Opscale Operator Manual

About this manual#

This is the complete reference for Opscale: what every feature does, how it behaves, and how to use it. It is written for the person who sets Opscale up and then runs it day to day: an owner, an operations manager, or a consultant implementing it on a client's behalf.

You do not need any technical background. You do need to make some decisions about how your business is organised, and this manual tells you what those decisions affect.

How to read it. Sections 1–3 explain the model and get you to a working setup; read those in order. Everything after that is reference, so jump to what you need using the contents list. If you are implementing for someone else, section 17 is a suggested rollout order.

A note on terminology. Opscale uses a small number of specific words (area, sequence, trigger, event) in precise ways. Section 2 defines them. Getting these right early saves a lot of rework.

1. What Opscale is#

Opscale turns the routines your business already has into a live, time-aware checklist that appears on a screen in your workplace, tells your team what needs doing right now, and records what actually got done.

The problem it solves is not that staff are unwilling. It is that they cannot hold every standard, every interval and every seasonal exception in their head at once, especially when they are new, when it is busy, or when a manager is not there. Opscale keeps the standard visible and current, so the bar is never a matter of memory.

How the pieces fit together#

Everything in Opscale hangs off a simple hierarchy:

Organisation → Locations → Areas → Tasks

• Your organisation is your company. It holds your team, your settings and your subscription.
• A location is a physical site: one restaurant, one hotel, one shop. Each location has its own opening hours and its own routines.
• An area is a zone of responsibility inside a location: Kitchen, Bar, Floor, Bathroom, Stockroom. Every task and every procedure belongs to exactly one area.
• Tasks are the things that need doing. They are scheduled, they appear when they are due, and someone checks them off.

Areas are the most important structural decision you will make, because they drive three separate things at once: how work is grouped on screen, which staff can see what, and how your procedures are organised. Section 4 covers how to choose them.

The two screens#

Opscale has two working surfaces, and understanding the difference is essential:

OpsCenter is the floor screen. It shows today's timeline (what is due now, what is overdue, what is coming) and staff check tasks off as they complete them. This is what runs on the tablet or terminal in your workplace.

The Manager dashboard is the oversight screen. Same underlying data, but with completion rates, reported issues, the calendar, and the controls to change what is scheduled.

How staff actually use it: read this before you set anything up#

This is the single most common misunderstanding, so it is worth being blunt:

OpsCenter is designed as a shared station, signed in as a manager. Individual staff members do not log in to it.

The intended setup is a tablet or computer left permanently on the OpsCenter screen, signed in with a manager-level account. Staff walk up to it and check tasks off. Instead of logging in, each person identifies themselves by tapping their initials when they complete something, which is how you still get per-person accountability without anyone typing a password mid-shift.

An account with the Employee role cannot open OpsCenter. If an employee signs in on their own phone, they are taken to the procedures library instead, where they can read the SOPs for the areas they are assigned to.

So when you plan your rollout:

• Budget for one shared device per location (or per busy area).
• Employee accounts exist for reading procedures and scoping visibility, not for operating the floor screen.
• Set an OpsCenter PIN (section 9) so staff cannot wander from the shared station into your management settings.

2. Core concepts#

These seven words carry most of the meaning in Opscale. Everything else is configuration.

Task#

A single thing that needs doing, belonging to one area. Two kinds:

• Recurring task: repeats on a schedule. "Check fridge temperatures", daily at opening. This is the workhorse.
• One-time task: happens once at a specific date and time. "Meet the electrician", Thursday 14:00.

Every task can carry instructions: formatted text and images explaining exactly how to do it. This is what makes the system useful to someone on their third shift.

Sequence#

An ordered set of tasks that run together, each offset by a number of minutes from the moment the sequence starts. An opening routine is a sequence: unlock at +0, switch on the coffee machine at +5, count the float at +15, unlock the door at +30.

A sequence is a reusable template. It can run on its own schedule, be fired by a trigger, be attached to an event, or be started by hand, as many times as you like. Its steps can span different areas.

Trigger#

A named button that starts one or more sequences and tasks on demand. "Delivery received". "Health inspector here". "Payment system down". Staff tap it; the associated work appears on the timeline immediately.

Triggers can also be scheduled, in which case they fire automatically rather than being tapped.

Event#

A one-off occasion pinned to a specific date and time, which fans out to sequences and tasks when it arrives. A Christmas lunch for 80, a deep-clean Sunday, a licensing visit.

Sequence vs event, in one line: a sequence is a reusable pattern you run many times; an event happens once, at a fixed moment, and will not fire twice.

Area#

A zone of responsibility within a location. Areas group work on screen, define what each employee can see, and organise your procedure library. Each area can be shown or hidden from OpsCenter independently, which is useful for back-office areas that should not clutter the floor screen.

SOP#

A standard operating procedure: a written, formatted document attached to an area. Unlike task instructions, an SOP is not tied to a schedule; it is reference material your team looks up. "How to clean the oven." "What to do if someone reports an allergy."

Prep checklist#

A running list per area that is not scheduled and does not reset. Items stay until someone completes them, however many days that takes. Mise en place, standing to-dos, "order more napkin rings". It sits alongside the timeline in OpsCenter.

3. Getting set up#

Creating your account and organisation#

1. Go to the sign-up page or open your invitation link.
2. Create your account with an email address, or sign in with Google.
3. Create your organisation. The person who creates the organisation becomes its owner.
4. You are taken into the setup wizard.

Your organisation starts with one location and one area already created, so you always have something to build on. The wizard renames and expands them.

Opscale also detects your time zone from your browser at this point. All scheduling across your whole organisation uses this single time zone, so check it in Settings if you operate near a boundary.

The setup wizard#

Nine steps. You can leave at any point and come back. Your progress is saved on the server, so it survives closing the browser or switching device. There is a Skip setup option on the first screen if you would rather configure everything by hand.

