Venheim
The manager goes through the shift with the service team on a tablet

Weekly grid · Requests · Swaps

Staff scheduling for hospitality: free for small businesses

A weekly grid with drag and drop, request and swap management, target-hours comparison and an assistant that reports gaps. The team is included without limit — one price per site instead of per employee.

Start free

Try Premium for 30 days, no payment details. After that your business carries on free on the Start plan; records stay readable and exportable.

The sign-up form is in German for now. Inside the app, everyone picks their own language — nine languages, English included.

In short

For staff scheduling in hospitality, Venheim is the app for the BUSINESS — the manager plans, the team sees roster, requests and swaps on their own phones. For one site with up to 5 active people it is free for good, not just for a trial; from Pro the team is unlimited and you pay per site.

Day to daypaper, Excel, WhatsApp

No more rosters on paper and WhatsApp

In many businesses the roster lives in an Excel sheet, on the wall and in a WhatsApp group — the same roster three times, different three times. Requests get lost in the flood of messages, a swap is agreed verbally and forgotten, and in the end nobody knows for sure who opens on Saturday. A scheduling tool turns this into one single, current truth that everyone sees on their phone.

On your own phone: the next shift, the week with opener, midday and late shifts — and, if you like, all of it in the phone calendar.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
A daybriefing, rush, closing

A day in the roster: from the briefing to the last chair

  • 10:45 · BriefingEveryone knows where they stand todayThe weekly roster is on everyone's phone — in their own language.
  • 12:30 · RushIf someone drops out, cover is already thereWhen someone calls in sick, the roster suggests cover that fits rest periods and hours.
  • 23:10 · ClosingThe hours are already inClocked is clocked: planned shift against clocked time, with no catching up at month end.
How it worksthe weekly grid

Staff scheduling in hospitality: the planner

Weekly grid with drag and drop

Place shifts by drag and drop, template roster for weeks A/B, opener, midday and late shifts per weekday from the opening hours.

Requests & swaps

The team enters weekly availability and preferred shifts and makes swap requests — the manager approves centrally in the approvals centre.

Target-hours comparison

Planned hours against agreed hours per person — with a running balance, so nobody is permanently scheduled too much or too little. Leave, sick leave and public holidays reduce the target instead of creating minus hours.

Assistant & simulation

Reports unfilled shifts and rest-period violations, suggests a replacement for sickness or leave and simulates a whole week — the decision stays with the manager.

One week, one grid, one truth — with a bar that flags conflicts such as a sick note before they show up on the floor.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
Relieflanguage, fairness, cover

What really takes the load off the site manager

Everyone reads in their own language

Besides German, the team view speaks eight more languages — English, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Everyone chooses for themselves; nobody has to translate the roster any more. Records stay in German.

Fairness account

Who had how many late, Saturday, Sunday and public-holiday shifts in the last eight weeks? The count per person ends the “always me” discussion — deliberately as an honest statistic, not an automaton that shares out over people's heads.

A sick call at six in the morning

The replacement dialog shows who is available, rested and not already scheduled — including a stand-in rotation for emergencies. The manager makes the decision; the app takes away the phoning round, not the judgement.

Everyone chooses their own language and reads the roster in it — the records stay in German.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
The targetcontract from a date

The target the roster calculates against

The target-hours comparison is only as good as the number it compares against. Two things that should go without saying and are almost never right in spreadsheets:

Absence reduces the target

Whoever was on leave for two weeks should not come back with eighty minus hours. Leave, sick leave and public holidays lower the person's weekly target instead of leaving it due — by one single rule shared by the roster, the assistant, the replacement search and the reports. Time off in lieu deliberately does not reduce it: it exists to work off extra hours.

The contract applies from a date

Weekly hours are a history, not an overwritable field: if you raise a part-timer from 10 to 24 hours in September, July stays at 10 hours — balance, reports and export calculate every week with the contract that applied at the time. Only the template roster does not follow by itself; the report then says so in its own line, so the manager can roll it out again.

Calendarsubscription, not export

Your own roster lands in your phone calendar

A roster you first have to go and look at gets forgotten. That is why everyone can subscribe to their shifts once in their own phone calendar — from then on they sit between the doctor's appointment and the birthday, with the reminder that is set there anyway. If the manager moves a shift, it moves on the phone too; a calendar downloaded once would not do that, and that is exactly where export files fail after the first roster change.

Each subscription belongs to exactly one person and can be withdrawn individually — regenerating it means revoking it, without touching anyone else's subscription.

What is not in the calendar

Colleagues' names. In the app, seeing who you work with is useful; in a file held by Google or Apple it would mean passing other people's working hours to a provider they never chose. The feed contains your own shift — time, role, site.

Excelthree breaking points

When Excel is enough — and when it stops being enough

Honestly: for a small, well-rehearsed team with fixed shifts, an Excel sheet is a perfectly usable roster. It breaks in three places — and whoever knows one of them usually knows all three:

  • The printout goes out of date. After the third change there are three versions: on the wall, in the file, in the group chat — and somebody follows the wrong one.
  • The swap gets lost. Agreed verbally, sunk in the chat, never made it into the roster. Then on Saturday nobody turns up — or two people do.
  • Nobody compares target with actual. Whether someone has been over or under their agreed hours for weeks is something a spreadsheet does not see — the running balance per person does.

