1.23 million zero-hours workers. 12 weeks of clean data. Most UK SMEs don't have it.
A weekly shift logbook for the 2027 guaranteed-hours duty
Executive Summary
In a nutshell
A sub-£10/month tracker for UK SMEs that logs weekly shifts, cancellations and short-notice changes for zero-hours and low-hours workers, then rolls them up into a 12-week reference period. It produces the one piece of paper an employer will need from 2027 onwards: a defensible guaranteed-hours-offer calculation under the Employment Rights Act 2025. Adjacent rota tools like RotaCloud, Deputy and Planday do scheduling well but ship no dedicated guaranteed-hours module. The window is the 12 months between the Fair Work Agency standing up (7 April 2026) and the substantive duties biting in 2027, while every hospitality, retail, care and events SME is racing to start its 12-week clock with usable data.
The Story
Meet the user
Naz runs a 14-cover bistro in Sheffield with five core staff and a rolling cast of seven zero-hours workers who cover Friday through Sunday and the odd Tuesday function. She heard about the Employment Rights Act on the radio in March, then again from her accountant, then again at a UKHospitality webinar where someone said the words "12-week reference period" and "Fair Work Agency" and her stomach dropped. Her shifts live in a WhatsApp group, her cancellations live in her head, and her payroll is a Sage export her bookkeeper does monthly. There is no single place that says "Marcus worked 14 hours a week on average for the last 12 weeks, so you owe him a guaranteed-hours offer of around 14 hours."
She tries Deputy for two days, balks at the £1 per user cost adding up across her casual roster, and gives up. She is not looking for clever scheduling. She is looking for a logbook. A friend in a Facebook group sends her a link to ShiftLedger: tenner a month, log shifts and cancellations Sunday night, hit one button on a Monday and out comes a clean PDF for each worker showing their rolling 12-week pattern, plus a flag if anyone is about to qualify for a guaranteed-hours offer. "That's it?" she asks. "That's the whole thing." Yes. That is the whole thing.
Scores
How does this idea stack up?
7.7/10
1.23M zero-hours workers in the UK, 32% of hospitality workforce, 176,685 hospitality SMEs alone
Rebox HR's March 2026 audit found only 12 of 40 SMEs had usable shift records. £20k per worker penalties under the FWA
Standard web stack, no regulated data, no special integrations. Buildable in two to three weekends
Fair Work Agency live 7 April 2026, substantive duties land 2027, 12 weeks of clean data needed before then
Regulation-driven wedge. RotaCloud and Deputy will absorb this within 18 to 36 months. Pivot or sell
Trivial CRUD plus a rolling-window calculation. One developer, one weekend for v1
Strongest
Timing
There is a hard, dated regulatory cliff and a 12-week look-back requirement that means employers cannot wait until 2027 to start logging.
Watch out
Durability
RotaCloud's blog already discusses the Employment Rights Bill. The likely path is a Guaranteed Hours module within 12 to 18 months. Plan the pivot or the exit from day one.
Pain Point
The problem
“Last-minute cancellations without pay are cited as examples of exploitative zero-hour contract practices. Workers report that shifts could be cancelled with not much notice at all, which was annoying and inconvenient.”
— Industry commentary on UK hospitality, 2026
Three pains stack on top of each other. The first is bookkeeping. UK SMEs running zero-hours rosters are predominantly using WhatsApp groups, paper rotas, or whichever spreadsheet a manager set up two years ago. Rebox HR's March 2026 audit of 40 SME clients found only 12 had a weekly shift-hours record in a format that would survive a 12-week reference-period calculation. Cancellations and shortened shifts, both compensable under the new short-notice rules, are almost universally undocumented.
The second is regulatory risk. From 7 April 2026 the Fair Work Agency can inspect workplaces and payroll without a worker complaint, with 550 inspectors and standard penalties of 200% of any underpayment, capped at £20,000 per worker. The substantive guaranteed-hours duty starts in 2027 but requires 12 weeks of clean shift data behind it. SMEs that don't start logging in mid-2026 will not be able to defend a calculation in 2027.
The third is product-market fit on the existing tools. RotaCloud (£10/month for five employees, the most cost-effective UK option), Deputy (£1 per user), Planday (£2.99 per user) are excellent rota schedulers. But they are forward-looking scheduling tools. None ships a "this worker has worked an average of X hours per week over the trailing 12 weeks, here is the offer letter you must issue" module. Employers want a logbook. They are being sold a planner.
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