1. Industry. Choose from Restaurant, Cafe, Bar, Hotel, Bakery, Nightclub, Store, or Other. This determines which starter areas and templates you are offered. Clicking a tile advances immediately.

2. Location name. Rename your first location to something real, such as "Main Street" or "Harbour Branch". This renames the existing location rather than adding a second one.

3. Opening hours. Set your usual weekly hours. This matters more than it looks: it lets you schedule work relative to opening and closing, so your routines follow your hours automatically when those hours change.

Do not skip this step. New tasks default to being timed relative to opening, and a location with no opening hours has nothing to offset from, so those tasks never appear at all. If you leave hours unset, your checklist will look empty no matter how many tasks you create. The step is skippable, but come back to it before you build anything.

4. Import your existing checklists. Upload a PDF or a photo of the checklists you use today. Opscale reads them and creates the corresponding areas, tasks, sequences and procedures for you. See below for the detail.

5. Areas. Choose which areas your location has. Industry defaults are offered and pre-selected; you can add your own. If the import step created areas, those appear as already included and are kept.

The placeholder area a brand-new organisation starts with is simply replaced by whatever you choose here.

6. Templates. Pick from pre-built routines, standalone recurring tasks and reference SOPs for your industry. Nothing is selected by default, deliberately: if you already imported your own checklists, you do not want a second set on top.

7. Invite your team. Send email invitations as Manager or Employee. Skippable.

8. Install on your phone. Instructions for adding Opscale to a home screen on iPhone and Android. Nothing is created here.

9. Summary. A recap of what was set up, and Go to dashboard to finish.

Importing your existing checklists#

The import step accepts PDF, PNG, JPEG and WebP, up to 5 MB per file, one file per conversation. Photograph a laminated checklist on the wall, or upload the Word document you have been printing for years.

Opscale reads the document and builds the corresponding structure directly, creating areas that are missing, then the tasks, sequences and SOPs it found. It works in your chosen language, translating the source document if needed.

Two things to know:

• It creates as it goes; there is no review-and-approve screen. It will ask clarifying questions in the conversation, and you should answer them: that conversation is your control over the result. Read what it says it created before moving on.
• You can upload several checklists one after another using Upload new checklist. Each gets its own conversation.

If you move on without anything having been created, Opscale warns you and offers to take you back to the conversation.

Everything created this way is fully editable afterwards. Treat the import as a fast first draft, not a finished configuration.

Templates#

Opscale ships 188 templates across 8 industries: 27 routines (sequences), 32 standalone recurring tasks and 129 reference SOPs, based on common industry practice.

Applying a template creates real, editable content in your account: a routine becomes a sequence with its steps, a task becomes a recurring task with a schedule, an SOP becomes a document in the relevant area.

Two practical points:

• Templates are starting points, not finished routines. The useful test: could a new team member complete this task using only the instructions provided? If not, add the specifics: your equipment, your chemicals, your standard.
• Applying a template twice is safe. Anything already present under the same name in the same place is skipped rather than duplicated, so you can revisit the template browser without cluttering your setup. Rename an item if you genuinely want a second copy of it.

After setup, templates remain available from the Browse templates button on the Tasks & Schedules and SOPs pages. There you can also browse other industries' templates, choose the language the content is created in, and map each template's areas onto your own.

4. Locations, areas and opening hours#

Managed from Locations & Areas.

Locations#

Add, rename and delete locations here. Renaming saves when you click away from the field.

How many you can have depends on your plan (section 13). When you are at the limit, the add option is replaced by a note telling you so.

Deleting a location is permanent and cascading. It removes every area, task, scheduled run, sequence and event belonging to it. You must type the location's name exactly to confirm.

Areas#

Areas are scoped to a location, so pick the location first, then manage its areas. Each row shows how many tasks it holds.

Show in OpsCenter. Each area has an eye toggle controlling whether it appears on the floor screen. Hidden areas still work normally and remain visible to managers on the dashboard; they simply do not clutter the staff view.

Areas you create yourself are included by default and you opt them out. But several industry-default areas arrive already hidden: Storage, Cellar, Maintenance and Back Office, depending on your industry. If you took the defaults and cannot find an area's tasks on the floor screen, check this toggle first.

Deleting an area permanently removes its recurring tasks, one-time tasks, scheduled runs and any sequence steps that referenced it. Type-to-confirm.

Duplicating an area copies its recurring tasks and its SOPs, along with the OpsCenter visibility setting and the display order. It does not copy one-time tasks, completion history, or staff assignments. Duplicating within the same location appends "(Copy)" to the name; duplicating to another location keeps the original name, with a number appended if that name is already taken there.

Choosing your areas#

Areas do three jobs at once, so it is worth pausing on them:

1. They group work on the OpsCenter timeline.
2. They control which employees see which procedures.
3. They organise your SOP library.

Practical advice:

• Match how your team actually divides responsibility, not your floor plan. If one person covers both the bar and the terrace, that may be one area.
• Between four and eight areas per location works well. Fewer and the timeline becomes an undifferentiated list; more and staff spend time filtering.
• Do not create an area per person. Areas are zones, not job titles.
• It is easy to rename an area later and hard to split one, so err towards slightly broader areas at the start.

Opening hours#

Edit from either the Locations page or the dashboard's opening-hours card.

Usual opening hours is a weekly pattern, Monday first. Each day can hold multiple intervals. A split-service kitchen might be 11:00–14:30 and 17:00–22:00. A day with no intervals is closed.

Special dates override the weekly pattern for a single date. A special date with no intervals marks that date closed, which is how you handle public holidays.

Rules to be aware of:

• Times are HH:MM in 24-hour form, and each interval must end after it starts. An interval cannot cross midnight. A bar open 22:00–02:00 is entered as two intervals on two consecutive days.
• Intervals within a day must not overlap.
• Hours are per location. There is no organisation-wide default and no copy-to-other-locations action; each site is set up independently.
• All hours are interpreted in your organisation's single time zone.

