HotSchedules API
HotSchedules (by Fourth) is a workforce management platform built for restaurants and hospitality, powering scheduling, labor forecasting, compliance, payroll, and shift communication across 120,000+ locations. An unofficial API lets you programmatically pull schedules, shifts, employee records, labor productivity, and time & attendance data—and push sales imports and roster updates back into HotSchedules.
What is HotSchedules?
HotSchedules, part of Fourth, is a workforce management platform built for the restaurant and hospitality industry. Operators use it to build demand-driven schedules from real sales and labor data, forecast staffing, stay compliant with predictive-scheduling and labor laws, run payroll and HR, and give staff mobile shift access, swaps, and messaging. The platform serves more than 120,000 locations and is trusted by chains including Taco Bell, Dunkin', KFC, and Pizza Hut.
Core product areas include:
- Scheduling (demand-driven schedule building, mobile access, real-time updates, shift swaps)
- Labor Management (predictive staffing to demand, overtime control, understaffing prevention)
- Forecasting (sales and labor forecasting from historical and POS data)
- Compliance Tools (predictive scheduling, labor-law alerts, penalty avoidance, reporting)
- Payroll & HR (payroll processing, taxes, benefits, recruitment, onboarding)
- Pay Solutions (instant digital tip payouts and early wage access)
Common data entities:
- Schedules, Shifts, Open Shifts, Shift Swaps, Roles, Departments
- Employees, Accounts, Locations, Stores, Job Codes
- Time & Attendance, Punches, Breaks, Timecards
- Sales Imports, Forecasts, Labor Productivity / BI metrics
- Payroll, Tips, Benefits, Onboarding records
The HotSchedules Integration Challenge
Restaurant operators run mission-critical scheduling and labor workflows on HotSchedules daily, but turning portal- and mobile-driven workflows into API automation is non-trivial:
- Partner-gated API access: credentials are issued through Fourth Professional Services and Implementation Consultants, requiring an agreement and a test environment before access
- Fragmented API surface: Schedules, Labor Productivity, Time & Attendance, and SCIM are separate APIs with different scopes, auth, and data models
- Mobile-first staff data: shift swaps, availability, and messaging live primarily in the mobile app and aren't fully exposed through published APIs
- Published-only schedule scope: the Schedules API returns assigned shifts that are published, excluding open shifts and draft rosters
- Multi-location complexity: enterprise chains span thousands of stores with per-location roles, departments, and labor rules to reconcile
- Time and timezone handling: shift data is returned in UTC and must be aligned to store-local time for accurate labor and payroll reconciliation
- SSO and identity gating: SCIM provisioning is tied to Fourth single sign-on, complicating headless account access
How Supergood Creates HotSchedules APIs
Supergood reverse-engineers authenticated browser and app flows alongside Fourth's published Schedules, Labor Productivity, and Time & Attendance APIs to deliver a single resilient API layer for your HotSchedules account—across scheduling, labor, and payroll data.
- Handles username/password, SSO, and MFA securely in a managed session
- Maintains session continuity with automated refresh and change detection
- Normalizes responses across Schedules, Shifts, Employees, Time & Attendance, and Sales so you integrate once and rely on consistent objects
- Aligns UTC shift data to store-local time and reconciles per-location roles, departments, and labor rules
Use HotSchedules with AI agents: HotSchedules MCP Server →
Getting Started
- Schedule Integration Assessment
Book a 30-minute session to confirm your modules, locations, and authentication model.
- Supergood Generates and Validates Your API
We deliver a production-ready HotSchedules adapter tailored to your account configuration and entitlements.
- Deploy with Monitoring
Go live with continuous monitoring and automatic adjustments as HotSchedules evolves.
API Endpoints
Authentication
/authenticateAuthenticate to a HotSchedules account using username/password, SSO, or MFA and obtain a session token for downstream calls.
Scheduling
/schedulesRetrieve published schedules and assigned shifts by location with fromDate/toDate or relative date-range filters.
Scheduling
/shiftsList individual shift records with location ID, employee account ID, work date, start/end times in UTC, break duration, role, and department.
Workforce
/employeesPull employee and account records, roles, job codes, and store assignments across locations.
Time & Attendance
/time_attendanceRetrieve punches, breaks, and timecards for labor reconciliation and payroll feeds.
Labor
/import_salesPush POS sales totals into HotSchedules to drive forecasting and labor productivity reporting.
Use Cases
Sync published schedules to POS and time clocks
- Pull the most recently published schedules and assigned shifts per location into time-clock and POS systems - Align UTC shift times to store-local time for accurate clock-in expectations - Keep roles, departments, and break rules consistent across every store
Feed labor and sales data into BI and forecasting
- Stream Labor Productivity and shift data into reporting and BI tools - Push POS sales imports back into HotSchedules to drive demand forecasts - Track labor cost percentage, overtime, and understaffing across locations
Reconcile time & attendance with payroll
- Pull punches, breaks, and timecards for each pay period - Match scheduled versus actual hours to flag exceptions and overtime - Feed reconciled labor data into payroll and tip-payout workflows
Keep workforce and location records in sync
- Provision and sync employee accounts, roles, and job codes via SCIM and account data - Mirror multi-location store hierarchies into CRM and HR systems - Trigger downstream onboarding when a new employee or location is added
Technical Specifications
Authentication
Username/password, Fourth SSO, and MFA handled in a managed session; Basic Authentication for published Fourth APIs
Connectivity
Authenticated browser/app flows plus Fourth's published Schedules, Labor Productivity, Time & Attendance, and SCIM APIs where entitled
Response format
Normalized JSON across Schedules, Shifts, Employees, Time & Attendance, and Sales objects
Rate limits
Adaptive throttling tuned to your account to avoid Fourth-side limits
Session management
Automatic session refresh, MFA replay handling, and credential rotation
Data freshness
Near real-time pulls for published schedules and punches with optional scheduled batch syncs
Security
Encrypted credential vault, scoped access tokens, SOC 2-aligned controls, and audit logging
Webhooks
Event-style callbacks for schedule publication, shift changes, and timecard updates
Latency
Sub-second reads on cached entities; multi-second writes when posting sales imports and roster updates
Throughput
Horizontally scaled workers sized to multi-location chain volume across thousands of stores
Reliability
Retry, backoff, and idempotency keys for sales imports and schedule writes
Adaptation
Continuous monitoring of Fourth/HotSchedules releases and API changes to absorb drift automatically
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Supergood normalizes Schedules, Shifts, and Employees alongside Time & Attendance punches, breaks, and timecards, so you can integrate scheduling and labor reconciliation through a single surface.
No. Supergood works with your existing HotSchedules credentials and authenticated sessions. We complement Fourth's published APIs where you are entitled and reverse-engineer authenticated flows where you are not, so you don't have to wait on partner gating for every data point.
Fourth's published Schedules API returns assigned, published shifts only. Supergood supplements it by reading authenticated portal and app surfaces so you can also access open shifts, draft rosters, swaps, and availability where your account exposes them.
Shift data is delivered in UTC by the underlying APIs. Supergood aligns shifts to each store's local timezone using location metadata so your labor and payroll reconciliation matches on-the-ground hours.
Yes. The API is built for enterprise chains spanning thousands of stores, with per-location roles, departments, and labor rules normalized so you integrate once and reconcile consistently across the estate.