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Schedule staff smarter, control wage costs and support your compliance efforts — without the complexity of enterprise systems or manual spreadsheets.
Café scheduling with live labour budgets
Australian award compliance built in
Integrates with Xero and MYOB
Scheduling a café is not the same as scheduling an office. Venues deal with early morning starts, weekend brunch rushes, a mostly casual team and strict award compliance — often all at once, and usually on a Sunday night.
Early morning opening shifts
Balancing baristas, kitchen and floor
Weekend brunch rush staffing
Hospitality Award compliance
High casual workforce turnover
Food safety certification tracking
Creating a café roster means balancing baristas, kitchen and floor against availability, cost and compliance — usually under time pressure.
Match staffing to trade instead of repeating last week's roster
Café staff scheduling means balancing baristas, kitchen and floor against availability, cost and compliance — usually under time pressure. RosterElf puts the scheduling decisions in front of you before the roster is published, not after payroll has run.
Not every team member can run the machine through a brunch service, and a roster that ignores that is the one that falls apart at 9am on Saturday. RosterElf holds skills against each person, so barista shift scheduling is a filter rather than a memory test.
Positions, not a memory test
Set up a barista position and assign the staff qualified to work it. When you publish an open shift, RosterElf offers it to that pool and shows who matches — so the Saturday 6am open goes to someone who can run the machine alone.
Split shifts are the quiet cost
A barista rostered 6am–11am and again 4pm–8pm is on a split shift, and the Hospitality Award treats that differently from one long day. RosterElf applies the rule when the roster is built rather than when the timesheet is reconciled — see the hospitality award guide for how the allowance works.
Accurate hours matter most when the day starts at 5:45am and most of the team is casual.
Accurate hours matter most when the day starts at 5:45am
In cafés, time tracking carries the payroll — especially with early starts and a casual team. RosterElf gives managers confidence that the timesheet reflects the floor.
Penalty rates, overtime and break rules vary by day, time, employment type and shift length — and a café roster touches most of them in a single week.
Hospitality Industry (General) Award (MA000009) — pay rates by period
| Period | Full-time & part-time | Casual |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary hours (Mon–Fri) | 100% | 125% |
| Evening (Mon–Fri 7pm–midnight) | +$2.95/hr | +$2.95/hr |
| Night (Mon–Fri midnight–7am) | +$4.42/hr | +$4.42/hr |
| Saturday (all day) | 125% | 150% |
| Sunday (all day) | 150% | 175% |
| Public holiday | 225% | 250% |
Casual rates are set by the award directly, not by adding a loading to the permanent rate — which is why Sunday casual is 175% rather than 150% plus 25%. Rates change each 1 July; the full breakdown by classification, junior age and allowance is in the hospitality award pay guide. Always verify against Fair Work.
Approved hours should reach your pay run without being re-keyed.
No re-keying between the roster and the payroll file
RosterElf connects café scheduling and time tracking to payroll, so approved hours flow through cleanly to Xero or MYOB.
Australian cafés using RosterElf report significant time savings on roster creation. Based on customer feedback and ROI calculator data.
Scheduling is one job of several. RosterElf puts communication, HR and time tracking in the same place, so a café team has one app rather than four.
Cafés and bakeries including Koffeez and Stone Valley Bakehouse use RosterElf to schedule staff and run payroll, and Bagel O’s has been with us for over two and a half years. RosterElf is built for Australian workplaces, with Fair Work compliance, modern awards and local payroll integrations as the starting point rather than an add-on.
Less time building and re-fixing the roster every week.
See live wage cost as you schedule — no guesswork until payday.
Hospitality Award rates and penalties built in.
Works for casual, part-time and full-time staff.
Intuitive for managers and staff, with minimal training.
Scales from one café to a group of sites.
“One of the main reasons we went with RosterElf was because they're Australian-based. We call, and we get a response straight away.”
Shahryar Tehrani · Owner, Bagel O's
Perth café cut admin and got instant Australian support
Read the Bagel O's storyHear from hospitality businesses that simplified their rostering with RosterElf
Andrew Nathan
November 13, 2025
"We are extremely happy with Roster Elf, it's a great improvement on the previous system we were using. Sean and all the staff have been fantastic, really know their stuff and make using RosterElf a pleasure."
Monica Van De Laak
October 16, 2025
"Sean was an amazing help, very patient and thorough."
Mary C.
October 13, 2025
"I can see my roster, enter availability, put leave in advance and clock on and off easily."
See how much time and money your business could save with RosterElf rostering software.
Based on 70% time reduction with automated rostering
No credit card required
Download free job description templates for your cafés team
Stay compliant with Australian Modern Award pay rates
Accredited RosterElf-partner accountants and bookkeepers who work with café businesses on payroll and award-compliant pay runs.
Christine Owng
Melbourne, VIC
Bookkeeping Partners is a Melbourne bookkeeping and payroll practice led by Christine Owng — an accredited RosterElf partner for shift-based businesses.
See how RosterElf helps other businesses like yours
Free scheduling tools, templates and guides for Australian café operators
Build your first café roster in minutes. No credit card required.
At RosterElf, support isn't a ticket system — it's part of the product. Our Australian-based team helps you set up correctly, understand award rules, and stay compliant as your business changes. No scripts. No offshore handoffs. Just real help when you need it.
Guided setup and onboarding
Award and payroll questions answered
Ongoing help as your team grows
The best café staff scheduling software combines fast roster creation, live labour cost tracking, award compliance and payroll integration. RosterElf is built specifically for Australian cafés, with the Hospitality Industry (General) Award applied automatically, casual pool management, and integrations with Xero and MYOB.
Most Australian café barista shifts run 4 to 8 hours, clustered around trade rather than spread evenly: an opener from around 6am through the morning rush, a mid shift covering brunch, and a shorter close. The Hospitality Award sets a minimum engagement of 2 hours for casuals, and a barista rostered both a morning and an evening block is on a split shift, which carries its own allowance.
Start from your trade, not from last week’s roster. Identify the peaks — the morning rush and weekend brunch — then schedule qualified baristas onto the machine first and build kitchen and floor around them. Keep a casual pool for surges, hold skills against each person so only qualified staff can be assigned to a station, and watch live wage cost as you build rather than discovering it at payroll.