If you still want to start with a spreadsheet: the guide has a roster template for Excel (German) for week and month.

Per siteunlimited team

One price per site — the whole team on board

One price per site — everyone included. And the roster is only one part — time tracking, HACCP, inventory and reports are in the same price. Whoever joins gets an invitation and is on the roster the same day.

€39.90per site per monthOne-off €199.00 setup fee with monthly payment — waived with annual payment.

All in one: roster, time clock, records, stock, reports.

In the logbook

The roster is one building block of the digital operations logbook — together with time tracking, HACCP and inventory. To the operations logbook.

Offline

No signal in the cold room? No problem.

Clocking in and out, temperatures, cleaning and maintenance ticks, stocktake counts and inspection dates work without a connection — the app can even be restarted with no signal. Every entry keeps the time it was tapped and is sent automatically later: time-clock entries for up to 3 days, everything else for up to 7 days. Nothing is thrown away. Approvals, orders, reports and chat need a connection — they depend on data only the server knows at the moment of the decision.

Price

One price per site, unlimited team

€39.90 Pro·€69.90 Premiumper site per month. Prices shown are final prices — as a small business under § 6 (1) no. 27 of the Austrian VAT Act (UStG), we do not charge VAT. The Start plan is free for good — with roster, time clock, chat and HACCP recording including Excel download.One-off €199.00 setup fee with monthly payment — waived with annual payment. All prices

Start free

How this compares with providers that charge per employee is shown in the price comparison with sources and a worked example (German).

Questions11 answers

Frequently asked questions

How do you create a roster in hospitality?
First store the opening hours per weekday; they give you the opener, midday and late shifts. The team enters availability and preferred shifts on their phones, the manager places the shifts in the weekly grid, and the assistant reports unfilled shifts and rest periods that are too short. Whoever has fixed weeks sets up a template roster for weeks A and B once. The finished roster is on the team's phones at once and, if they like, in their own phone calendar.
Is an Excel sheet enough for a hospitality roster?
For a small, well-rehearsed team with fixed shifts, yes. It breaks in three places: the printout goes out of date after the third change, a verbal swap never makes it into the roster, and nobody compares the planned hours with the agreed ones. Whoever wants to start with a spreadsheet finds a roster template for Excel in the guide (in German).
Does every extra part-timer cost more?
No. The price depends on the site, not on headcount: the Start plan is free for one site with up to 5 people; from Pro (€39.90 per site per month) the whole team is included — whoever joins gets an invitation. One-off €199.00 setup fee with monthly payment — waived with annual payment.
Can staff enter requests and swaps themselves?
Yes. The team enters weekly availability and preferred shifts on their own phones and makes swap requests. The manager sees everything in the approvals centre and approves or declines — the roster stays in one hand instead of falling apart in WhatsApp messages.
Does the roster spot gaps and rest-period violations?
Yes. The assistant checks staffing against the site's opening hours, reports unfilled shifts and warns about rest periods that are too short. There is a comparison against the agreed hours and a template roster for weeks A/B.
Is the roster connected to time tracking?
Yes — both are in the same tool. The planned shift sits next to the clocked time, so target and actual can be compared. No switching between two systems.
How do weekend shifts stay fairly shared?
The fairness account counts each person's late, Saturday, Sunday and public-holiday shifts over the last eight weeks — visible to the manager while planning. It is deliberately an honest statistic, not an automaton: people do the sharing out, but on the basis of the same figures instead of gut feeling.
How short-notice can the roster be changed (Austria)?
The scheduling of working time generally has to be agreed; if the business wants to change it unilaterally, § 19c AZG usually requires two weeks' notice — exceptions apply to unforeseeable cases, and collective agreements may differ. This is not legal advice: the binding answer comes from the chamber or the labour inspectorate. In practice it helps that every roster change reaches the team's phones immediately, so old printouts never circulate in the first place.
Can people see their shifts in their phone calendar?
Yes, as a subscription: everyone sets up their roster once in their own phone calendar; after that the shifts sit there next to all their other appointments and change along with it when the manager re-plans. A downloaded calendar export would not do that — it goes out of date with the first change. Each subscription belongs to exactly one person and can be revoked individually; colleagues' names are deliberately not in the feed.
Do leave, sick leave and public holidays create minus hours?
No. These days reduce the person's weekly target instead of leaving it due — by the same rule in the roster, the assistant, the replacement search and the reports. Time off in lieu deliberately does not reduce it, because it is meant to work off extra hours; “not available” does not either, because it is not paid leave.
What happens to past weeks when weekly hours change?
They stay as they were. Weekly hours and hourly rate apply from a date: whoever goes from 10 to 24 weekly hours in September still has 10 in July — balance, reports and export calculate every week with the contract that applied at the time. Only the template roster does not adjust itself; the report points this out so the manager can roll it out again.

A roster the whole team sees

Create the business, enter opening hours, invite the team — the first weekly roster is ready the same day.

Start free

Try Premium for 30 days, no payment details. After that your business carries on free on the Start plan; records stay readable and exportable.

The sign-up form is in German for now. Inside the app, everyone picks their own language — nine languages, English included.