Special periods#

Special periods are named date ranges: "Christmas Week", "Summer Season", "Refurbishment". They are defined per location, and any scheduled item can be set to run only during them, or to be skipped during them.

This is how you handle seasonal reality without rebuilding your schedules: a terrace routine that runs only during "Summer Season", a deep-clean that is skipped during "Christmas Week".

Create and edit them from Manage periods inside any schedule editor.

If you already have periods defined, the dashboard shows a review prompt each January to remind you to update them for the year ahead. It is a reminder only: you cannot create your first period from it, and it never appears for an organisation that has none.

Saving replaces the whole list, so removing a row deletes that period. If a schedule still refers to a period you deleted, its summary falls back to generic wording, which is worth checking after a clear-out.

5. Building your routines#

This is the heart of Opscale. Tasks are created and managed from the Tasks & Schedules page, which has four tabs: Tasks, Sequences, Triggers and Events.

Creating a task#

Every task has:

• Task name: required.
• Area: required. Determines who sees it and where it appears.
• Type: Recurring (repeats on a schedule) or One-time (happens once).
• Instructions: optional formatted text with images. This is where the value is; see below.
• A schedule (recurring) or a date and start/end time (one-time).

There is a Schedule this task automatically checkbox. Leaving it unticked creates the task without putting it on the calendar, which is useful for something you only ever want to start manually from a trigger.

Keep showing until someone completes it brings an unfinished task back at its next scheduled run instead of quietly lapsing, and clears the old, missed copy. On a daily task that means tomorrow; on a weekly Monday task it means next Monday. Use it for things that must happen even if they happen late.

Writing good instructions#

Instructions support bold, italic, headings, quotes, bulleted and numbered lists, and up to five images per field. Images can be inserted from the toolbar, pasted from the clipboard, or dragged in; they are compressed automatically before upload.

Images must be PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 2.5 MB each. Your total image allowance across the whole organisation depends on your plan (section 13); usage is shown in Settings. Images that are no longer used anywhere are cleaned up automatically each night, freeing their slot, though an image uploaded within the last week is left alone until that week is up.

The single best investment you can make in Opscale is writing instructions that pass this test:

Could a competent person who has never done this task complete it correctly, to your standard, using only what is written here?

That means naming the actual product, the actual temperature, the actual location of the thing. "Clean the coffee machine" is a reminder. "Clean the coffee machine: backflush with Cafiza, three cycles, then rinse twice. Tablets are in the cupboard above the sink" is a procedure.

The schedule builder#

The scheduler is the most detailed part of Opscale. It is worth understanding properly because almost every question about "why did this not appear" is answered here.

How often#

Four patterns:

Weekly offers three ways to pick days: specific weekdays, first day open each week, or last day open each week. The last two follow your opening hours, so a "first day open" task moves automatically if you change which day you open.

Monthly offers: a specific date (1–31), a specific weekday ("the 2nd Tuesday", "the last Friday"), or the first/last day you are open that month. You can also restrict it to certain months only. Selecting specific months overrides the "every N months" interval.

If you pick day 29, 30 or 31, shorter months fall back to their last day rather than being skipped: day 31 runs on 30 April and on 28 February. Choose "the last " instead if you want a true month-end task.

Repeating asks for an interval in minutes and which weekdays it applies to. When you choose this pattern, Opscale automatically ticks Only during business hours for you, since an hourly check almost never wants to run at 03:00.

What time#

Two modes, and the choice matters:

At a specific time is a fixed clock time: 09:00 means 09:00 regardless of your opening hours.

Based on opening/closing time is an offset: "30 minutes before opening", "15 minutes after closing", up to 12 hours either side. This is the mode that makes Opscale worth using. Your closing routine is defined once as "20 minutes before closing" and it is correct on a Tuesday when you close at 22:00 and on a Saturday when you close at 01:00, and it stays correct when you change your hours next season.

Relative timing is the default for new tasks, set to "at opening".

Three behaviours to know:

• Relative timing needs opening hours to exist. A location with no opening hours configured at all produces no runs for any relative-time task, and since that is the default for new tasks, the whole checklist stays empty. Set your hours first. (The Repeating pattern is affected too, because it switches on Only during business hours automatically.)
• A relative-time task cannot run on a day you are closed, because there is no opening time to offset from. This is true even if you tick "Also run on closed days". If something genuinely must happen on a closed day, give it a fixed clock time.
• If a relative time computes to before midnight or after midnight of that day, the task simply does not run that day. It never spills into an adjacent day.

Duration#

How long the task should take, in minutes. This sets the task's window: it becomes overdue once the window has passed, and the progress ring on the row fills as the window elapses. A duration of 0 means the task has no window and is due at its start time.

Tasks created from the task dialog default to 10 minutes. Sequence steps and event tasks default to 0 unless you fill the field in, so set durations deliberately when building a sequence.

More options#

These apply consistently across every pattern, including Repeating and the weekly first / last day open options.

Only during business hours treats both ends of an opening interval as inside business hours, so a closing routine timed to exactly your closing minute still runs.

The scheduler will warn you if you build a contradiction. "30 minutes before opening" combined with "only during business hours", for example, can never produce a run. Fix the conflict; the task will not save otherwise.

Reading the summary line#

Under the builder, Opscale writes your schedule out in plain language, such as "Every 1 week on Monday at opening for 10 minutes, only during Summer Season". Read it before saving; it is the fastest way to catch a mistake in the recurrence, the time or the duration.

Note that the summary covers recurrence, time, duration and special periods only. It does not mention Active from, Active until, Also run on closed days or Only during business hours, so check those four in the panel itself.

How and when tasks appear#

Tasks are generated once a day, for that day. A scheduled generation run creates the day's task list from your recurring tasks, sequences, scheduled triggers and events.

Creating or editing a task takes effect immediately: today's list is rebuilt for that task straight away, so you can see the result without waiting.

