The Backhouse Guide
Everything you need to run
your venue on Backhouse.
From first sign-in to close-out. Written for the people who actually run a venue - if you can run a floor, you can run Backhouse. Ten minutes here and your whole crew knows the playbook.
Getting Started
From zero to running a shift in one sitting
Owner sign-up takes about two minutes. No credit card, no confirmation email to click - you land straight in your dashboard with a 90-day free trial running.
- 1
Create the account
Your name, your venue name, an email and password. That is genuinely it - you are signed in and your venue exists.
- 2
Pick your venue type
Cafe, bar, restaurant, nightclub, or live music venue. This is not just a label: it pre-loads your starter kit so you are never staring at a blank app.
- 3
Invite your team
From Staff Management, Invite Staff creates a login with a one-time temporary password you hand to your teammate. Quick Add puts someone on the roster with a 4-digit PIN when you just need them on the books.
- 4
Work the Getting Started card
The Home dashboard walks managers through setup - venue, team, first schedule, floor. Finish it and it politely gets out of the way.
What your venue type pre-loads
- Opening & closing checklists tuned to your operation - a cafe gets espresso machines, a music venue gets line check and box-office settle
- Side-work tasks by area (FOH / BOH / Bar)
- Shift types with default times - Open/Mid/Close for a cafe, Load-in through Load-out for a music venue
- Tip-out roles, positions, comp reasons, and required certifications where they apply
Change any of it later under Venue Setup. Load Starter Content only fills in what is missing - it never overwrites your edits.
Owner & Manager
Full access to everything - finance, staff, settings, payroll, and the multi-location views.
Lead
The day-to-day operating tools plus some finance: floor, schedule, 86 board, inventory, tip-out, comps.
Staff
Their week, the shared boards, checklists, side work, chat, and the shift pool. Manager tools stay hidden.
Unlimited seats
Every plan includes unlimited staff. Invite the whole crew - there is no per-seat charge, ever.
Scheduling
Next week's schedule, built in minutes
Most weeks look like last week - so Backhouse starts you from last week. Copy it forward, fill the gaps, publish in a tap, and every shift lands on your team's phones instantly.
- 1
Build on the grid
One row per person, a column per day, grouped FOH / BOH / Support. Click an empty cell to quick-add a shift; drag a shift to move it, hold Option/Alt while dragging to duplicate it.
- 2
Copy last week
Clone the prior week in one tap - it automatically skips anyone on approved time off. The labor bar along the bottom tracks hours, estimated cost, and conflicts as you go.
- 3
Publish
New and edited shifts stay drafts until you hit Publish. Staff are notified the moment it is live; changes after publish notify only the people affected. No printouts, no did-you-see-the-schedule texts.
Shift Pool & swaps - without the manager relay
Three ways to hand off a shift: Coverage (just needs covered), Give away (drop it entirely), or Swap (trade against one of your own upcoming shifts). Offer it to the whole eligible pool or to one named teammate.
- Eligibility is checked automatically - position, overtime, conflicts, certifications, rest between shifts - and the button tells you why if a claim is blocked
- A manager always approves before the schedule actually changes
- Stale offers expire on their own shortly before the shift starts
Auto-assign drafts the week for you PRO
Created open shifts but have not picked people? Auto-assign fills them with the best eligible person using clear, deterministic rules - same inputs, same answer, every time.
- Respects roles, approved time off, availability, weekly-hour caps (it never creates overtime), and minimum rest
- Balances hours fairly across the team
- Anything it cannot fill is left open with the reason - and everything lands as drafts for you to review before publishing
Requests, in one inbox
The Requests tab holds time-off and swap approvals with Pending / Approved / Denied filters. Approving time off that collides with assigned shifts? One tap on Approve & open shifts frees those shifts up for re-filling. Staff file and track their own requests from My Week - every upcoming shift has Request Swap, Request Coverage, and Request Off built in.
Tips & Payroll
The numbers are already collected by the time payroll comes
Generic payroll tools make restaurant pay painful because they don't understand tips, tip-outs, multiple rates, or overtime. Backhouse captures all of it during the shift - so prep is minutes, not an afternoon of spreadsheets.
- 1
Tips get captured at the shift, not at period end
Cash Out records each server's declared credit-card and cash tips (and flags over/short drawers by variance). Tip Pool splits a pooled pot by equal shares, hours, or weighted hours - penny-exact, always summing to the pool you entered. Tip Out calculates support-role cuts from your saved rules.
- 2
Hours and overtime roll up automatically
Payroll reads the hours logged in Labor Cost, totals regular and overtime (at 1.5x), and rolls multi-role staff into one line - someone who bartends some shifts and serves others shows up once, with combined hours and gross.
- 3
Export prep, hand off, done
One tap downloads a payroll-ready CSV - hours, OT, rates, gross, and declared tips per employee. Hand it to your payroll provider, or connect Gusto from the Integrations page.
Mia R.
Server
Leo T.
Bar / Server
Ada K.
Line · OT 2.0
Hours, OT, multi-role rates & declared tips · download or email to your payroll provider
Backhouse preps payroll - it doesn't cut the checks. It collects the hours, overtime, and tip data and hands your payroll provider a clean, complete file. Your processor runs the actual pay run - you stay in control of it.
Team Messaging
One place to talk, instead of five group texts
Built-in chat scoped to your venue: group channels and one-on-one DMs, with @mentions, emoji reactions, and a live pill showing who else is in the thread right now.
