GoTab is a point of sale and commerce platform for bars, restaurants, and venues. Connecting GoTab to Workforce does three separate jobs: sales and tips flow from GoTab into Workforce every 15 minutes, employees flow the other way from Workforce into GoTab, and GoTab can require a server to be clocked in before they can ring in orders. Each job is configured independently, so a venue can run just the sales sync, or all three.
The connection is set up entirely on the GoTab side. There is no GoTab option under Settings > Integrations > POS Integrations in Workforce, and nothing to install in Workforce before you start.
What's covered in this guide?
What the integration does
Three things move between the two systems, each turned on by its own setting in GoTab:
Sales and tips flow from GoTab into Workforce every 15 minutes, as soon as the agent is switched on.
Employees flow from Workforce into GoTab, either on demand or once a day overnight. Controlled by Turn on User Syncing?.
Clock-in enforcement checks Workforce for an open shift when an employee pins into the POS. Controlled by Enforce timeclock via Workforce app.
Sales data is the only piece that arrives in Workforce. Employee syncing and clock-in enforcement both read from Workforce and act inside GoTab, so most of what you will see for those two lives in the GoTab Manager Dashboard.
Before you connect
Have the following ready in Workforce:
A location for the venue. Each GoTab location maps to exactly one Workforce location. Check your Locations & Teams page, and create the location first if it does not exist yet.
Employees assigned to a team. GoTab works out which employees belong to the location by looking at the teams they are assigned to. An employee with no team is never included in an employee sync.
The Time Clock app on the POS device, if you plan to use clock-in enforcement. The POS hands the employee off to the Time Clock app to clock in, so it needs to be installed on the same device. See Installing the Time Clock App.
You will also need an admin login for the GoTab Manager Dashboard, and a Workforce login that can authorize an integration.
Connecting GoTab to Workforce
All of these steps happen in the GoTab Manager Dashboard.
Go to Agents and click Add Agent.
Select Workforce from the dropdown and click Save.
When the page refreshes, expand the Workforce agent to reach Workforce Configs.
Set Region to Workforce (US/CAN). This decides which sign-in the connection uses, so set it before you connect.
Click Connect with Workforce OAuth 2.0 and sign in to Workforce when prompted.
On the authorization screen, review what GoTab is asking for and click Authorize. GoTab requests access to your data streams and store stats, your team information, your timesheets, and the details of the account you signed in with.
You are returned to the Agents page. GoTab then creates the data stream in Workforce and reads back your list of locations.
Choose the matching venue in the Workforce Location dropdown and click Save. If your Workforce account has only one location, GoTab selects it for you.
Toggle the Workforce switch at the top of the agent panel on.
Sales start flowing on the next 15 minute cycle. Nothing syncs until that toggle is on, no matter how the rest of the configuration looks.
Heads-up: The mapping between a GoTab location and a Workforce location is one to one. A venue that rings sales through several GoTab locations needs the Workforce agent configured on each of them, pointed at the Workforce location it belongs to.
Sales and tips in Workforce
GoTab pushes net sales and tips into Workforce as a data stream, in 15 minute buckets, for the one location the agent is mapped to. To find it, go to Settings > Integrations > Manage Data Streams. The stream appears there like any other sales feed, and carries two figures:
Sales, the net sales rung up in the period.
Tips, the tips collected in the period.
GoTab created the stream and joined it to the location you selected, so sales show up against that location straight away. If you want sales to sit against a specific team as well, for costing a schedule or filtering a report, link the stream to that team from the same screen. See Configure your Sales, Revenue, Budgets & Demand Data for how data streams attach to locations and teams, and Importing Sales Data Through The API for the mechanism GoTab uses to send it.
Each push replaces whatever was already recorded for the period it covers, rather than adding to it. Figures for the current period can move as more orders are closed out, and a late correction in GoTab overwrites the earlier number rather than double counting it.
Paying out tips with a Tip Jar
The tips GoTab sends are a total for the venue, not amounts against individual employees. To split them across the staff who worked, point a Tip Jar at the GoTab data stream. The daily tip total is then filled in for you instead of being typed in by a manager at the end of each day.
Tip Jars is switched on under Settings > Feature Management > Tip Jars. Once it is on, set one up from Compliance > Customize Your Setup > Tip Jars > Manage:
Click to create a new Tip Jar and give it a Name, for example "Bar Tips".
Choose the Location the GoTab agent is mapped to.
Set POS Integration to the GoTab data stream. This is the field that pulls the tip totals across.
Choose the teams that receive the tips, and how much each team gets.
From there tips behave exactly as they do for a manually entered Tip Jar. Each day's total is spread across the shifts on the eligible teams in proportion to hours worked, shows on the timesheet as an allowance, and is paid through the pay run. Set the earnings rate the tips are paid on to the Tips earnings type so they are taxed and reported correctly, and see One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Tip and Overtime Reporting for what has to be reported on a pay stub and at year end.
💡 Tip: When you allocate by percentage, the percentages cannot add up to more than 100%, and at least one team has to be left without a percentage to take the remainder. Workforce blocks the setup otherwise.
Syncing employees into GoTab
Employee syncing creates and updates real GoTab users from your Workforce staff list, and makes Workforce the source of truth for POS PINs. It is off by default. Turn on User Syncing? in the agent config has three settings:
No Sync. The default. No employees are pulled from Workforce.
Manual. The sync runs only when someone clicks the sync button on the GoTab users page.
Automatic & Manual. The sync runs once a day overnight, at 08:00 UTC, and on demand.
Once it is set to anything other than No Sync, a Workforce button appears on the GoTab Manager Dashboard users page. That is where you run a sync, download the results, and finish off anyone the sync could not complete.