Future days are a live preview. Navigating forwards in OpsCenter shows what will be generated, recomputed on the fly. Those rows are marked as a preview and cannot be ticked off. Tasks can only be completed on the day they run.

Note that if you change your opening hours, task runs already generated for today keep their original times. The change takes effect from the next day. Change hours outside service if the shift is significant.

One-time tasks#

A one-time task takes a date, a start time and an end time. It has no recurrence and is not affected by opening hours or special periods.

6. Sequences, triggers and events#

Sequences#

Create from the Sequences tab. A sequence has a title, an optional schedule, an optional SOP with images, and a list of steps.

Each step has a title, an area, an offset in minutes from the sequence start, and an optional duration. Steps can be dragged to reorder. Steps may belong to different areas; an opening routine legitimately spans kitchen, bar and floor.

A sequence starts in one of four ways:

1. On its own schedule. Tick "Has schedule" and configure it exactly like a task.
2. From a trigger.
3. From an event.
4. By hand, from the search box in OpsCenter.

While a sequence is running, OpsCenter shows a progress bar counting how many of its steps have been completed, so anyone can see at a glance how far through the opening routine the team is. The bar disappears once every step has been ticked.

Sequences also support repeat until complete: steps already finished are skipped on the next run, so a partially-done routine picks up where it left off.

Triggers#

Create from the Triggers tab. Give the trigger a name, choose whether it is Manual or Scheduled, and select the sequences and recurring tasks it should start.

Manual triggers appear as buttons on the manager dashboard and can be found and run from OpsCenter's search. Tapping one asks for confirmation, then puts all the associated work on the timeline immediately, starting now.

Scheduled triggers fire automatically at times you configure with the same schedule builder.

Two operational notes:

• Running a trigger requires manager-level access. Since OpsCenter runs as a manager-signed-in station, this is normally fine, but it means a personally-signed-in employee cannot fire one.
• Firing the same trigger twice in the same instant is safe; it will not create duplicate work.

Good manual triggers are the exceptions your team already recognises: "Delivery received", "Spillage in the restaurant", "Fire alarm test", "Power cut", "Inspector on site". Each one turns a moment of improvisation into a checklist.

Events#

Create from the Events tab. An event has a name, a date, a time and optional details. You then attach:

• Sequences, each with an offset from the event's start time.
• Existing recurring tasks, each with an offset.
• Unique tasks defined inline on the event itself, with their own area, offset, duration and instructions.

When the event's moment arrives, everything attached appears on the timeline. An event fires once and will not fire again.

Events appear on the dashboard calendar as dots on their day, and in OpsCenter as pills in the day header with an Active badge once they have started.

Use events for the things that are important, rare and dated: a large private booking, an audit, a refit, a licence renewal.

7. SOPs#

The SOPs page is your operating manual, organised by area. SOP stands for standard operating procedure.

Creating and editing#

Choose a location, then use Add SOP within any area. An SOP has a title and a formatted body supporting the same rich text and images as task instructions.

Editing saves automatically as you type. There is no save button.

Managers get a view/edit toggle. View mode is what your team sees; edit mode exposes the drag handles and add/delete controls.

The unified area layout#

Each area shows a single ordered list mixing four kinds of thing:

• SOPs: reference documents
• Sequences: routines whose steps touch this area
• Tasks: recurring tasks in this area
• One-off: one-time tasks in this area

Each card is labelled with its kind. In edit mode you can drag any card anywhere in the list, mixing types freely, so the page reads in the order that makes sense for your business rather than in database order. Order is saved per area.

This is the feature that turns Opscale into a genuine SOP base: your scheduled work and your written procedures live in one browsable document per area, and a new starter can read the Kitchen page top to bottom and know the job.

What your team sees#

Expanding a sequence in view mode reveals its schedule in plain language, any triggers that start it, its SOP, its images and all its steps in order with their offsets and durations. Expanding a task shows its schedule and instructions.

Employees see this page read-only, for the areas they are assigned to, at their active location. It is the one management page an employee account can open, which makes it the natural home for training material.

8. Running the day: OpsCenter#

OpsCenter is the screen your team works from.

The layout#

On the left: a large live clock, the date with arrows to move between days, today's events, and any items flagged as sold out.

On the right: today's timeline.

The timeline#

Tasks are ordered by status, then by time, not grouped by area. All areas are interleaved into one chronological list, because on a busy floor what matters is what is due now, not which zone it belongs to.

Top to bottom:

1. Completed: collapsed behind a header with a count.
2. Overdue: past their window, not done.
3. Active: happening now. The view auto-scrolls to centre this.
4. Future: still to come.

Each row shows its time, title, window, the sequence or event it belongs to, an instructions button where instructions exist, and a progress ring that fills as the task's window elapses, green when done and red when overdue.

Future steps of a sequence collapse into a single group row you can expand, so a 40-step opening routine does not bury everything else.

Above the timeline, any sequence with steps still outstanding gets a progress bar with its completion count.

Filtering by area#

A row of area chips filters the view; All clears the filter. Only areas set to show in OpsCenter appear here.

The gear icon saves your current selection as the default for that device. A tablet in the kitchen can default to kitchen areas while the office computer shows everything. This default is stored per device and per browser, so a replacement tablet starts from "All".

Completing tasks#

With completion tracking on (the default), tapping Mark done opens a list of team members shown as initials, then name. Tapping a name completes the task, attributed to that person. Members are ordered by how much they have completed, so the people who use it most are at the top.

With tracking off, Mark done completes immediately with no attribution. This is a deliberate escape hatch for genuinely frantic periods. The setting can be switched at any time and previously recorded completions are kept.

To undo, tap the completed row again. Completed rows move into the collapsed Completed section and show the completion time rather than the scheduled time.

Past days are locked. Tasks can only be completed on the day they run; historical records cannot be edited, so your completion history stays trustworthy. Future days are previews and equally non-interactive.

