Best Payroll Software for Hospitality in Ireland and the UK (2026)

Short answer: for restaurants, bars and hotels in Ireland and the UK, the tax side of payroll is a solved problem. BrightPay, Thesaurus, Sage, Xero, QuickBooks and IRIS all calculate and file correctly with Revenue or HMRC. What separates an easy hospitality pay run from a painful one is everything that happens before it: hours that change every week, breaks, tips and tronc, holiday pay for irregular hours, and getting all of that out of the rota and into the payroll without retyping it. Pick the payroll package on filing, fit and price. Then fix the hours problem separately.

What hospitality payroll has to cope with

Office payroll is the same salary twelve times a year. Hospitality payroll is a different job:

• Hours that change every week. Split shifts, late finishes, someone covering a sick call at an hour's notice. Every pay run starts with somebody working out who actually worked what, and that number rarely matches the rota.
• Breaks. In Ireland the Organisation of Working Time Act requires a 15-minute break after 4.5 hours and 30 minutes after 6. In the UK the Working Time Regulations require 20 minutes once a shift runs past 6 hours. Whether breaks are paid depends on the contract, and unpaid ones have to come off the hours consistently.
• Tips, service charges and tronc. In Ireland, the Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Act 2022 stops employers using tips to make up basic pay and requires a tips notice on display. In the UK, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 requires all qualifying tips to reach workers in full, a written tipping policy, and records kept for three years. Tips paid through payroll are taxed through PAYE in both countries; in the UK a properly run independent tronc can also avoid National Insurance.
• Holiday pay on irregular hours. In Ireland one of the statutory methods is 8% of hours worked. In the UK, for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of hours worked. Both need accurate hours to start from.
• Pensions. UK employers have run auto-enrolment for years. In Ireland, MyFutureFund auto-enrolment started on 1 January 2026 for employees aged 23 to 60 earning over EUR 20,000 who are not already in a workplace pension. Your payroll software has to handle it.
• Turnover. Starters and leavers every month, so how quickly you can set up a new employee matters more than it does in an office.

Related: Tips and Tronc Systems Explained for Hospitality Businesses

The main options compared

Prices change often, so check each provider's current pricing page before you decide. The billing model matters more than the headline number: most payroll software costs more as your headcount grows, which in hospitality means it costs more every summer.

Which one should you pick?

• Ireland, doing payroll yourself: BrightPay or Thesaurus. Both handle Revenue Payroll Notifications and PAYE Modernisation submissions, and most Irish accountants know them.
• Ireland or the UK, your accountant runs payroll: use whatever they use. Your job is getting them accurate hours and tips on time.
• UK, already on Xero or QuickBooks: use the payroll inside it. One login, and your accountant sees everything.
• UK, standalone: Sage Payroll or BrightPay.
• UK group with a significant tronc: talk to IRIS or a specialist troncmaster before you choose the payroll package, because the tronc structure decides the rest.

Related: Best Small Restaurant Payroll Software in the UK and Ireland

The real problem is the hours, not the payroll

Every package above calculates tax correctly. None of them knows who actually worked last Saturday, whether the kitchen porter took his break, or that the bar shift ran two hours past the rota because a party stayed late.

That information lives on a paper timesheet, in a WhatsApp thread, or in the manager's memory, and someone has to turn it into a spreadsheet before the pay run. That is where the hours go every week, and where the mistakes come from: paying the rota instead of the hours worked, unpaid breaks deducted for some people and not others, tips mixed into wages.

So the useful question is not "which payroll software is best for hospitality?" but "how do accurate hours get from the floor into my payroll software?"

Where Rotahr fits, and where it doesn't

Rotahr does not run payroll. It does not calculate PAYE, PRSI, USC or National Insurance, it files nothing with Revenue or HMRC, and it pays nobody. You still need one of the packages above, or an accountant.

What it does is the part before the pay run:

1. You build the rota and publish it to staff phones.
2. Staff clock in and out on their phone. Breaks are tracked against the Irish thresholds, with a reminder when one is due.
3. The payroll view shows hours and gross pay per person for the period, with breaks already deducted, and flags any hourly rate below the Irish minimum wage.
4. You export a CSV, or a BrightPay-format CSV, and hand it to whoever runs the pay run.
5. Tips are recorded and distributed separately from wages, so the two never get mixed up.

It is priced as a flat monthly fee per venue, not per employee: EUR 49 a month for up to 15 staff, EUR 89 for up to 30, and EUR 215 for unlimited staff and multiple venues. The first 3 months are free with no card. It also covers scheduling, table bookings and HACCP records, which is the point: one system for the shift, not five.

To be fair about it: if you have four staff on fixed hours and your timesheet already works, you don't need it. A per-employee tool or a spreadsheet will be cheaper.

See how clock-in and payroll hours work in Rotahr

Worked example: an 18-person restaurant in Galway

Weekly pay, 18 staff on a mix of full and part-time hours, card tips shared through a pool. The owner's accountant runs payroll in BrightPay.

Before: every Monday morning the manager adds up a paper sign-in sheet, checks it against the rota, texts two people to ask what time they actually left, types it all into a spreadsheet and emails it over. The tips are worked out on a separate sheet. It takes about two hours, and any mistake becomes a conversation on payday.

After: staff clock in and out on their phones. On Monday the manager opens last week's payroll view, checks the variance against the rota (one shift ran long, one person forgot to clock out), corrects it, and exports the BrightPay CSV. Rotahr doesn't store PPS numbers, so the accountant matches those in BrightPay before importing. Tips go out through the tips screen, separately from wages.

Cost: 18 staff puts the restaurant on the Pro plan at EUR 89 a month, flat, on top of whatever the BrightPay licence or accountant already costs. Rotahr replaces the timesheet and the spreadsheet, not the payroll software.

If you're in the US

US hospitality payroll is a different job: tip credits against minimum wage, tip reporting, the FICA tip credit and state-level overtime rules. Gusto, ADP, Paychex and, for venues on Toast POS, Toast Payroll are the usual choices. This guide sticks to Ireland and the UK. For the US side, see How US Restaurants Handle Payroll Taxes and Tip Reporting.

Common mistakes

1. Paying from the rota instead of actual hours. The rota is the plan. Pay what was worked, and keep the record.
2. Mixing tips into wages. In Ireland tips cannot be used to make up basic pay, and in the UK all qualifying tips must be passed on. Keep them separate in the records as well as in the bank.
3. Deducting breaks inconsistently. If unpaid breaks come off the hours, they come off for everyone, and only when they were actually taken.
4. Working out irregular-hours holiday pay by hand. Use the accrual method your payroll software supports and feed it real hours.
5. Choosing payroll on price alone. If your accountant already uses BrightPay, a cheaper package that they have to re-key from is not cheaper.

Related: Irish Restaurant Payroll: Weekly vs Monthly Pay Explained

Want accurate hours without the Monday spreadsheet? See how Rotahr handles clock-in and payroll hours, or try it free for 3 months.