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Employees and access

Every person who clocks in, takes an order, or logs into the management app is an employee record. This page covers adding, configuring, and offboarding staff.

Adding employees​

Open Staff → Employees and click Add Employee. You'll need:

  • Name and contact info — first name, last name, email, mobile number.
  • Job title — at least one required (see below).
  • Pay rate — hourly, salary, or tipped-minimum. Required if you run payroll through OrderUp.
  • Start date.

If you only need to give someone access to the management or admin app (no POS, no payroll), you can invite them via the team invitation flow instead. That path skips pay setup.

Station accounts​

Not every login on the POS belongs to a person. Click Add Station (next to Add Employee) to create a shared sign-in for a fixed spot in the restaurant — a takeout counter, an expo screen — where several people sign in over a shift using the same PIN.

A station takes just a name and gets its own PIN; it never takes an email, a job title, a wage, or manager access, so it never appears in payroll, tip pooling, or onboarding, and no invitation is sent. Unlike a staff PIN, a station's PIN is durable — it doesn't expire after first use, since there's no single person to hand ownership of the counter to. Change it from the station's profile whenever someone who knows it leaves. Voids, comps, and discounts at a station still require a manager's PIN, so those stay attributable to whoever approved them. Stations show up in the employee list tagged Station and are edited from their own dialog, not the employee form.

Job titles​

Job titles describe what someone does — Server, Bartender, Line Cook, Manager. They're managed under Staff → Jobs.

Each job title can have:

  • A default pay rate that pre-fills when you assign the title to a new employee.
  • A role that controls what the person can do on the POS and in management.
  • Tip pool participation — whether someone in this job contributes to or draws from the tip pool.

An employee can hold multiple job titles. Bartender by default but the schedule has them as Server tonight? They'll clock in under "Server" and accrue server-rate pay and server tip-pool share for that shift.

Roles and permissions​

Roles bundle permissions. Default roles cover most kitchens:

  • Owner — full access to everything.
  • Manager — most things except billing and account settings.
  • Shift Lead — can approve discounts, voids, and time edits.
  • Server / Bartender / Cook — POS-only access scoped to their station.

Custom roles live under Staff → Roles. Toggle individual permissions: void orders, comp items above $X, run reports, approve time entries, and so on. Assign the role to a job title and every employee with that title inherits it.

POS PIN setup​

Every employee who uses the POS needs a 4–6 digit PIN — every role except Accountant, since Accountants never work the register. Whether an employee needs a PIN follows their role automatically; POS Access on the employee profile reflects that and isn't a switch you flip yourself.

PINs are self-service. An employee creates their own the first time they sign in, and can reset it any time from Account → Security (in the staff portal, or in the management app for Owner and Administrator, who sign in there instead of the portal). Owners and Administrators are prompted to set a PIN the first time they log into management if they don't have one yet. The PIN is hashed before storage — nobody, including OrderUp, can read it back. If an employee is locked out after too many wrong attempts, a manager can unlock their existing PIN from the employee's profile; if they can't reach their portal before a shift, a manager can issue a temporary PIN from the same screen, but they cannot set or view someone's permanent PIN.

For higher-value actions (refunds, voids, discount overrides) the POS can require a manager PIN on top of the staff PIN. Configure those thresholds under Settings → POS.

Pay rates​

Pay rate setup feeds payroll. From the employee profile, set:

  • Pay type — hourly, salaried, or tipped (with tip credit if your state allows it).
  • Base rate.
  • Overtime eligibility — exempt or non-exempt.
  • Direct deposit details — bank routing and account numbers, encrypted at rest.

For the full payroll picture — pay periods, tip distribution, W-2s, and 1099s — see Payroll.

Termination flow​

When an employee leaves, open their profile and click Terminate. You'll be asked to:

  1. Set a termination date. Open shifts after that date are removed; closed shifts are preserved for payroll and reporting.
  2. Choose a reason (voluntary, involuntary, no-call/no-show). This is private to managers and feeds turnover reports.
  3. Revoke POS access. The PIN is invalidated immediately.
  4. Revoke management access if applicable. The user is signed out across devices.

Terminated employees stay searchable in the Inactive filter so you can pull historical records, run their final pay stub, and generate their year-end W-2 or 1099. Don't delete employees — termination preserves the audit trail you need for tax filings and unemployment claims.

Re-hiring​

If a former employee comes back, find them in the inactive list and click Re-hire. Their history (training, write-ups, prior pay rates) carries forward. You'll set a new start date, confirm the pay rate, and re-issue a PIN.