Initials#

Initials are assigned automatically for every team member when OpsCenter first loads, derived from their name, and made unique within your organisation. You can edit them on the Team page. They must be unique, so two people cannot share initials, and they are limited to five characters.

The prep checklist#

Opened with the Prep button. One tab per area.

Items are added from the bottom of the list and stay until completed. They do not reset overnight. Completing an item files it under a collapsible Completed section for that day; deleting is a soft delete, so nothing is lost.

Every item carries a History view showing who created, completed, un-completed or deleted it and when.

On past dates the checklist is read-only and shows that day's activity; on future dates it shows what is still outstanding.

You can rename it and turn it off per location in Settings. Some sites call it Prep, others Mise, others To-do.

Reporting issues#

The New button offers Report issue. It takes a title, optional details, and requires selecting who is reporting it.

Issues appear on the manager dashboard under Reported issues. A manager opens one, reads it, and clicks Resolve, which archives it. Archived issues can be reviewed and permanently deleted.

There is no notification. Issues surface on the dashboard in real time, but nobody is emailed or alerted. If issues matter to your operation, make checking the dashboard part of a manager's own routine: a recurring task, naturally.

Shopping notes#

Flag something as sold out or short supply. Sold-out items also appear as red chips under the clock, so they are visible without opening anything.

Managers see them grouped on the dashboard with a Bought button that clears them.

Search#

The search box finds tasks, sequences, triggers and procedures across the location. Results are grouped by type; clicking one opens a read-only detail view; sequences, recurring tasks and triggers can be run immediately from the result.

Search covers titles and body text, ranks title matches higher, and tolerates typos.

The PIN#

See section 9.

9. Security on the floor: the OpsCenter PIN#

Because OpsCenter runs on a shared device signed in as a manager, anything that account can reach is reachable from the floor. The PIN closes that gap.

What it protects: leaving OpsCenter for the management screens. Entering OpsCenter never asks for a PIN; only exiting does.

Setting it up. Settings → OpsCenter PIN → Set PIN. Numeric, up to 12 digits. Then switch Require PIN on.

If you set a PIN but leave "Require PIN" off, the gate accepts anything. Both the PIN and the toggle are needed.

How it behaves. Once a device has been used for OpsCenter, any attempt to reach a management page from that browser prompts for the PIN. Passing the gate ends the OpsCenter session on that device.

The prompt is remembered for 30 days per browser. A manager who once opened OpsCenter on their own laptop will be asked for the PIN on later visits from that laptop until they pass the gate once.

Wrong entries are throttled. Delay grows with each failure, up to a 15-minute lockout, and there are daily caps per organisation and hourly caps per user. This is deliberately opaque from the outside: the screen only ever says the PIN was incorrect.

If you forget it. Use Forgot PIN?. This signs you out of the device and requires you to sign in again with your normal account credentials, after which you are taken straight to the screen where you can set a new PIN. There is no email reset: recovering the PIN requires knowing an account password and holding the permission to change PINs.

Changing the PIN requires the Change OpsCenter PIN permission.

10. The manager dashboard#

The oversight screen for a single location.

Headline figures#

On-time today: of the tasks completed today, the share finished within their window. Shows 0% until something is completed.

Tasks to do: tasks that have started and are not done, meaning active plus overdue, with today's total underneath.

Both figures follow whatever filters you have applied, so narrowing to one area gives you that area's numbers.

Status tiles#

Completed, Overdue, Active and Future, each with a count. Click to filter the list; they are multi-select. On a wide screen the list opens with Overdue and Active pre-selected, the two that need attention. Unlike the headline figures, these counts always reflect the whole day.

The task list#

The same rows as OpsCenter, plus two differences: the completion picker also shows each person's completion count for that area, and there is a Skip button.

Skip removes a task from today's timeline without marking it done. It is the honest option for "we are not doing this today", and better than a false completion. Skipping is only available here, not on the floor screen, and a skipped task disappears from every view.

Calendar#

A month view with a coloured bar on each day showing whether you are open, event dots, and a list of events for the selected day.

Quick actions and triggers#

Buttons to create a task, sequence or event, and to invite a team member. Below, every manual trigger appears as a button you can fire directly.

Issues, shopping notes and opening hours#

Sidebar cards for reported issues, shopping notes, and a summary of this week's opening hours with an edit link.

Once you have special periods defined, a prompt appears each January asking you to review them for the year ahead, which is a useful annual habit.

11. Your team: roles, permissions and scope#

Managed from Team & Permissions.

The three roles#

Ownership transfer is done from Settings, not Team: choose a member, type their name to confirm, and you swap places: they become owner, you become a manager. There is exactly one owner, and the role can only move by transfer.

Permissions#

Permissions are granted through roles. The full set:

Manage team members is the most powerful of these after ownership: it also governs the activity log and data export. Grant it sparingly.

How a permission is decided#

In order:

1. Owner? Yes → allowed, always.
2. Otherwise, start from the permissions granted by the person's role.
3. Apply any per-user overrides: an explicit Allow adds, an explicit Deny removes.
4. If the permission is present, allow. Otherwise deny.

Broad permissions imply their narrower forms, so holding Create & edit tasks covers both creating and updating.

In the per-user Configure dialog, each permission shows one of four states:

• Allowed: explicitly granted to this person regardless of role
• Denied: explicitly blocked even though their role grants it
• From role: granted by their role
• Not granted: neither granted nor overridden

Clicking cycles through the states, and changes take effect immediately. Opscale will warn you before you remove your own ability to manage the team.

You cannot grant yourself billing, member-management, role-management or settings permissions. Those must come from someone else.

Custom roles#

Create roles with your own names, such as "Shift Lead", "Head Chef" or "Cleaner", each with a tier of either Manager or Employee.

The tier is structural, not cosmetic:

• Manager tier roles can hold the full permission set and automatically get Complete tasks.
• Employee tier roles are read-only by design. They cannot hold Complete tasks. If someone with an employee-tier role must complete tasks, grant it as a per-user override.

