Staff PIN — give every team member their own identity on a shared device

In this article, you will find everything you need to know about Staff PIN: what it is, how to activate it, and how it works for you and your team. 

Summary

1. What Is Staff PIN and Why Use It?
2. How to Activate Staff PIN
3. Who a Reservation Is Credited To
4. Signing Out from the Lock Screen
5. Troubleshooting & FAQs
6. Support & Related Articles

What you need to know

If your restaurant works off one or two shared tablets, you probably keep a single account logged in all day. That is convenient, but it means no reservation action can be traced back to a person, and your manager code ends up known by everyone. Staff PIN keeps the shared account exactly as it is and adds a lock screen on top: each team member picks their name and enters their own 4-digit PIN. Nothing about how you take reservations changes.

Staff PIN is included on the Manage and Grow plans, and you turn it on yourself from Settings.

Every action on a shared device is attributed to the person who actually performed it.

1. What is Staff PIN and why use it?

Without Staff PIN, a shared account produces a shared history: you can see that a reservation was cancelled, but not by whom. Creating one user account per team member solves that on paper, but it is slow to set up and painful to switch between during service. Staff PIN sits in between. The restaurant account stays logged in; the app simply locks to a team-selection screen between uses.

What you get:

• Personal identity — each team member has a name and a 4-digit PIN
• Automatic attribution — reservation actions are recorded against the person who was unlocked at the time
• Protected manager actions — actions that already required a manager code now ask for a specific manager's PIN
• Fast onboarding — adding a team member takes seconds, with no new user account

Your reservations, settings, and the way you work are unchanged. This only affects who the system thinks is acting.

2. How to activate Staff PIN

1. Sign in with an account that has the User Management permission.
2. Go to Settings → Team → Accounts and open the account you want to put behind the lock screen.
3. Toggle Lock Screen on. That account will show the lock screen the next time it is opened.
4. Go to Settings → Team → Staff List to add your team, each with a role (manager or member) and a 4-digit PIN.
5. Your existing manager code is carried over automatically into a manager-role entry, so you always have at least one manager from the start.

Keep at least one account off Lock Screen. Lock Screen and User Management cannot be combined on the same account: an account behind the lock screen cannot manage the team. Leaving one normal account in place means you can always add a team member or change a PIN without waiting for anyone.

Note: the person who manages the team never has Lock Screen switched on. That is by design, not a limitation.

Roles at a glance

• Member — unlocks the app and works normally. Actions that need a manager will ask for a manager's PIN
• Manager — everything a member can do, plus passes straight through actions that would otherwise ask a member for a manager PIN

3. Who a reservation is credited to

The person unlocked at the time is credited, and that credit cannot be changed from the shared device.

When you create a reservation while unlocked, the Taken by field fills in with your name automatically. On an account with Lock Screen on it is shown but cannot be edited — not when creating a reservation, and not when opening an existing one.

Opening a reservation someone else took shows their name, not yours. Editing that reservation does not move the credit to you. This is deliberate: it is what makes the history trustworthy.

Someone signed in with an account that does not have Lock Screen on can still change Taken by, for example to correct a mistake from the back office. That change is recorded in the reservation's history, showing the previous name, the new name, who made the change and when.

4. Signing out from the lock screen

Signing out leaves the restaurant account entirely, not just your own session.

The lock screen has a Logout action in the account menu at the top. It signs the restaurant account out and returns to the normal Zenchef sign-in screen.

Use it when you need something a locked device cannot reach. The most common case: nobody present remembers a PIN. Sign out, sign back in with an account that holds the User Management permission, and set a new PIN from Settings → Team → Staff List.

Note: this is different from Sleep mode, which only locks the device back to the team-selection screen and keeps the restaurant signed in.

5. Troubleshooting & FAQs

Common Issues

• "I don't see the Lock Screen toggle or the PIN field at all" — Staff PIN is included on the Manage and Grow plans. If you are on another plan the controls are hidden rather than greyed out, so the feature looks absent. Contact your Customer Success Manager to discuss moving plan.
• "I don't see the lock screen" — once the feature is available on your plan, it is enabled per account, not for everyone at once. Check that Lock Screen is toggled on for the specific account you are signed in as. If you are signed in with a Zenchef staff account, or with an account that manages users, you will not see it. That is expected.
• "Someone forgot their PIN" — a user with the User Management permission resets it in Settings → Team → Staff List. The person keeps their history and their past actions stay attributed to them.
• "A manager wants to change their own PIN" — PINs are changed by a user with the User Management permission. An account with Lock Screen on cannot hold that permission, so sign in with your user-management account to change any PIN, including a manager's.
• "The app locked while I was working" — on iPad the app returns to the team-selection screen after 30 seconds of inactivity. Enter your PIN to continue where you left off. On web the app locks only when someone taps Sleep mode.

FAQ

• Can two people have the same PIN? — Yes. Zenchef does not block duplicate PINs, because each person is identified by the name they select, not by the PIN alone. Choosing distinct PINs is still good practice.
• What happens to the history when someone leaves? — Remove them from the team and their past actions stay attributed to them, shown as their name marked as removed.
• Does a PIN expire? — No. PINs are changed on demand only, by a user with the User Management permission.
• Can one person work across several restaurants? — No. A team member belongs to a single restaurant.
• Can I correct who a reservation is credited to? — Not from the shared device. Someone signed in with an account that does not have Lock Screen on can change it, and the change is logged in the reservation's history.
• What if we delete our last manager? — You cannot, and Zenchef tells you so: "This staff member is the restaurant's last manager and can't be deleted or changed to another role. Assign another manager first." Manager-protected actions can never become unreachable.

6. Support & Related Articles

Support

For further assistance, please contact Zenchef Support through your customer portal or visit our Help Center.