How employees are matched
Every sync reads your Workforce staff, keeps the ones whose teams belong to the mapped location, and matches them against the active GoTab users at that location in this order:
Email. A Workforce email that matches a GoTab user's email is treated as the same person.
Full name. With no email match, GoTab compares the employee's full name against the GoTab display name and first and last name.
Otherwise a new GoTab user is created and tagged with the employee's Workforce ID.
Employees and managers are treated differently
Anyone with an elevated permission level in Workforce, meaning Team Manager, General Manager, Payroll Officer, or Admin, or anyone who manages a team, is treated as a manager by the sync. Everyone else is treated as an employee.
Managers need a phone number in Workforce. A manager without one is skipped, and if they already exist in GoTab, the phone number on the two records has to match.
New employees are created in GoTab with server and time clock permissions.
New managers are created with no permissions at all, so an admin has to assign them in GoTab afterward.
POS PINs come from Workforce
When the sync creates a GoTab user, it sets their GoTab PIN from their Workforce Time Clock Passcode. That happens on creation only. The sync never changes the PIN on an existing GoTab user, and never writes a PIN back into Workforce. PIN fields for synced users are locked in GoTab, so to change one, change the passcode on the employee's profile in Workforce and run the sync again.
Reading the results
Two things are worth checking after every sync:
The CSV. Everyone the sync could not handle is listed in a downloadable CSV with a reason: a manager with no phone number, a phone number that did not match, more than one Workforce account for the same person, or a create or update that GoTab rejected. Duplicate accounts are worth cleaning up in Workforce, because GoTab only syncs one of them.
Incomplete users. A red badge on the GoTab users page means someone came through but still needs attention, usually a manager who arrived with no permissions. Complete User Sync lists them.
Employee syncing writes to real user records. It creates GoTab users, updates names, and sets PINs. Be sure you want Workforce to own the venue's staff list before switching it on.
Requiring a clock-in at the POS
Turning on Enforce timeclock via Workforce app does two things. It points the location's labor tracking at Workforce, so clocking in and out at the POS opens the Workforce Time Clock app instead of GoTab's own time clock. And it becomes the default for employees synced from Workforce, so a server is sent to clock in before they can ring in orders.
When a synced employee pins into the POS, GoTab checks Workforce for an open shift. If there isn't one, the POS hands them to the Time Clock app on the device, with their passcode already filled in, and drops them straight on their clock-in screen. Once they have clocked in, the app returns them to GoTab. If the passcode does not land for any reason, the app falls back to its normal keypad so they can key it in themselves.
Two behaviors are worth knowing before you troubleshoot a report of this:
Per-employee settings survive a re-sync. The location setting is only the default for someone who has never been given a value of their own. Enforcement can be turned off for an individual from the clock-in enforcement panel on the GoTab users page, and later syncs leave that exemption alone.
It fails open. If Workforce cannot be reached, the connection needs re-authorizing, or the employee has no Workforce ID, the employee is let through. An outage will never lock your floor out of the POS, which also means enforcement can be quietly doing nothing while the connection is broken.
Only employees carrying a Workforce ID are checked, which in practice means employees who came through an employee sync.
Troubleshooting
No sales are arriving in Workforce
No sales are arriving in Workforce
Check the Workforce agent toggle in GoTab is on. Region, location, and the OAuth connection can all be correct and the location will still push nothing while the toggle is off.
Confirm a Workforce Location is selected on the agent.
Reconnect through Connect with Workforce OAuth 2.0. If Workforce has stopped accepting the stored authorization, sales syncing, employee syncing, and clock-in enforcement all stop.
Allow a full 15 minutes before comparing figures.
Sales are arriving but not showing on a schedule or report
Sales are arriving but not showing on a schedule or report
Open Settings > Integrations > Manage Data Streams and confirm the GoTab stream is linked to the team you are filtering by. The location join is created for you, but team joins are not.
Tip totals are not filling in on a Tip Jar
Tip totals are not filling in on a Tip Jar
Check the Tip Jar has POS Integration set to the GoTab data stream, and that its Location is the one the agent is mapped to.
Confirm tips are actually being taken in GoTab for the period you are looking at. A day with no tips comes across as zero, not as a blank.
An employee I expected is missing from GoTab
An employee I expected is missing from GoTab
If they are not in the users list and not in the CSV either, they almost certainly did not resolve to the mapped location. Check the teams they are assigned to in Workforce, then run the sync again.
If they are in the CSV, the reason is listed against them. Managers missing a phone number are the most common one.
Employees are not being asked to clock in
Employees are not being asked to clock in
Only employees who came through an employee sync are checked, so confirm employee syncing is on and that the employee has synced.
Check whether enforcement has been turned off for that individual on the GoTab users page.
Reconnect the agent. Enforcement fails open, so a stale connection lets everyone straight through without any visible error.
Confirm the Time Clock app is installed on the POS device. See Time Clock: Troubleshooting if the app is installed but not behaving.
Important reminders
Nothing syncs until the agent toggle is on. It is the single most common reason a correctly configured venue sends no data.
Toggling off is not the same as disconnecting. Toggling off pauses syncing and keeps the connection. Disconnecting clears the credentials and needs a fresh authorization to come back.
A connection can go stale and stay stale. Sales syncing and employee syncing stop visibly, but clock-in enforcement stops silently because it fails open. Reconnecting through Connect with Workforce OAuth 2.0 fixes all three.
Tips arrive as a venue total. Workforce needs a Tip Jar to turn that into an amount per employee, and an earnings rate on the Tips earnings type to pay it. See Run Payroll for where tips land on a pay run.
Teams decide who syncs. An employee with no team is invisible to the integration, both for employee syncing and for clock-in enforcement.