7shifts’ Year in Review 2022: New features, add-ons, improvements, and more

As the holiday season approaches and we put a bow on the year, we wanted to look back at all the ways we’ve worked to help 7shifts users simplify team management and improve their restaurant performance in 2022.

Let’s kick it off with some numbers. As of writing, 7shifts counts nearly 1.5 million restaurant workers that use 7shifts to view their schedules, manage time off and keep in touch with their coworkers and managers. Our user base represents more than 30,000 restaurant locations across the United States and Canada.

As the restaurants shift into the post-pandemic era, our team is constantly looking for ways to evolve the 7shifts platform to meet the changing needs of the industry. This year, we’ve added new features like Tip Pooling and Employee Onboarding, made updates to core features like messaging, and improved all areas of the platform to help restaurants run their business better.

New Features in 7shifts

Tip Pooling

In 2020, we reached out to our customers to find the most time-consuming part of managing tips. And we’re proud to say we’ve addressed those pain points with the 2022 release of Automated Tip Pooling!

This shiny new feature gives you the power to automatically sync tips from your POS provider and set custom rules. With that in place, you’ll receive calculated tip outputs—send them to payroll or view them in a comprehensive report!

Employee Onboarding

A lot happens between hiring a new team member and their first shift. With Employee Onboarding, we’ve brought the process into the 7shifts platform, saving managers 2 hours per employee with the ability to:

• Send legal forms including the I-9, W-4, and any required state income tax forms
• Upload custom documents like training manuals or contracts
• Track, view, review, and approve employee submissions
• Send new employees Direct Deposit Forms
• Store health and alcohol certifications

Documents and Certifications

All of those documents are securely stored in an employee’s 7shifts profile. Think of it as a virtual filing cabinet for everything from alcohol permits and food handler licenses to employee contracts and tax forms.

Managers can also get notified well before an employee’s certification expires—at 30, 45, 60, and 90 days—so nothing falls through the cracks.

All-new messaging and communication

When it comes to engaging a Gen Z and Millennial workforce—which made up 75% of the restaurant workforce as of 2020—digital communication is critical.

That’s why this year, we made improvements to 7shifts messaging. There were significant design updates to the feature, including a more modern messaging interface, emoji reactions, in-app GIFs, and the ability to delete messages.

We’ve also made infrastructure updates to make 7shifts messaging faster and more reliable.

Task management got even better

Task Management got a lot of love this year, and we launched our most highly-requested feature: Task Notifications.

To stay on top of employee productivity, you can now assign and send notifications to employees to remind them of tasks when they clock in. And if the floor doesn’t get swept, managers will get a message.

We also focused on reporting and insights with the launch of the Task Summary in Manager Log Book and the Tasks Report.

The Task Summary provides an easy way for managers to view their team’s progress throughout the day and gives extra context to managers’ notes recorded in the Log Book. The Tasks Report gives you a wealth of data to help find top-performing locations and employees and to keep a record of tasks completed in any given time frame.

Employee Pronouns

Employee Pronouns was brought to life by a group of passionate 7shifts employees wanting to create a simple yet impactful feature. Now, every 7shifts user can set their pronouns in their Employee Profile to help make their workplace more inclusive and positive.

Permission Templates

A restaurant operator’s most precious resource is time, and with permission templates, we’ve shaved down on how long it takes to change permissions for what managers and assistants can do in 7shifts. Use our preconfigured templates, or make and save your own to speed up the future process.

Mobile App Improvements

2022 brought a bunch of improvements to our iOS and Android apps. In addition to significant updates to messaging, we’ve brought an essential part of the web app to mobile: sales performance dashboards.

You can now get a snapshot of your daily sales progress in the 7shifts app. Robust data in your pocket makes for quick action and adjustments to stay on top of labor targets.

Expanding our API

2022 was an exciting year for our API, with the launch of our second generation API endpoints based on Open API standards. For you, that means upgrades to versioning, standardized payloads, increased security, and all new capabilities in the 7shifts platform.

Webhooks UI

Another one way that can be seen is the addition of webhooks. Webhooks are often used alongside software like Zapier and IFTTT to help create automated workflows, connecting 7shifts and your favorite apps.

But what does this look like in practice? Here’s one example: After closing payroll in 7shifts, admins can set up a webhook to trigger an email to your accounting team—keeping everyone informed without any extra steps or manual work.

Personalized Access tokens

Additionally, we added personalized access tokens for API access. With personal access tokens, you can interface with our V2 API endpoints and have greater flexibility in access management by being able to create multiple access tokens per company, make edits and deletions, and add names and owners for your different use cases.

Looking ahead to 2023

That’s a wrap on 2022! We’re hard at work building new features and products to help you navigate every element of restaurant team management. Stay tuned for updates to compliance, payment processes, employee onboarding, and more! We’re also working to partner with more restaurant tech companies you use and love to expand our integration offerings.