5 best hotel and hospitality payroll software

Your best server insists her tip pooling looks off. The bartender wants to know if direct deposit went through. Two housekeepers have questions about how their split shifts will be paid. Oh, and you’ve still got tax forms on your desk from last quarter and a POS system that won’t play nicely with Excel. Welcome to payroll for hospitality.

If you’re living this every few weeks and trying to do payroll yourself or dreaming of payroll outsourcing, it might be time to start thinking about specialized hospitality payroll software.

The right system can automate time tracking, manage tip distribution, coordinate multi-location reporting, and manage compliance with labor laws.

In this article, we’ll look at six of the most widely used hotel and hospitality payroll software. These are tools that can save you hours each week and get your staff paid on time.

What is hospitality payroll software?

Hospitality payroll software is a dedicated payroll system built to handle the unique demands of the hospitality industry, like rotating schedules, tip management, high turnover, and multi-location compliance. For hotels, restaurants, and other service-driven businesses, it helps streamline multi-state payroll processing while accounting for tipped income, variable shifts, and seasonal new hires.

By automating tasks like time tracking, overtime calculations, and benefit deductions behind the scenes, the right software can take a lot of the complexity out of payroll for hospitality. Owners and managers spend less time fixing spreadsheets and more time focusing on customers, guests, and staff needs.

Business is complex. Payroll shouldn’t be.

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Key features of hospitality payroll software

Running payroll in a hotel or restaurant comes with some moving parts that a generic system might not cover. The right payroll software for your business likely needs to handle rotating shifts, tipped wages, and multi-location employee scheduling and compliance. When evaluating options, keep the features below in mind.

Employee time tracking and scheduling

Accurate time tracking is mission-critical for restaurants and hotels, where labor accounts for a big share of costs and hours shift frequently. Pairing time and attendance features and scheduling tools with payroll ensures that staff hours flow directly into payroll processing with no room for manual error. You also benefit from increased visibility into your labor costs across your entire operation.

Tip pooling and tip management

Restaurants and bars need software that can manage tip distribution fairly. A good system will automate tip pooling, keep you compliant with local labor laws, and generate the payroll records you need in case questions come up later. Your staff gets paid correctly, and you have one less spreadsheet to update.

Multi-location support for chains

The system that works great for your boutique property might not cut it once you expand into other cities. A payroll platform with multi-location support lets you process payroll across sites in one place, while tracking costs and staff separately, streamlining your workforce management.

Compliance with local labor laws and tax regulations

Unpredictable hours, tipping, and constant turnover can make compliance in the hospitality industry trickier than others. An effective hospitality payroll system can automatically calculate payroll taxes, handle overtime, and remove a lot of the guesswork associated with staying on the right side of labor laws.

Integration with POS and booking systems

In hospitality, your POS and booking systems hold critical data about sales and staffing. Choosing HR software that integrates with those tools helps ensure that payroll reflects the reality of how you run your business. It also means fewer late nights reconciling numbers by hand. 

Employee self-service portals

With employee self-service, staff can grab pay stubs, update their direct deposit information, and check schedules without interrupting managers. That means fewer admin-related headaches and a better employee experience, which can help cut down on turnover.

Automated tax filing and reporting

Tax season is no one’s favorite shift. Automated filing and reporting means your payroll software takes care of the calculations, deadlines, and year-end forms on your behalf, freeing up your attention and focus for guests and customers.

Wage garnishments and tip distribution

Handling wage garnishments correctly matters just as much as properly paying out tips. A strong payroll system calculates and applies garnishments automatically, so you’re in line with legal requirements. Add features for reliable tip management, and you’ve got accurate and transparent payroll that satisfies both employees and auditors.

How to choose the right hotel payroll software

You’re likely already juggling tipped wages, complicated scheduling, seasonal staff, and near-constant turnover, so your payroll system needs to take work off your plate—not pile more on. The last thing you need is clunky payroll processing that can’t handle the realities of hotels and restaurants. A smart choice can help you manage compliance, control your labor costs, and keep your loyal employees happy with accurate overtime pay and checks that land on time.