Deleting a custom role removes it from everyone holding it and returns them to the least-privileged state. Type-to-confirm.

Scope: who sees which areas#

Scope is separate from permissions. Permissions say what you may do; scope says where.

This is the part most worth reading twice, because empty scope means opposite things for the two tiers:

So restricting a manager is opt-in: leave it empty and they have the run of the place; add areas and they are confined to those. Whereas a new employee with no areas assigned sees an empty SOPs page. Assigning areas is a required step when you onboard someone, not an optional refinement.

Both are edited from the Configure gear next to each person.

Location scope#

If you run more than one site, a role can also be confined to particular locations. Set this on the Roles tab, on the role itself.

It follows the same opt-in rule as manager write scope: select nothing and the role reaches every location; select one or more and its members only see and work in those. A manager confined to the Harbour branch will not see the other sites in the location picker, and cannot edit them or add areas to them.

Unlike area scope, this keeps working as you grow: add a new area to Harbour and that manager gets it automatically, because the scope is the site rather than a list of areas. Owners are never confined.

One important behaviour: manager write scope is a property of the role, not the person. Editing it from one manager's dialog changes it for everyone sharing that role. If you need managers with genuinely different scopes, give them different roles.

Inviting people#

Enter an email, choose Manager or Employee, and send. The invitation is emailed by our authentication provider. Owner cannot be invited; use transfer instead.

Pending invitations are listed and can be revoked. Seat limits apply per plan and count pending invitations. Invitations are rate-limited to 10 per hour and 50 per day per organisation.

Re-inviting an address that already has a pending invitation updates it rather than creating a duplicate.

The activity log#

At the bottom of the Team page: a record of security-relevant events. Each entry shows when, who, what and against which target. Entries fall into five categories, and which ones are recorded depends on your plan:

• Data & privacy: data exports and deleted accounts. Recorded on every plan.
• Subscription: plan and subscription changes. Recorded on every plan.
• Security: OpsCenter PIN attempts, per-user permission overrides, and public join being switched on or off. Professional and above.
• Team changes: invitations, joins, people leaving and role changes. Professional and above.
• Roles & permissions: roles created, renamed or deleted, changes to what a role can do, changes to who sees which areas and locations, and changed initials. Business and above.

Visible to anyone with Manage team members. Filterable by category, paged 50 at a time.

What is recorded and for how long depends on your plan (section 13), and the gate applies when the event happens, so upgrading does not retrospectively fill in events that were not recorded at the time. If this history matters to you, choose the plan before you need the history.

Statistics#

Each person's row has an Analytics view: their completions broken down by area. Individuals can see their own figures under My statistics.

These counts depend on completion tracking being on. While it is off, completions are recorded but not attributed, so statistics do not accrue for that period.

Performance reports#

Business and Enterprise plans. A cross-location view of how reliably your routines are actually being run, at Reports in the sidebar.

Pick a period (last 7, 30 or 90 days, this month, last month, or a custom start and end date) and you get one row per location showing tasks due, completed, on time and skipped, with a completion rate and an on-time rate. Expand a location to see the same figures area by area, and there is a total row across every location.

• Days are counted in UTC, based on when each task was due, not when it was completed. A task finished after midnight counts against the day it was due, which is what you want when judging a closing routine.
• Export CSV downloads the whole table, one row per location and area. It opens correctly in Excel with Danish characters intact.
• Requires the Manage team members permission, the same gate as the activity log. If your role is scoped to particular locations, the report shows only those.
• Skipped tasks are excluded from both rates. A task a manager skips is not counted as due, so skipping does not damage your completion rate. It is reported separately in its own column. Watch that column alongside the rates.
• Figures are built from a nightly rollup, so today's numbers appear tomorrow. A very long range may be trimmed to the most recent days it can cover in one go; the report then tells you which period it is actually showing.

12. Settings#

Organisation-wide unless noted.

Organization name. Editable by administrators.

Switch organization. For people belonging to several organisations. Also where you create or join another.

Time zone. One zone for the whole organisation, and every schedule uses it. Set initially from your browser; the Set to my local button updates it to the current device's zone.

Ownership (owner only). Transfer ownership.

Leave organisation (non-owners). Leave the organisation.

Language. English or Danish. This is a personal preference, not an organisation setting; each person chooses their own.

Storage. How many images you have stored against your plan's allowance.

Billing. Subscription status, current plan, and the billing portal. See section 13.

OpsCenter · independent checklist (per location). Turn the prep checklist on or off and rename it.

OpsCenter PIN. Set, change, and require the exit PIN. See section 9.

Task completion tracking, on by default. When on, staff choose their initials when completing tasks. Switch it off for speed during exceptional periods; previously recorded completions are preserved either way.

Employee search scope, off by default. When off, employees find only content in areas they are assigned to. When on, they can search everything visible in OpsCenter at their location. Managers and owners always see everything.

Data & Privacy. Exports and deletion. See section 15.

A Give feedback button sits at the bottom of the sidebar for reporting bugs, requesting features or sending general comments. Bug reports can carry an image: attach one by choosing a file, dragging it in, or pasting a screenshot straight into the description box.

13. Plans and limits#

Every plan includes the whole operating platform: OpsCenter, scheduling, sequences, triggers, events, SOPs, prep lists, issues, search, training and the AI assistant. Plans differ in capacity, in access control, in reporting and in audit-log depth. A 14-day free trial is available.

There are no limits on the number of areas, tasks, sequences, triggers or events on any plan. Build as deep a system as you like. Data export, both your own personal data and the whole organisation's, is available on every plan.

What happens at a limit#

• Team members. Inviting beyond the limit is refused with a clear message. Pending invitations count towards the total.
• Locations. The option to add one disappears at the limit.
• AI messages. The assistant stops accepting messages for the rest of the calendar month.
• Images. Uploads are refused.