- 1
Channels for the crew
Create a channel with an emoji and a name (late-night-crew), flip it Private for invite-only, and pull in the right people. DMs are one tap from any teammate's name.
- 2
Announcements for management
One-to-many notices - policy changes, event prep, great job last night. Managers post and can pin the important ones; the team reads.
- 3
Notifications keep score
Published schedules, approved time off, claimed shifts, new announcements - everything that needs your attention lands in Notifications, with the unread count on the Home tile and the nav bell.
Manager
We're 86 on the burrata, push the special.
Got it. Updating the board now.
Mia
Walk-in temp logged, all green ✅
Checklists & Side Work
The open, the close, and everything that keeps a shift honest
Daily run-lists for FOH and BOH that reset fresh each business day. Every tick records who did it and when - so the clipboard is gone and the accountability isn't.
- 1
Checklists
Backhouse pre-selects Opening in the morning and Closing at night. Tap an item to mark it done - it stamps your name and the time. Managers build and edit the lists; the Overall Progress card tracks the day.
- 2
Side Work
The recurring duties that aren't on the open/close lists - prep and clean-down by area (FOH / BOH / Bar), tagged Ongoing or Closing. Tap to complete; resets daily like checklists.
- 3
Temperature & Cleaning Log
Fridge, freezer, and hot-hold readings judged In Range or Out of Range live as you type, with the safe range shown. Cleaning checks log the same way. History steps back day by day, out-of-range flagged in red.
- 4
Daily Status - did each place run right?
The owner view: one card per location with opening, closing, side-work, and temp-log completion at a glance. Problem locations surface first, so you can scan every site in seconds.
Food safety, on the record
Walk-in at or below 41°F, freezer at 0°F, hot hold at 135°F+ - presets built in, custom units when you need them, and a dated history when the inspector asks.
Resets on your business day
Lists roll over on the venue's business day, not each phone's local clock - so a 1 a.m. close still counts toward the right day.
86 Board & Floor
What's out, who's where - live on every device
The 86 board is the live menu-availability board: every change broadcasts to the whole team instantly, so nobody sells the branzino that ran out twenty minutes ago.
- 1
Quick 86
Type the item, hit Enter, it's out - everywhere, immediately. Status follows quantity: zero is 86'd, one to five is Low, six-plus is Available. Adjust with -/+, Restore brings it back to full.
- 2
Floor Board
The live section map for the shift: tap a section to assign a server, set its status, or leave a note. The staff-on-floor strip and pre-shift notes get everyone on the same page, and the shift's reservations sit alongside so you can plan seating.
- 3
Shift Notes
The handoff log - the VIP coming in, the broken machine, the delivery due. Anyone can post; every note is stamped with a name and time. It replaces the scrap of paper by the POS.
Managers and leads edit the boards; staff see them live, read-only - they watch it update but can't fat-finger the burrata back onto the menu.
Make It Yours
Your name on the door - in the app, too
Backhouse white-labels to your venue on every plan. Your team opens an app that looks like yours, not ours.
- 1
Upload your logo
PNG, JPG, SVG, or WebP. Backhouse extracts a color palette from it - one tap on Apply Logo Colors themes the whole app to match.
- 2
Or dial it in by hand
Pick a theme preset or fine-tune individual colors under Custom Color Overrides. A live preview shows the look before you commit, and everything auto-saves. Prefer no attribution? Toggle the Powered-by-Backhouse badge off.
- 3
Trim the app to your operation
Venue Modules turns features on and off per venue. A coffee shop doesn't need Reservations; a food truck doesn't need a Floor Board. Toggling off only hides - no data is ever deleted, and it all comes back exactly as you left it.
Good to know
- White-label branding is included on every plan, starting with Basics
- Core modules (Home, Notifications, Settings, Profile) can never be disabled - you can't lock yourself out
- Hidden a module by mistake? Re-enable it anytime from Settings → Venue Modules
- Modules outside your plan show Upgrade to Unlock instead of a dead toggle
On Your Phone
Install it in ten seconds - it updates itself forever
Backhouse is a web app that installs straight from the browser: nothing to find in an app store, nothing for your crew to download. Added to the home screen, it opens full-screen with a bottom tab bar, built for one-thumb use mid-shift.
iPhone & iPad (Safari)
- 1
Open Backhouse in Safari
Sign in at your venue's Backhouse address.
- 2
Tap the Share button
The square with the arrow, at the bottom of the screen.
- 3
Tap Add to Home Screen, then Add
Backhouse appears on your home screen like any app and opens full-screen from now on.
Android (Chrome)
- 1
Open Backhouse in Chrome
Sign in at your venue's Backhouse address.
- 2
Tap the ⋮ menu
Top-right corner of the browser.
- 3
Tap Add to Home Screen (or Install App), then confirm
Backhouse lands on your home screen and opens full-screen like a native app.
Updates are automatic
There is no app store and no update prompt to babysit. Backhouse loads fresh from the web, so every time you open it you're on the latest version. Had it open through a long shift? Pull down to refresh and you're current.
Turn on push notifications
When Backhouse asks, allow notifications - published schedules, claimed shifts, and approvals reach you even when the app is closed. You can change your mind anytime in your phone's settings.
That's the whole playbook.
Ninety days free, no credit card, unlimited staff on every plan. Set up tonight, run tomorrow's shift on it.
Stuck on something this page doesn't cover? support@runbackhouse.com - a person answers.