1. Evaluate your property’s specific needs 

No two hotels, venues, or restaurants are alike. Some deal with seasonal rushes, others onboard new hires every week. If you’re trying to pay a mix of tipped servers, salaried receptionists, and a bartender who also performs gigs as a DJ at weddings, you need payroll software that can keep up. 

2. Assess integration capabilities with existing POS/HR systems

No one likes manually fixing labor reports and tax filings, and hospitality HR software that doesn’t talk to your POS means hours typing in data until your eyes glaze over. Payroll software with the right integrations sends time tracking and sales data straight into your payroll system. 

3. Verify compliance features for local labor laws & taxes

Nothing derails a busy season like an audit. Between shifting schedules, surprise overtime, and nuances in local labor laws, you need software with comprehensive support. Look for a tool that proactively flags potential issues and notifies you of upcoming changes to regulations. Features like automatic withholding and tax filing? Table stakes. 

4. Consider user-friendliness & employee self-service options

Save yourself the trouble of scrambling to produce paystubs, tax forms, and other paperwork by opting for a tool with employee self-service. Allowing your team access to their own records frees up more time for actual work and keeps employees from having to wait days for basic information.

5. Review customer support & vendor reputation

When payroll questions pop up, it’s never on a slow Tuesday afternoon. In hospitality, you need the assurance of customer support that answers fast, because fifteen minutes may be all you have in the middle of lunch rush, and nothing boosts turnover like late paychecks. A payroll provider with a solid track record can give you confidence that, when issues come up, you’ll have a solution before the problem snowballs.

Fully customizable payroll software

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Top 5 hospitality payroll software solutions

Choosing the right payroll system for your restaurant or hotel is about more than cutting checks. The hospitality industry comes with some specific payroll processing quirks, and the right system needs to manage tips, split shifts, overtime, and constant new hires without extra handholding. Below, we’ll look at five of the most popular hospitality payroll services.

1. Rippling

Rippling is an employee management software for hospitality that brings HR, IT, and payroll together in a single platform. For restaurants and hotels, it automates complicated payroll tasks like overtime pay, pay-to-minimum adjustments, and wage garnishments. 

Time tracking, scheduling, and payroll sync automatically, reducing manual entry and errors. Compliance features update in real time, with federal, state, and local labor laws, while over 600 integrations link payroll to your POS or accounting system. The platform also extends to global payroll and border HR software functions to support larger operations looking to expand beyond borders. 

Pros

• Automates hospitality-specific payroll tasks like tip adjustments and garnishments

• Scheduling and attendance integrate directly with payroll

• Compliance alerts at the federal, state, and local levels

• Extensive integration library

Cons

• Setup and configuration can take time to align with custom workflows

• Potentially more complex than a payroll-only product

2. Gusto 

Gusto is a payroll software platform that aims to combine payroll, HR, and tax filings in a single system. It offers several tools to support hospitality businesses, including payroll for tipped workers, onboarding for new hires, and scheduling.

Pros

• Time Clock Kiosk to reduce buddy punching and time theft

• Integrates payroll with POS and scheduling

• Access to HR resources and compliance guidance

Cons

• Users report poor customer service experiences

• Limited flexibility for businesses that want payroll with no bundled extras

• Potentially long resolution times for payroll tax support 

3. ADP 

ADP offers hospitality payroll software with a comprehensive set of HR and compliance tools aimed at restaurants, hotels, and food service businesses. The platform is built for high turnover, multi-location scheduling, and benefits administration, and also offers recruiting and workforce development features. While the breadth may help larger operators, smaller hospitality businesses may find ADP more complex than necessary if your main concern is running payroll.

Pros

• Covers HR, payroll, and compliance in one system

• Recruiting tools through a third-party partner

• Offers multi-location and workforce management tools

Cons

• Feature set may be excessive for small hotels or single-location operations

• Lower rated on ease of use, compared to alternatives

• Reliance on add-ons and marketplace apps can increase complexity

4. Paychex Flex

Paychex markets itself to the hospitality industry as a full-service option that combines payroll, HR, benefits, and insurance. The platform is built around Paychex Flex, which pulls in time-tracking, onboarding, and compliance features. 

