Connect Square, read the three screens, and know your number before the doors open.
Go to hospodash.app, create your account with your email and a password. You land straight in setup.
Press Connect Square, sign in to Square, approve, pick your location. Your opening hours come across with it.
Suburb and seating type — that is how HospoDash matches weather to your sales.
Press Run backfill. HospoDash pulls your recent Square sales and a year of local weather, then builds today's forecast. A couple of minutes.
Go to hospodash.app and sign up with your email and a password. You'll be taken straight into the setup flow.
Press Connect Square. You'll be redirected to Square's login page. Sign in with the account your POS is registered to — not a staff PIN.
Square shows you what HospoDash reads: your merchant profile, orders and payments (and timecards if you use Square Team). Press Allow.
If your Square account has more than one location, choose the venue you're setting up. Each venue is managed separately; you can add more later. Opening hours are read from the Square location automatically — if your Square location has none set, Today will tell you and Settings has a Refresh opening hours button for when you've added them.
Press Run backfill. HospoDash pulls the last 90 days of Square payments and a year of historical weather for the venue, then builds today's forecast. Setup is complete once a week of trade is in.
Square connections expire and are renewed automatically every month. If a renewal fails, you will not see a silent zero — Today shows Square disconnected with the last day sales were received, and Settings shows the same chip next to your venue. Press Reconnect Square in Settings (venue owner or admin) and the sync resumes.
If Square has stopped sending the renewal token, you get warning ahead of time: Square can't renew — reconnect in Settings, and one muted line on Today with the date the connection would stop. Reconnect before that date and nothing is missed.
Pulled from Square. Edit it in Settings if you want a shorter display name inside the app.
Asked during setup. Suburb places the venue for weather; seating type — indoor, outdoor, or mixed — sets how much a wet day is expected to cost you until HospoDash has measured it from your own history. A fully indoor venue is barely affected by rain; a courtyard venue is.
Read from your Square location. Today uses them to switch between its states and to know when a day is finished. Changed your hours in Square? Settings → Refresh opening hours — "Pull opening hours from this venue's Square location. Replaces what is stored here."
In Settings → Venue, tick the days you trade and set the public-holiday rule — closed, open as normal, or open as a special day. Days you don't trade get no forecast; Today says Closed today · Next open: Saturday instead.
Settings → Labour settings: Labour target — 30% of net (ex-GST) revenue. Every labour percentage in HospoDash divides by net revenue, and this is the benchmark the labour arc reads against.
Settings → Team → Invite a team member. Choose the venues they can see and whether they are a Member or an Admin; they get an email with a sign-in link. Admins can reconnect Square and answer the review cards; Members read.
Three states. Switches on its own. Open it on the way in, check it during service, review it before you leave.
Dial arc colour — what it means during trading hours
The HEADED FOR number is always amber — a projection. The arc colour is the signal.
Every forecast carries one line about how much to trust it, built from your own past days of that weekday: Based on 14 past Wednesdays · the middle half landed between $2,880 and $3,310. If those days varied too much, or there aren't enough yet, it says so in plain words instead of a range. On a public holiday it compares with past holidays, not past Wednesdays. If you have set the number yourself it reads Set by you.
Tap ⓘ next to the forecast to see exactly how it was built — which past days were used, which were excluded and why, the seasonal factor, and whether a rain adjustment was applied. This is also where you set your own number for a day (a private function, a street closure) and where you edit flags.
On a day you don't trade Today reads Closed today · Next open: Saturday · $3,194 forecast. No forecast is made for a closed day, so nothing is scored against one either.
When a finished day lands well below forecast, a card appears the next morning: Thursday came in $1,078 below forecast. Was this an unusual day? with No, keep it and Yes, flag it. Flagging marks the day for review; it does not change your forecasts by itself. Excluding a day from the forecast pool is a separate, deliberate press in the forecast breakdown. Cards show how old they are and wait until someone answers.
Square sales sync automatically every hour, and Today refreshes them when you open it. Pull down for an immediate sync during service.
After close, tap the Tomorrow card for the full pre-trading layout for tomorrow. Plan staffing and prep before you leave.
Today never shows a silent zero. If sales stopped arriving it says Square disconnected and when the last sale was received; if Square can't renew the connection it names the date to reconnect by; if your Square location has no opening hours it says Opening hours not set for this venue — Settings → Refresh opening hours pulls them from Square.
One line at the top tells you how the forecast has been doing: 83% of days within 10% of forecast · last 30 days. That is the number to watch in your first weeks — it climbs as HospoDash sees more of your trade.
