado v. Dart Container (Cal. 2018): the flat-sum divisor applies only to fixed amounts, not to amounts that vary with sales
• O'Grady v. Merchant Exchange Productions (Cal. Ct. App. 2019): distributed service charges are treated like bonuses for overtime

Go to Documents (Admin+ role). Click "Upload Document" to add PDFs, images, or other files. You can assign them to specific employees or roles for restricted read access.

Go to Form Templates (Admin+ role) and click "Create Template". The visual form builder supports 13 field types including text, number, date, dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, signatures, file uploads, document links, and more. Organize fields into multiple sections, make sections repeatable, and add manager-only sections.

When creating a form template, you can add multi-step approval chains. For example: Employee fills out the form → their direct manager reviews and approves → an admin gives final approval. Each step can be configured for specific roles and job titles.

Manager-only sections are parts of a form that only managers (or higher roles) can fill in. For example, an incident report might have employee-facing fields for describing the incident, plus a manager-only section for documenting the investigation and resolution.

After creating and publishing a form template, you can assign it to specific employees, specific roles, or all employees. Assigned employees see the form in their "My Forms" page.

Admins can attach a form template to specific actions like time off requests, employee time change requests, and manager-initiated time changes. When configured, the action requires the employee to complete a form before it can move through the approval process.

For example, if a form is attached to time off requests, the employee fills out the form as part of their request. If a form is attached to manager time changes, the employee must review and sign off before the change applies.

You configure these under Form Templates by linking a form template to the workflow type.

When a form is linked to a time off request or time change, the two stay in sync. Approving the form automatically approves the linked request. Rejecting the form automatically rejects it. If you return the form for revisions, the linked request goes back to a returned state until the employee resubmits.

This means you only need to act on the form. The connected request follows along.

When a manager edits an employee's badge time and a form trigger is configured, the change doesn't apply right away. Instead, the employee gets a form assigned to them. They fill it out and submit it, which sends it into the normal approval workflow.

Once the form is approved, the time change is applied automatically. If there's no form trigger configured, the manager's edit applies immediately like a direct change.

Open Certificates (the My certificates tab) and click Submit Certificate. Pick the certificate type, attach a photo or PDF of your card, and enter its expiration date (plus the certificate number if it has one). Your submission goes to an admin for review, and you can see its status on the same page.

If your job title requires a certificate you haven't submitted yet, it appears in a "Required for you" section at the top of the page.

Open Certificates (the My certificates tab) and click Update on the certificate's card. Renewals require a photo or PDF of the new credential along with its new expiration date. Your existing certificate stays valid while the renewal is under review.

You can also update a submission that's still pending review, for example to fix the expiration date or swap the photo.

Each certificate type has its own reminder schedule, set by your administrator: up to two advance reminders (for example 30 days and 7 days before expiration) plus an email on the expiration day itself. Reminders arrive by email and push notification.

You can manage the Certifications notification category from your profile's notification preferences.

The Team certificates tab on the Certificates page shows a pending-approval queue at the top. For each submission you can view the uploaded document, then approve it (optionally correcting the expiration date) or return it to the employee with a note explaining what to fix.

Below the queue, the compliance view shows each certificate type's current holders on a Submitted tab and everyone who is required but missing on a Not Submitted tab. You can also record a certificate on an employee's behalf, look up all certificates for one employee, and export the compliance view to CSV.

Open Certificates and choose the Configure certificates tab. Each type defines a name, which job titles require it, which locations it applies to, its reminder schedule, and which admins are notified about submissions and expirations. Companies can have up to 10 certificate types, archived ones included.

Employee notifications are opt-in per type: when enabled, employees who need the certificate are alerted by email and push. This includes a one-time catch-up to everyone currently missing it when you first turn it on. Archiving a type hides it from employees and stops new submissions without deleting any records; you can unarchive it at any time.

Everything an inspector typically asks for is on the Team certificates tab of the Certificates page: who holds each certificate, when it expires, and the actual photo or PDF of the card, viewable or downloadable on the spot. The Not Submitted tab shows any employee who is required to hold a certificate but doesn't have a current one, so you can close gaps before the inspector finds them.

Reports lets managers and admins build custom reports from your restaurant data. Pick from eight data sources (employees, time entries, schedules, compliance, employee requests, payroll runs, audit logs, and locations), choose which columns to include, set filters, and export as CSV or Excel. You can save report configs to reuse later, or schedule them to run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence.

