Shift notes
A shift note is a short, tagged note about a business day, such as "slow night due to rain" or "walk-in freezer tail light out." Owners, managers and staff log notes from Home or right after a count. Notes are a record that explains the numbers, not a team chat, and Pro's demand forecast reads them as context.
Two ways to log one
From the Home Log menu, any time. Tap Log (the same dropdown you use for Receive, Log waste, and Log prep) and choose Log a note. A quick sheet opens with tag selection, a note field, and a date picker defaulted to today.
From the count-complete celebration, right after finishing a count. Below the celebration is a collapsed prompt — "Anything to note about this shift?" Expanding it opens the same form (without the date field; the note is stamped to today) and links the note to the session you just completed.
Neither entry point blocks anything else. The count-complete prompt is optional, and the Log menu shows Log a note only to roles that can write notes. Shift notes are on every plan, Free included.
Tags
Every note needs at least one tag:
| Tag | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Demand | Unusual traffic — a rush, a slow night, weather |
| Equipment | Something broken or acting up |
| Staffing | Callouts, short-staffed shifts, new hires |
| Supply | A delivery issue, a substitution, a shortage |
| Other | Anything that doesn't fit the above |
Tags aren't just organizational — Demand-tagged notes are what the demand forecast prioritizes when explaining an anomalous sales day (see below), so tag accurately rather than defaulting to Other.
The note body itself is free text, up to 2,000 characters.
The note's business day
A note is stamped to a restaurant-local business day, not a timestamp. Logged from the Home menu, you can backdate it to an earlier day (useful for catching up on a note you forgot to log) — but never forward-date it; a note describes something that already happened, at least partly. Logged from the count-complete prompt, the day is always today and isn't editable.
Who can do what
- Logging a note requires the STAFF role or above (Owner, Manager, Staff). Viewers can't log notes.
- Deleting a note requires Owner or Manager.
- No editing. If a note has a typo or needs a correction, delete it and log a new one.
To delete a note, open Activity, tap the note to expand it, and tap Delete. Rinvy asks you to confirm, because a deleted note can't be restored. If an owner or manager deletes the count that a note came from, the note stays.
See roles and permissions for the full capability matrix.
Who gets notified when someone logs a note?
Every Owner and Manager in the kitchen gets a push notification, except the person who wrote the note. Staff and Viewers get none. The push reads New shift note, followed by the author's name and up to the first 120 characters of the note. Tapping it opens Activity with the Notes chip on.
Each person can turn these off in Kitchen Settings → Notifications, with the Shift notes toggle under Team activity. See push notifications.
The push also needs the phone's permission. If a manager never sees shift note pushes, check that notifications are on for Rinvy in the phone's settings. Apple covers this in notification settings on iPhone, and Google in control notifications on Android.
Where notes show up later
Notes appear in the dashboard's activity feed and on the full activity history page, behind a Notes filter chip. The feed sorts by when the note was logged, not the business day it describes — so a note you backdate to last Tuesday still shows up at the top of the feed today, right when you logged it.
Feeding the demand forecast
On Pro, the demand forecast reads the notes dated inside the sales-history window it learns from. Demand notes help it tell the difference between "sales dipped because of a real trend" and "sales dipped because of a one-off snowstorm." See demand forecasting for the full list of inputs.
The forecast takes up to 20 notes from that window, Demand notes first, and reads only the first 200 characters of each. Put the reason in your first sentence, for example "Road closed outside, dinner down by half," and add detail after it.
Common mistakes
Using shift notes as a chat tool
Notes are one-way and there's no reply thread. If you need a back-and-forth with a teammate, use whatever messaging tool your team already has — shift notes are for the record, not the conversation.
Tagging everything 'Other'
A vague tag makes a note harder to find later. If the note was really about demand, the forecast reads it after every Demand note, so it may not make the cut of 20. Take the extra second to pick the tag that fits.
Trying to edit a note
Notes have no edit, only delete and log again. If you don't have delete permission (Staff role), ask an Owner or Manager to remove the old one before you log the corrected version.