ShiftTracker vs Quinyx: UK workforce management compared

If you run a UK security agency or cleaning company, workforce software comes down to one question: does it handle your compliance obligations, or only your rotas? Quinyx is a workforce management platform founded in Stockholm, serving around 800 customers across more than 50 countries. It is strongest where demand swings hard and headcount scales fast, with AI demand forecasting, multi-site scheduling and an AI assistant named Ava. Quinyx was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Workforce Management Technology. Quinyx publishes no BS 7858:2019 vetting workflow, no Security Industry Authority (SIA) licence verification, and no check-calls or patrols. ShiftTracker is a UK-built platform for security agencies and cleaning firms where those duties are contractual. Choose Quinyx if you run retail, logistics, hospitality or multi-site facility operations and labour cost forecasting is the priority. Choose ShiftTracker if your contracts carry BS 7858, SIA and lone working obligations.

What Quinyx is built for

Quinyx is workforce management software for large, multi-site frontline operations. Founded in Stockholm in 2005, it now supports around 800 customers across more than 50 countries, serving retail, logistics, hospitality, facility management and healthcare. The product splits into three modules: Manage for Scheduling and time and attendance, Optimize for AI forecasting, and Engage for the employee hub.

Manage covers Scheduling, time and attendance, and workforce analytics. Optimize adds demand forecasting, scheduling automation and operational insights. Those AI features are what win Quinyx enterprise shortlists. Engage is the employee-facing layer, covering the employee hub, messaging, feedback and recognition, and task management.

Named customers include Starbucks, Boots, HMV, McDonald's, Rituals and Tory Burch. Quinyx was also named a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape for EMEA AI-enabled workforce management and compliance.

Scheduling, forecasting and workforce analytics

This is where Quinyx is strongest and where the comparison is not close. Quinyx forecasts labour demand against live operational data, then builds schedules around skills, service levels and budget targets. Scheduling Automation applies those forecasts to produce shift plans, and Operational Insights shows managers where cost and coverage drift.

ShiftTracker Scheduling runs a different job. A supervisor rotas vetted officers to named client sites and contract requirements, and shift data stays tied to the contract so client charge reporting is accurate. An officer covering a retail shift is interchangeable with the next one. An officer holding a specific SIA licence category on a static site is not.

The multi-client scheduling setup guide covers how ShiftTracker handles per-client rotas and reporting for agencies working across several contracts at once.

ShiftTracker site roster for the week on Week + Patterns, with a coverage strip

Where compliance coverage differs

Quinyx validates compliance at the point of decision, applying labour laws, collective agreements and company policies across every schedule, site and region. That covers rest rules and working time under the Working Time Regulations 1998. It is not UK security sector compliance: Quinyx publishes no BS 7858:2019 screening workflows, no SIA licence verification, no check-calls and no patrol checkpoints that we could find.

ShiftTracker treats those as the core job. BS 7858 Vetting runs the security screening workflow with an audit-ready record. ShiftTracker tracks each officer's SIA licence status and reports on SIA compliance. Check-Calls run on an interval you set, are verified by PIN, site ID or GPS, and escalate a missed call to control. Patrols run as a mobile app workflow. A dedicated Lone Worker module is still in build, so check-calls are the live welfare tool. The BS 7858 vetting workflow walks through each step in the platform.

GOV.UK is clear on the operator's duty here: you must check that someone holds the correct security licence before hiring them for private security work, and you can be fined or sent to prison for paying someone to work in security without the right SIA licence.

Time and attendance, payroll and mobile access

Both platforms record clock-in and clock-out times, and both give staff a mobile app for shifts, swaps and leave. Quinyx adds a Messenger tool and an Employee Hub fronting task management and recognition. Ava, the Quinyx AI assistant, reads workforce data and policies to answer questions in seconds and flag staffing gaps.

ShiftTracker's Employee App (iOS and Android) handles book-on against the site geofence, availability updates, shift acceptance and check-call responses from one phone.

On payroll, ShiftTracker's Payroll Export builds a Sage 50 Payroll timesheet file or a generic hours file from approved arbitration records, so a mid-market agency can send hours to payroll without rekeying. The documented export is Sage 50 or generic CSV, and the pricing page lists a Xero push on the Professional plan, which we could not find in the documentation. The payroll export guide covers the steps. Quinyx lists integrations with enterprise payroll and HR systems such as Workday and ADP.

Pricing and the size of operation you are buying for

Neither platform publishes a per-user price. Quinyx quotes per customer and lists no per-user rate publicly. Quinyx sells to organisations running hundreds of sites.

ShiftTracker publishes its price: £49 a month plus £3 per active employee, with a 30-day free trial and no card required. The design centre is the mid-market UK agency. Quinyx-scale demand forecasting is not the brief, and a 60-officer security firm does not need it. The guide to choosing a WFM platform for UK security and cleaning sets out the evaluation criteria that matter at that size.

Who should choose ShiftTracker

Choose ShiftTracker when compliance sits in the contract rather than in a policy document. A static guarding contract requires every officer on the rota to hold the right SIA licence, and an audit trail showing when that was checked. A cleaning contract at a protected site requires screening records for everyone on site.

If a missed licence renewal or an unverified screening record puts a contract at risk, the software needs to hold that evidence as a first-class record. Choose ShiftTracker when you run multiple client contracts and each needs its own rota, its own reporting and its own billing. Choose it when you want a Sage 50 or generic payroll hours file without reconciliation work at month end, and when you need check-calls and patrol logs for lone working under your duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

Who should choose Quinyx

Choose Quinyx when you have hundreds of sites and demand moves faster than a planner can model by hand. Retail chains, logistics operators, hospitality groups and multi-site facility managers use Quinyx to forecast labour demand, hold overtime down and give managers back hours each week. If your workforce is geographically spread and interchangeable, the forecasting engine earns its place.

Quinyx also suits organisations that already run enterprise payroll and HR estates and want workforce management to feed them directly. Its analyst recognition, customer list and compliance rule engine are credible at that scale. Its public material does not cover UK security and cleaning sector obligations. If none of your contracts reference BS 7858, SIA licences or lone worker duty of care, that gap does not matter to you.

How to decide between them

Start with the contract clauses. Pull out your largest two client contracts and read the compliance clauses. If either names BS 7858:2019, SIA licensing, lone working or specific vetting evidence, you need a platform that holds that evidence per officer, per shift and per date. Quinyx does not publish a workflow that produces it.

If neither contract names sector compliance, and your real problem is overtime and rota time across a large site estate, Quinyx is the stronger fit and worth the enterprise buying process. If you are somewhere in between, take the shortlist further with the ShiftTracker vs Planday comparison, which covers the other end of the UK market, and the 90-day workforce management implementation plan for what rollout actually involves.

TLDR

Quinyx wins on AI demand forecasting and multi-site scheduling at scale, with a 376% ROI in a 2022 Forrester Total Economic Impact study that Quinyx publicises. Quinyx publishes no BS 7858:2019 vetting, SIA licence verification or check-calls, while ShiftTracker carries all three. Read your two largest contracts for compliance clauses, then shortlist ShiftTracker if they name BS 7858, SIA or lone working.