Pros

• Payroll integrates with scheduling and EEOC & OSHA compliance monitoring

• Options like Paychex Pre-Check improve accuracy for employees

Cons

• Strong focus on upselling HR and insurance services

• Outsourcing emphasis can reduce flexibility for businesses that prefer to stay hands-on

• Product complexity may increase administrative burden for smaller operators

5. QuickBooks Payroll

QuickBooks offers hospitality payroll services as an extension of its general accounting platform, with third-party add-ons for HR and benefits. Key features include time tracking, compliance, and employee benefits administration through partner integrations. 

Pros

• Built-in time tracking and automated tax filing

• Tax penalty protection available for upper-tier plans

Cons

• Heavy reliance on third-party partners for core features

• No in-house HRIS available, preventing consolidation of HR and payroll into one platform 

• Focus on accounting users may make it less appealing as a standalone payroll system

Simplify and optimize hospitality payroll with Rippling

If you want real, powerful payroll for hospitality, then you want Rippling. Rippling offers full-service payroll software built on top of a single source of truth for employee data. That means your employee data isn’t tied to one specific app—it’s the same across payroll, time and attendance, onboarding, performance management, and any other apps you use within our unified platform. 

What does that mean for you and your team? For starters, you have a single source of truth for up-to-the-minute employee information. It also means that your team doesn’t have to reenter information across systems when an employee gets promoted or moves to a different city to work remotely. From changing security permissions to updating PTO policies, Rippling triggers automatic updates to employee information in a single flow. More than half of HR leaders need seven or more tools to accomplish basic tasks. Rippling reduces that number to one.

With Rippling you can:

• Pay employees and contractors in the same platform

• Manage time and attendance natively 

• Run unlimited off-cycle pay runs at no extra cost 

• Set up multiple pay schedules, pay rates, and pay types in just a few clicks 

• Add recurring reimbursements (like cell phone payments, gym memberships, etc.) that are automatically paid out every pay period, monthly, or at whatever interval you choose

• Automatically calculate prorated pay runs for new or promoted employees 

• Manage all currency conversions, including payroll adjustments 

• Automatically calculate overtime for every country 

• Make changes after submitting payroll

Payroll software for hospitality FAQs

Which payroll software offers features like time tracking, benefits administration, and compliance management?

Most modern payroll software includes features like time tracking, benefits administration, and compliance management. For businesses in the hospitality industry coping with complex tax regulations and labor laws, high turnover, and advanced scheduling, these add-ons matter. The right system acts as both HR software and a payroll system, giving you a single place to manage pay, staff, and records.

Is there any free payroll software?

Yes, there are free versions of payroll software, but they usually come with limits. You might be able to run basic payroll processing for a few employees, but advanced features like time tracking, compliance support, or full HR software functions usually require an upgrade to a paid plan. In the hospitality industry, where high turnover and seasonal staff are the norm, investing up front in a solid payroll tool with specialist features you need may be more practical.

Which software is mostly used for payroll?

The software mostly used for payroll varies by industry and business size. Most organizations opt for payroll software that combines core payroll processing functions with features like time tracking, onboarding, and compliance management. The most common systems can typically handle paying employees, calculating withholding and filing taxes, and managing overtime. Tools that cater to the hospitality industry may include extras like POS connections, scheduling tools, and dashboards to track labor data and control costs.

Is it possible to manage multiple locations in a payroll software?

Yes, most modern payroll software supports multi-location management, a key feature in the hospitality industry, where businesses often operate multiple restaurants or hotels. That means you can process payroll, track attendance, and manage labor costs across all sites from a single system. Centralized reporting can help you stay on top of changes in labor laws and regulations, and integrated time tracking keeps payroll accurate for staff who work shifts at different job sites.