Downgrading#

If you move to a smaller plan while over its location limit, the oldest locations stay fully editable and the excess become read-only. Read-only locations keep working, and their tasks still run and can be completed, but they cannot be edited and drop out of search.

Renaming a read-only location is deliberately still allowed, so you can label which sites you intend to keep before deciding what to remove.

The same principle applies to access control. If you drop below Professional, any custom roles, permission settings and area or location scoping you already configured keep working and keep being enforced. You simply cannot change them until you upgrade again, and the controls appear locked with an upgrade prompt. Moving people between the three built-in roles stays available on every plan, so you are never unable to administer your own team.

Managing your subscription#

Settings → Billing → Manage billing opens the billing portal for payment methods, invoices and plan changes. Requires the Manage billing permission; normally the owner.

Prices are shown in DKK, EUR or USD, detected from your language and time zone, and exclude VAT. Tax is calculated at checkout.

If you cancel, you keep full access until the end of the paid period, and an Undo cancellation option appears until that date passes. Resubscribing keeps all your data and settings.

Enterprise is arranged directly, so contact us rather than checking out online.

14. The AI assistant#

Available from the sidebar and its own page, to anyone with AI Assistant access.

The assistant knows your organisation and your current location, and it can make real changes: creating areas, tasks, sequences, triggers, events and procedures, and setting opening hours and special periods.

It is most useful for the work that is tedious by hand:

• Converting an uploaded checklist into structured routines.
• "Create a closing sequence for the bar with these eight steps."
• "Set up a monthly deep-clean for every area."
• Asking what a shipped template contains before you add it.

Conversations are organised into threads. You can attach a PDF, PNG, JPEG or WebP, one file per conversation, up to 5 MB.

Things to keep in mind:

• It creates things directly. There is no preview-and-confirm step, so read what it tells you it did, and check the result. Everything is editable afterwards. As the assistant page notes: AI can make mistakes, so review important information before acting on it.
• It can delete things too, including tasks, sequences, events and procedures. Be specific about what you want removed.
• Keep conversations short. You are warned at 10 messages and stopped at 20 in a single conversation, so start a new one for each distinct piece of work. Results are better as well as faster.
• Your monthly message allowance depends on your plan and resets on the 1st of each calendar month, not on your billing anniversary. Usage is shown on the assistant page, and you are warned when 10 messages remain.
• Conversations are kept for 90 days, then deleted. Anything the assistant created stays; only the chat history goes.

15. Your data#

Exports and deletion#

Settings → Data & Privacy:

• Export my personal data. A JSON file of your own data. Available to everyone.
• Export organization data. A JSON file of the organisation's data. Requires the Manage team members permission, not merely a manager role.
• Delete my account. Irreversible; type your name to confirm. Blocked if you are the sole owner of an organisation: transfer ownership or delete the organisation first.
• Delete organization. Owner only, irreversible; type the organisation name to confirm. Blocked while a subscription is active, so cancel first.

Automatic retention#

Opscale deletes operational detail on a schedule and keeps aggregate counts, so you retain long-run insight without holding personal data indefinitely.

The practical consequence: the statistics you see are preserved as counts, but the individual record of who completed which task on a given day is removed after 30 days. If you need long-term evidence of specific completions, for a food-safety regime say, export it on a schedule.

The 30-day rule applies to each dated record, complete or not. One-time tasks disappear from the Tasks & Schedules page 30 days after their date, and missed recurring runs are cleared on the same timetable, so the list stays about the current month's operation rather than accumulating history.

16. Devices, browsers and connectivity#

What Opscale runs on#

Opscale runs in a web browser. There is nothing to install from an app store and no separate version to keep updated. Everyone is always on the current release.

It works on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones, in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari.

Adding it to a home screen#

On a phone or tablet you can add Opscale to the home screen so it opens full-screen with its own icon:

• iPhone and iPad: open Opscale in Safari, tap Share, scroll to Add to Home Screen, tap Add. This must be done in Safari; it does not work from Chrome or other browsers on iOS.
• Android: open Opscale in Chrome, tap the three-dot menu, tap Add to Home screen or Install app, confirm.

Connectivity: plan for this#

Opscale requires a working internet connection. There is no offline mode.

Nothing is cached for offline use and no completions are queued while disconnected. A device that loses its connection cannot load or reload Opscale, and a page already open will not accept work until the connection returns.

When planning a rollout this means:

• Check Wi-Fi coverage at the spot where the screen will live before you fix it there. Cellars, walk-ins and back corridors are the usual problem.
• For a site with unreliable connectivity, prefer a device with a mobile data fallback, or position the station where coverage is strongest.
• Everything syncs live between devices, so once connectivity returns, all screens show the same current state within moments.

Setting up a floor station#

1. Sign in on the device with a manager-level account.
2. Open OpsCenter and add it to the home screen. On iPhone and iPad the icon opens straight back to OpsCenter. On Android, the installed icon opens the manager area and you will be asked for the OpsCenter PIN, so either use the browser's Add to Home screen on the OpsCenter page rather than Install app, or simply bookmark it.
3. Set the device's default area filter with the gear icon, so it opens on the areas that matter at that spot. This default is stored on the device, so set it again on any replacement tablet.
4. Set the device to never sleep, and keep it on power.
5. Make sure the OpsCenter PIN is set and required (section 9).

17. Rolling out Opscale#

Everything above is reference. This section is a suggested order of work for getting a real site live, whether you are the owner or implementing for a client.

Before you touch the software#

Gather what exists today: laminated checklists, opening and closing lists, the cleaning rota, whatever lives in a WhatsApp group or in one long-serving person's head. You are going to digitise what is real, not invent something new.

Then agree two things with whoever runs the site:

1. The areas. Four to eight zones matching how responsibility is actually divided.
2. The opening hours, including the exceptions: the day you open late, the season you open on Sundays.

