Payroll Software for Restaurants in 2026: Tips, Hourly Shifts and Hospitality Teams

The best payroll software for restaurants depends on how your tips and hours reach the pay run. Homebase suits a small restaurant that wants scheduling, a time clock and payroll with tip pooling in one app. Toast and Square suit restaurants that already run their point of sale there, because tips and timecards come from the same system. Deputy and 7shifts suit larger or multi-location teams that build the schedule first and pay second.

Enlisted has few payroll tools built only for restaurants, so this guide sorts picks by job: payroll tied to your POS, payroll inside a workforce app, scheduling tools that feed a payroll provider, and general payroll products. Open-source options come last, with an honest note on what they lack for hospitality.

What restaurants should check before buying payroll software

Restaurant pay is mostly hourly, often with more than one wage rate per person and tips on top. Three questions decide most choices, and each can be answered from a vendor's own pages.

• How do tips reach payroll? Vendor pages describe three routes: an import from the POS (Square Payroll and Toast), a pooling tool that splits tips by a rule (Toast Tips Manager, 7shifts and Homebase), or typing them in by hand. Ask which route your POS and your tip policy need.
• Where do hours come from? A payroll product with its own time clock reads hours directly. Deputy, for example, sends approved timesheets to its payroll partner in one step. Others export a file you upload.
• Is tax filing included? Homebase, Square and Toast each describe federal, state or local tax filing as part of payroll. A scheduling tool that only exports hours leaves filing to whichever payroll product you pair it with.

Also check the country. Homebase and Square describe payroll for the United States only, and Deputy's payroll page refers to US pay rates. Outside the US, the shortlist changes.

How we picked

Enlisted looked at which tools name restaurants, hourly teams, tips or timesheet-to-payroll in their own descriptions, then checked each vendor's payroll or pricing page where it could be read. Licence, self-hosting and published pricing come from Enlisted's listings, and the cards below show live data. Only tools with a clear link to restaurant or hourly-shift payroll made the list. Read more on how Enlisted ranks tools. This is not payroll or tax advice, so confirm state and local rules with your payroll provider or accountant.

Best payroll built into a small-business hourly app

1. Homebase: best all-in-one for a small restaurant with hourly staff

Homebase is a hosted app that puts scheduling, a time clock, payroll and hiring tools in one place for small businesses with hourly employees. Restaurants are the first use case in its listing, and its payroll page lists tip pooling, overtime calculations and multiple wage rates alongside automated tax calculation, filing and payment, direct deposit, W-2s and 1099s.

Homebase has a free Basic plan for a single location with a small team, so you can start with the schedule and add payroll later. Caps and tiers are on the Homebase listing and its pricing page.

• Best for: single-location restaurants and cafes that want one app for shifts, timesheets and paychecks.
• Watch out for: payroll is a paid feature, and the page describes coverage for US-based businesses only. Check which plan includes payroll for your headcount.

2. Deputy: best for multi-location hospitality teams that schedule first

Deputy is workforce management software for shift-based teams, with scheduling, timesheets, attendance, HR features and AI labor forecasting. Its listing names restaurants, healthcare and franchise networks, and it offers roll-up views for multi-location operators.

Deputy's payroll page says payroll is enabled by Paycor: you approve timesheets in Deputy, click send, and the pay run is ready in Paycor. That means Deputy supplies hours and pay rates, while Paycor processes payroll. The page does not mention tips.

• Best for: restaurant groups and franchises that need compliant schedules and timesheets across sites.
• Watch out for: payroll runs through a partner, and the payroll page describes US pay rates. Ask how tips are entered before you commit.

Best payroll that follows your point of sale

3. Toast: best for restaurants already on the Toast POS

Toast is a restaurant point-of-sale and management platform with online ordering, payments and payroll tools for food-service businesses. Toast's support pages say tips customers add in the POS flow into Toast Payroll, with Toast Tips Manager for pooled tipouts, direct sync for individual tips and manual entry as a fallback.

Toast also says it handles the filing and payment of payroll taxes. Enlisted has no published plan prices for Toast, so ask the vendor.

• Best for: full-service and quick-service restaurants that want tips, hours and pay in one vendor's system.
• Watch out for: payroll is positioned as part of the Toast platform. If you use another POS, ask Toast whether Toast Payroll is open to you before you plan around it.

4. Square Point of Sale: best for restaurants on Square

Square Point of Sale is register software and card-payment hardware for restaurants, retail and service businesses, and it includes staff scheduling and payroll tools. Square's payroll page says you can import timecards and tips from Square POS, and that it handles federal and state tax filings, including quarterly and annual forms, and year-end W-2 and 1099-NEC filings. It also has a contractor option.

The POS has a free tier with no monthly fee, though card-processing fees apply. Payroll is described on its own page, so price it separately.

• Best for: cafes, bars and restaurants that already take payments on Square and want tips imported without re-keying.
• Watch out for: the payroll page is written for the United States. Staff and tip logic outside Square's own hardware needs checking.

5. Clover: best for restaurants buying POS hardware and staff tools together

Clover is a point-of-sale and payments platform that pairs hardware with software for restaurants, retailers and service businesses. For restaurants, Clover's site lists staff scheduling and payroll tools next to a kitchen display system and online order management.

Enlisted's listing does not detail how Clover handles tips or tax filing, so treat it as a candidate to confirm on the vendor's site. Purchases go through the sales team.