Navy bar is actual revenue, grey bar is what was forecast. Under each day: the variance, the labour percentage and its basis — $4,941 / $4,572 · +8.1% · L 58% · ACTUAL. Same day last year sits beside it as LY $4,820 where you have the history.
Today reads In progress until it is finished. Future days show the grey forecast bar only, labelled Not yet. Forecasts are rebuilt every evening at 6pm for the next four weeks, so Sunday night's Week is Monday morning's plan.
Labour on a completed day is ACTUAL once its timesheets are in and PLANNED · est until then. A week with both reads MIXED. The word names the source of the number; it is never guessed from the date.
Labour in HospoDash has two parts: a one-time staffing model you build in Settings, and a daily read on the Roster screen of how the planned cost stacks up against the day — first against the forecast, then against where the day is heading, then against what it actually did. Set it up once; it runs from there.
In Settings → Staffing model, create one tier per revenue band. Each tier defines the roles and shift times for that kind of day. When the day's forecast is calculated, HospoDash matches the right tier and pre-populates Roster → Day with the suggested shifts.
Create your tiers here — one per revenue band. Give each tier a name, set the revenue range, then add roles and shift times. One setup; matched automatically every day after that.
Hourly rates by role and shift. HospoDash starts from the Australian hospitality award; override with your actual rates. Weekend and public-holiday loadings are applied for you: Saturday ×1.20, Sunday ×1.20, public holiday ×2.00 on the base rate. Super is added on top.
The matched tier's shifts arrive pre-populated. Drag the bars to match how the day will really run and confirm. The header shows the day's number the same way Today does — FORECAST before the projection opens, HEADED FOR during service, FINISHED AT once the day is done — and the labour percentage divides by whichever of those is showing.
Every wage figure is labelled PLANNED or ACTUAL. Planned is the roster priced at your rates. Actual arrives with the timesheets — from Deputy every 15 minutes if you use it, otherwise from Square Team timecards. A shift with no timesheet yet is still planned, never assumed absent, until the day's timesheets have been approved.
"Connect Deputy and sync the published roster." Once connected, your published Deputy roster replaces the suggested tier for that day, and Deputy timesheets become the actual.
The labour arc on Roster → Day has two modes. Plan measures your planned labour against the day's forecast — a morning check. React switches the denominator to HEADED FOR during trading, so when the day slows down your labour percentage rises on its own and the arc tips red before the day is lost. Both divide by net revenue, and both read against your labour target.
Ask is the ✦ tab in the bottom navigation. Every answer is built from your own numbers — your Square sales, your forecasts, your confirmed roster, your rates. When you ask about today, Ask quotes the same actual, HEADED FOR and labour figures Today is showing; it never recomputes them.
The Ask screen opens with five ready-made questions: How are we tracking today? · Why is today forecast $3,131? · How did last week go? · Help me roster next week · Is my labour on target this week?. Tap one, or type your own.
Need to change today's roster — cut someone early, add a shift? Ask proposes it with the cost and the labour percentage before you confirm. Confirm, and the shift is saved to today's Roster. For future dates Ask will recommend what to do and point you to Roster.
Describe what you need — a revenue range, a crew, the roles — and Ask drafts a tier as a card you can review and save straight into your staffing model.
It won't roster your whole week — that's Roster. It won't touch confirmed rosters or timesheets, and it won't give you payroll figures. All labour costs in Ask are indicative, the same as everywhere else in HospoDash.
Name, suburb and seating type; trading days and the public-holiday rule; the Square status chip (Connected, Square disconnected, Square can't renew — reconnect) with Reconnect Square; and Refresh opening hours. Changes to trading days and rules take effect at the next evening refresh.
Your tiers. See section 5.
Add, edit or update your role rates. After an award increase, update the rate here; HospoDash uses the new rate from that point forward.
Your labour target (% of net, ex-GST), super, and any fixed owner cost you want counted in the day.
For venues that roster in Deputy. Published rosters and timesheets sync every 15 minutes.
Invite a manager as Member or Admin, per venue. They receive a sign-in link by email. Admins can reconnect Square and answer the "Unusual day?" cards.
From any forecast's ⓘ breakdown: set your own figure for a day you know better than the history (a booked function, a closure), or edit flags. A flagged day is marked for review; a day you exclude leaves the forecast pool. Flagging alone changes nothing.
Settings → Help: "How HospoDash works" — the short answers to the questions operators ask most (why did I fall short of forecast, what is HEADED FOR, how are public holidays forecast, how do I correct a forecast I don't trust).
Direct access during this phase. If something doesn't look right, screenshot it and send it through. Known gaps exist — your feedback is what fixes them.