Week one: get one location working#

1. Create the organisation, confirm the time zone.
2. Set opening hours accurately, including any special dates you already know about. Everything downstream depends on this.
3. Create the areas.
4. Import the existing checklists with the AI assistant, or apply templates, or both. Expect to edit the result.
5. Build the opening and closing routines as sequences, scheduled relative to opening and closing. These two alone deliver most of the value.
6. Set up the shared device: a tablet on the floor, signed in as a manager, left on the OpsCenter screen. Add it to the home screen so it opens full-screen.
7. Set the OpsCenter PIN and turn on Require PIN.

Run it for a few days with just those two routines before adding anything else. You will learn more from three days of real use than from a week of planning.

Week two: make it complete and accountable#

8. Invite the team. Managers as Manager; everyone else as Employee.
9. Assign each employee their areas. Remember: an employee with no areas assigned sees nothing.
10. Check the initials on the Team page. People should recognise themselves in the completion list.
11. Add the weekly and monthly work: deep cleans, stock counts, maintenance.
12. Add manual triggers for the exceptions your team already recognises.
13. Fill in the instructions on the tasks that most often go wrong. This is the highest-return work in the whole implementation.

Then: the polish that makes it stick#

14. Define your special periods for the year: holidays, seasons, closures.
15. Organise each area's SOPs page by dragging cards into a sensible reading order, so it works as a training document.
16. Set device defaults for the area filter on each screen.
17. Point the team at the training courses. A manager and an employee course are built into the SOPs page.
18. Make reviewing issues part of a manager's own routine, as a daily recurring task, since nothing is emailed.

Common mistakes#

• Too many areas. Ten or fifteen areas turn the floor screen into a filtering exercise. Start broad.
• Fixed clock times everywhere. If you find yourself editing schedules every time your hours change, you should have used opening-relative times.
• Thin instructions. A task title alone is a reminder, not a procedure, and it will not survive staff turnover.
• Forgetting employee area assignment. The most common "it's broken" report, and it is always this.
• Everything on day one. A hundred tasks on the first morning teaches your team to ignore the screen. Start with opening and closing.

Multiple locations#

Give each site's manager a role confined to that location (section 11), so their location picker, dashboards and search stay focused on the site they run.

Each location has its own hours, areas and routines. To standardise across sites, build one location properly, then duplicate its areas into the others, which carries recurring tasks and procedures across, and adjust each site's hours and specifics afterwards.

18. Troubleshooting#

A task did not appear. Work through, in order:

1. Are opening hours set for this location at all? If not, every task timed relative to opening, which is the default, produces nothing. This is by far the most common cause.
2. Is the location closed that day? A task will not run on a closed day unless you have ticked Also run on closed days, and a relative-time task cannot run on a closed day even then.
3. Is the date within Active from / Active until?
4. Have you restricted it to special periods, or excluded it from one covering today?
5. Is Only during business hours fighting the time you set?
6. Was it skipped from the manager dashboard? Skipped tasks disappear entirely, with no marker.

An employee sees nothing. They have no areas assigned. Team → Configure → Employee viewing scope.

An area's tasks are missing from the floor screen. The area is probably hidden from OpsCenter. Several industry-default areas (Storage, Cellar, Maintenance, Back Office) ship hidden on purpose. Locations & Areas → the eye toggle.

An employee cannot open OpsCenter. By design; OpsCenter needs manager-level access. Use a shared manager-signed-in device.

The PIN prompt keeps appearing on a manager's laptop. That browser was used for OpsCenter, and the flag lasts 30 days. Enter the PIN once to clear it.

The correct PIN is being rejected. Repeated wrong entries lock PIN entry for the whole organisation, with the delay growing up to 15 minutes, and there is a daily cap on failed attempts. Wait, then try again, or use Forgot PIN? to sign in with your account password and set a new one.

"Mark done" is not asking who did it. Completion tracking is off. Settings → Task completion tracking.

A completed task cannot be un-ticked. It is on a past day. History is locked so records stay trustworthy.

Changing opening hours did not move today's tasks. Runs already generated for today keep their times; the change applies from tomorrow.

I cannot edit a location. It is read-only after a downgrade past your plan's location limit. Look for the Read-only badge next to its name on Locations & Areas. Its tasks still run; upgrade or remove another location to restore editing.

The AI assistant stopped responding. Either you have reached your monthly message allowance, which resets on the 1st, or the conversation has hit its 20-message limit. Start a new conversation.

The screen shows a connection error. Opscale needs an internet connection and has no offline mode. Check the device's Wi-Fi; everything re-syncs automatically once it reconnects.

Someone completed a task under the wrong initials. Un-tick it and re-complete it with the right person, on the same day.

19. Glossary#

Active from / Active until: the date window during which a schedule produces runs.

Area: a zone of responsibility within a location. Drives grouping, visibility and procedure organisation.

Event: a one-off occasion at a fixed date and time that starts attached sequences and tasks. Fires once.

Initials: a short unique code per person, used to attribute completions without logging in.

Location: a physical site, with its own opening hours and routines.

One-time task: a task that happens once at a specific date and time.

OpsCenter: the floor screen showing today's live timeline.

Opening-relative time: a schedule expressed as an offset from opening or closing, so it follows your hours automatically.

Overdue: started, not completed, and its window has passed.

Prep checklist: an unscheduled running list per area that carries over until items are completed.

Recurring task: a task that repeats on a schedule.

Read-only location: a location frozen for editing after a plan downgrade. Tasks still run.

Scope: which areas a person can work in or see. Separate from permissions.

Sequence: a reusable ordered set of tasks with offsets from a start moment.

Skip: removing a task from today without marking it done. Manager dashboard only.

SOP: a standard operating procedure: reference documentation attached to an area.

Special period: a named date range that schedules can be limited to, or excluded from.

Tier: whether a role behaves as a manager or an employee. Structural, not cosmetic.

Trigger: a named button that starts sequences and tasks on demand, or on a schedule.