Staff don't have access to reports. Access depends on your role:

• Manager: Can build reports scoped to their assigned locations, including hours, pay, and tip data for those locations.
• Admin: Can build reports across their location scope (all locations, or the subset chosen when the role was assigned).
• Org Admin: Everything an admin can, plus payroll runs and audit logs.

Permission restrictions apply too: if a capability like viewing hours, pay, and tips has been turned off for you at a location, those columns are excluded from your reports for that location.

The system enforces this at every level. Columns you can't access are never shown, not even in the column picker.

Go to the Reports page (Manager+ role) and click "New Report". The builder walks you through four steps:

1. Choose your data sources
2. Pick columns (grouped by source, drag to reorder)
3. Set filters (date range, locations, employee status, sort order)
4. Name your report, choose the export format (CSV or Excel), and save

You can save the config for later or export right away with "Save & Export".

Templates are pre-built report configs ready to use. Go to the Templates tab on the Reports page to browse them. Available templates include Compliance Report, Employee Roster, Schedule vs. Actual, Termination Report, Audit Trail, and Time Off Summary.

Click "Use Template" to clone one into your saved reports. From there you can customize the columns, filters, and schedule however you want.

After saving a report, you can enable a schedule on it. Pick a frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly), set the time and timezone, and add recipients. Recipients must be employees in your company with a role that can access the report's data sources.

Scheduled reports run automatically and are emailed with the file attached plus a download link. POS data is fetched live at report generation time, so the report always reflects the most current data available.

Go to Reports → "Scheduled & History" tab. You'll see all generated reports from the last 90 days. Each entry shows the report name, date generated, format, file size, and row count. Click Download to get the file.

You can also access reports directly from the download link in the email notification.

Yes, a few:

• 25 saved report configs per user
• 5 scheduled reports per user (50 total per company)
• 30 on-demand exports per day
• Date range limits vary by source (e.g., 14 days for time entries, 90 days for employee requests)
• Report history is kept for 90 days

Reports adjust automatically. Every time a report generates, the system checks your current role and permissions and only includes columns you can access. If you saved a report with payroll data as an org admin but were later changed to admin, or a permission like viewing pay and tips was turned off for you, those columns are quietly removed from the output. Your saved config stays, just with fewer columns in the results.

If you're terminated, any scheduled reports you created are automatically disabled.

Each employee can be assigned to multiple locations. Employees can optionally set a primary location themselves, which determines which schedule and location data they see by default when they log in. Tip pool eligibility depends on the employee's job title and how the pools are configured at each location by an admin.

QuickSpice tracks the complete employee journey with a full audit trail:

• Hire: Employee appears automatically when added in Toast
• Role changes: Promote or change QuickSpice roles (e.g., Staff → Manager)
• Transfers: Location assignments sync automatically from Toast
• Termination: Synced automatically when an employee is removed in Toast (employee loses access but data is preserved)

Org Admins have three tools for shaping who sees and manages what, from broadest to finest:

1. Roles: Assign each person a role (Staff, Manager, Admin, or Org Admin) from the Team page. The role sets their default capabilities.
2. Location scope: Managers act only at their assigned locations. When you assign the Admin role, you choose their location scope: all locations or a specific subset.
3. Permission restrictions: Turn off specific capabilities per person, per location. For example, a manager who builds schedules but should not see pay and tip amounts, or an admin who should not edit tip pool configuration.

Restrictions are configured from the Team page (Edit Permissions on a person), and the Permissions page shows everyone's restrictions in one place. Restrictions only remove capabilities, never add them, and only Org Admins can view or change them.

For what a restricted person actually sees, and more detail on admin location scope, see the Account & Security section.

The system prevents removing or demoting the last Org Admin in a company. There must always be at least one Org Admin to maintain company administration.

QuickSpice includes built-in team communication:

• Direct messages (1-on-1 between employees at the same location)
• Group chats (named conversations with multiple members)
• Announcements (broadcast messages from managers/admins to locations or the whole company)

Messages are delivered in real time.

Managers can send announcements to their assigned locations. Admins with access to all locations, and Org Admins, can send company-wide announcements; an admin scoped to specific locations sends to those locations. Announcements support read receipts, so the sender can see who has opened the message.

Yes. You can edit or delete your own messages after sending. You can also react to messages with emoji, mute conversations you don't want notifications from, and add or remove members from group chats.

Messages and conversations are automatically deleted 30 days after the last message. Announcements are deleted after 30 days by default; the sender can choose a longer expiration, up to 1 year, when posting or editing an announcement, and its read receipts are kept for the same period.