• Best for: restaurants choosing a Clover terminal and kitchen display system that want staff tools from the same vendor.
• Watch out for: there is little public detail in Enlisted's data about payroll depth. Ask for a demo that shows a tipped employee through a full pay run.

Best for scheduling and timesheets that feed payroll

6. 7shifts: best restaurant scheduling with tip pooling

7shifts is restaurant team scheduling software with labor cost tracking and time clocks. Its own site describes a tip pooling tool that splits tips by hours worked, points or percentages, a 7shifts payroll product, and exports or integrations for providers such as ADP, Gusto and Paychex.

Enlisted lists a free plan. The vendor's site blocked automated reading when the listing was prepared, so confirm what each plan includes on 7shifts.

• Best for: restaurant managers who care most about scheduling and tip rules, and want payroll to follow.
• Watch out for: confirm which countries 7shifts payroll covers, and that your POS connection pulls the tip types you take.

7. Sling: best free scheduling tier for a restaurant team

Sling is employee scheduling and shift planning software with a free tier, now branded Sling by Toast. It adds a time clock, messaging, task assignment per shift and support for multiple locations, and its industry list starts with restaurants.

Enlisted's listing does not mention payroll, so use Sling to build schedules and capture hours, then pass those hours to your payroll product.

• Best for: small restaurants replacing a group chat or spreadsheet rota.
• Watch out for: it is a scheduling and time tool, not payroll. Check how hours export to your payroll provider.

8. Turnozo: best rota-to-timesheet tool for small cafes and restaurants

Turnozo is shift scheduling and time tracking for small teams, with a mobile clock-in app, optional GPS location checks, absences, shift swaps and automatic timesheets with monthly hours exports for payroll. Restaurants and cafes are the first industries on its site.

It will import your current rota from a spreadsheet or photo during setup. It exports hours; it does not run payroll.

• Best for: a cafe or restaurant leaving Excel and WhatsApp rotas that pays through an accountant or separate payroll tool.
• Watch out for: no payroll or tax filing, and the listing shows euro pricing, so check regional fit.

Other scheduling tools in Enlisted that hand hours to payroll include Findmyshift, which has a free time clock station and reports that feed payroll, Planday, which names hospitality rotas, and When I Work.

Best general payroll providers for restaurants with hourly staff

9. Gusto: best general small-business payroll for US restaurants

Gusto is a hosted payroll, benefits and HR product for small US businesses that pays employees and contractors and handles payroll taxes. Enlisted's listing does not describe restaurant tip handling, so this is a general payroll pick, not a restaurant-specific one.

7shifts lists Gusto among the payroll providers it works with, which makes it a practical pairing for a restaurant that schedules in 7shifts.

• Best for: US restaurants that want a mainstream payroll provider and handle tips through their scheduling or POS tool.
• Watch out for: confirm how tips and tip credits are entered, since the listing does not say.

10. Paycom: best for larger hourly workforces that want one system

Paycom is payroll and HR software for US employers that keeps payroll, talent, time, benefits and HR in a single database. Its time and labor tools cover time clocks, geofencing, scheduling and labor allocation, and its listing names hourly workforces.

Pricing is sales-led, and the product range is broad, so it fits larger restaurant groups better than a single site. Dayforce and UKG also list hourly and shift-based workforces among their uses.

• Best for: multi-site operators that want payroll, time clocks and HR from one vendor.
• Watch out for: more product than a small restaurant needs, and no published price to compare.

Open-source payroll for restaurants: a careful look

Frappe HR and Horilla are the open-source payroll options in Enlisted's data. Both are free to self-host, and both cover payroll alongside leave and attendance.

11. Frappe HR: best open-source HR and payroll for a team that can host it

Frappe HR is an open-source HR and payroll system under GPL-3.0, covering leave, attendance, expenses and payroll with salary structures and tax slabs. Its own site stresses configurable regional tax rules and highlights India payroll, and it offers self-hosting or managed Frappe Cloud.

Nothing in its description mentions tips, tip pooling or restaurant shift rules, so a restaurant would need a developer to set those up. Horilla, an LGPL-2.1 HR system with payroll and attendance, is similar.

• Best for: a hospitality business with technical staff that wants control of its own payroll data.
• Watch out for: tip handling and your country's tax filing are your responsibility to configure and verify.

Payroll software for hospitality outside the US

Most restaurant-specific payroll above describes US coverage. Employment Hero is an HR, payroll and rostering platform popular in Australia, with rostering that uses photo capture and geo-tracking, and it is offered in New Zealand, the UK, Canada, Singapore and Malaysia too. Planday and Turnozo handle rotas and timesheets, and you pair them with a local payroll provider.

How to choose payroll software for your restaurant

• Small restaurant, one location, US: start with Homebase if you want one app, or the payroll product of the POS you already own.
• Already on Toast or Square: price their payroll first, because tips and timecards already live in that system.
• Multi-location group: compare Deputy, 7shifts and Paycom on scheduling rules, tip handling and reporting.
• Schedules first, payroll elsewhere: pick Sling, 7shifts or Turnozo, then confirm the export into your payroll provider.
• Outside the US: begin with Employment Hero or a local payroll provider, and keep a scheduling tool for rotas.

For the wider picture, see Enlisted's guide to HR software, the HR category, and the guides to POS systems for restaurants and inventory software for restaurants. Smaller teams without hourly staff may prefer free payroll software for small business.