Employees can send direct messages to anyone they share a location with, and can create group chats with those people. Announcements are different: only managers and above can send those, and managers can only target their own locations.

Instead of passwords, QuickSpice uses magic links: secure, one-time-use URLs sent to your email. The link expires after 15 minutes. This eliminates password-related security risks like phishing, credential stuffing, and weak passwords.

Each employee has a role that determines what they can see and do:

• Staff: Personal schedule, badge times, tasks, forms, documents
• Manager: Staff features plus scheduling, approvals, hours, pay, and tips for their assigned locations
• Admin: Manager features plus documents, form templates, configure tips, review employee certificates, across the location scope chosen when the role was assigned
• Org Admin: Admin features plus payroll, audit logs, POS configuration, certificate types, company settings, billing

Roles are additive. Each level includes everything below it. On top of roles, Org Admins can restrict specific capabilities per person, per location (see the next questions). Job titles and employee data are synced automatically from your POS and cannot be edited directly in QuickSpice.

Yes. QuickSpice uses role-based access control (RBAC): roles set the defaults, and Org Admins can turn off specific capabilities for any manager or admin, per location. For example:

• A manager who builds schedules but should not see pay and tip amounts
• A manager who handles time-off requests at one location but not another
• An admin who should not edit tip pool configuration

Restrictions are set from the Team page (Edit Permissions on a person) or reviewed company-wide on the Permissions page. Restrictions only remove capabilities. They never grant someone more than their role allows.

It depends on what was turned off:

• If a capability controls a whole page, the page disappears from their navigation.
• If it controls part of a page, that part is hidden or shown as restricted. For example, a manager without permission to view pay and tips still sees schedules and hours pages they otherwise have access to, with the pay and tip figures withheld.
• If a management capability is turned off but viewing is still allowed, the page becomes read-only.

Some capabilities depend on each other. Turning off "View hours, pay & tips" also turns off tip redistributions and other features that require reading that data. The permissions editor shows these effects and asks you to confirm before a change with wide impact.

When you assign the Admin role, you choose which locations that admin can access: all locations, or a specific subset. An admin scoped to a subset only sees and manages data for those locations, the same way a manager is limited to their assigned locations.

This is useful for regional managers or admins responsible for some locations but not others. Org Admins always have access to every location.

Every request is scoped to your company. One company cannot access another company's data. This isolation is enforced at every level of the system, so your information stays private.

Every change (create, update, delete) across the platform is logged with who performed the action, what was changed, who was affected, when it happened, and a detailed change summary. Audit logs are archived for 5 years.

Yes. All data is encrypted when it's stored and encrypted while it's being transmitted. We use AES-256 encryption (the same standard banks use) for stored data, and every connection between your browser and our servers is secured with HTTPS. POS connection credentials are encrypted with their own dedicated key that rotates automatically.

Everything runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud. There are no physical servers, no hardware in an office, nothing to physically break into. AWS handles the physical security, power, and maintenance. For the full breakdown, check out our Security page.

Data follows a two-tier lifecycle:

• Active data: Readily accessible in the app for varying periods. Time entries are available since your restaurant's creation (fetched live from your POS). Audit logs 6 months, schedules 12 months, time off/time change/tip change requests 12 months, form submissions 12 months.
• Archived data: Before active data expires, it's automatically archived and kept for 5 years. Org Admins can download it anytime from the Data Archives page.
• Permanent: Companies, employees, locations, and uploaded employee documents are never auto-deleted. Documents stay until an admin deletes them, since the acknowledgment records that reference them are permanent too.
• Uploaded files attached to form submissions (including paper forms scanned in on an employee's behalf) are downloadable while the submission is live in the app (about 13 months after approval) and are removed at 600 days. The submission's own responses stay archived for the full 5 years.
• Employee certificates (the record and the uploaded photo or PDF) are kept while the certificate is valid and for 1 year after its expiration date, then removed. Abandoned submissions that were never approved are removed after 6 months.

Our full schedule is published on the Data Retention page.

Go to Operations → Data Archives (Org Admin role required). Browse and download archived data by type and date range. Archived data is stored in CSV or JSON format depending on the data type.

Yes. Multiple export options are available:

• Reports: Build custom reports from any data source (employees, time entries, schedules, compliance, payroll, audit logs). Export as CSV or Excel, or schedule automatic delivery.
• Payroll (Org Admin only): Generate and download Excel payroll files
• Data Archives (Org Admin only): Download any archived dataset (CSV or JSON depending on type)
• Audit logs (Org Admin only): Browse and filter audit history