Q3 2026 (July - September), UK Release Summary

Overview

This article contains a list and summary of every UK release note published by Fourth during Q3 of 2026 (1st July to 30th September).

Release notes are listed under the following headers:

• Workforce Management
• Purchase-to-Pay & Inventory
• Fourth Engage/Mobile apps
• Fourth Analytics
• AI Forecast
• MacromatiX

Select the name of the release note to view it in full. They will open in a new browser tab.

Workforce Management

New Release | Scheduling: Changes to Wording in Schedule Status Report | 1 Jul 2026

• Changes to Wording in Schedule Status Report
  The wording in the Schedule Status Report has been updated to better align with the Rota Approval Report and the Schedule. Previously, schedules with a status of 'Ready for Review' were incorrectly displayed as 'new' in both the Schedule Status Report and the Rota Approval Report. These will now correctly reflect the 'Ready for Review' status.
  Please note that this change is not applied retroactively to existing reports.

New Release | WFM UK: Multiple Session Conflict Resolution | 2 Jul 2026

• Multiple Session Conflict Resolution
  Multiple Session Conflict Resolution is now available. When a login is attempted, the system automatically checks for an existing active session and handles the conflict intelligently, removing the need for users to close their entire browser to resolve session issues

New Release | Scheduling: Age-Based Restrictions | 10 Jul 2026

• Age-Based Restrictions
  Administrators can now create and manage age-based scheduling restrictions that automatically prevent non-compliant schedules from being saved.
  This enhancement helps organisations comply with age-related working regulations and company policies by preventing schedules that breach configured working time restrictions. It reduces manual compliance checks, minimises scheduling errors, and helps ensure younger workers are scheduled safely and appropriately.
  The following hard restrictions are now available within restriction profiles:
  • Maximum Weekly Working Hours Restriction
    Limits the total number of hours an employee can be scheduled within a scheduling week
  • Gap Between Shifts Restriction
    Enforces a minimum rest period between consecutive days scheduled
  • Minimum Weekly Consecutive Rest Restriction
    Guarantees a minimum number of consecutive days off within each scheduling week for employees within a defined age group
  • Latest Permitted Working Time Restriction
    Prevents employees from being scheduled beyond a defined time of day

New Release | eClock: Shift Sentiment

• Shift Sentiment
  eClock now supports Shift Sentiment, capturing anonymous employee feedback during the clock-out process. Employees select the option that best reflects how they felt about their shift (Good/Neutral/Bad), choose one or more predefined tags for additional context (e.g. Well Staffed, Steady Service, Challenging Shift), and can optionally add written comments. Responses are anonymous and mapped to Day Parts. Shift Sentiment can be enabled or disabled at an organisational level. When disabled, employees are not presented with the sentiment screen and clocking continues as normal, uninterrupted
• Fourth Analytics Reporting
  A dedicated Fourth Analytics dashboard has been introduced alongside Shift Sentiment, giving managers visibility into overall sentiment score and response volumes, the percentage of Positive/Neutral/Negative responses, sentiment trends over time, sentiment by day of week, day part, location, hierarchy, area and job role, top/bottom performing locations and roles, common issue tags with average sentiment score per tag, and submitted employee comments. Reporting can be filtered by organisational hierarchy, location, financial period, day part and operational area

New Release | Scheduling: Restrict Student Visa Employee hours on a Monday–Sunday Week Regardless of Business Week Start Day | 23 Jul 2026

• Student Visa Hour Calculations to Use Calendar Weeks
  Scheduling will now enforce student hour restrictions based on a fixed Monday–Sunday calendar week, regardless of the site's configured week start day. Previously, student weekly hour limits were calculated relative to the site's week start day, which could lead to inconsistent enforcement of working hour restrictions for students. With this change, student hour caps are always measured across the standard Monday–Sunday calendar week, ensuring consistent and compliant scheduling of student employees across all site configurations.
  The change is implemented to align with UKVI Legislation as per which 'Week' means a period of 7 days beginning with a Monday

New Release | WFM UK: Absence (Sickness) Record Breakdown, Absence and Pay Report | 6 Aug 2026

• Absence (Sickness) Record Breakdown
  We've added a breakdown view to the Absence grid, accessible via a button on each absence record. It gives a read-only, day-by-day view of SSP and CSP for the full absence period, showing qualifying days, waiting days, exclusion reasons, and daily values. The figures shown match exactly what the payroll engine calculates, so they line up with payroll outputs and downstream exports, and the view updates automatically whenever the absence record is edited and recalculated
• Absence & Pay Report
  We're introducing a brand new Absence & Pay Report, giving users a more powerful way to export absence and pay data than the existing Absence Analysis Report. It's available in two views: a detailed view, providing a full day-by-day breakdown of each absence including qualifying day status, SSP and CSP rates, waiting days, excluded reasons, and payment dates, and a summary view, condensing each absence into a single row with totals across the full period, including calendar days, working/qualifying days, total SSP and CSP paid, paid and unpaid days, and overall payment status. Once Absence in Hours is released, this report will be extended to support hours-based absence too, making it the go-to report for absence and pay data going forward
• Report Exporting Method Modernisation
  Payroll Previews, Past Pay Run Reports, and the Weekly Overview Report V3 can now be exported as XLSX or CSV files, as well as the legacy XLS format. This functionality was originally released on 21 May 2026 but was only available on request. From this release, it's enabled across the board for all users

New Release | Scheduling: Shift Creation Window Location | 19 Aug 2026

• Shift Creation Window – New Location
  When you click to add or edit a shift, the box that used to appear in the middle of the screen will now slide in from the right-hand side instead. This change means you can still see the rota while you add or edit a shift, making it easier to reference the schedule as you work. The following remains unchanged:
  • Design
    All the familiar options are exactly where you'd expect them: Start date and time, End date and time, Job Role, Passive Shift (with Passive Shift Reason), Breaks (Break 1 min / Break 1 Start), and Notes
  • Functionality
    There is no change to how shifts are created, edited or saved

New Release | WFM UK: Holiday Carry Over Reason Codes | 3 Sep 2026

• Holiday Carry Over Reason Codes
  Carry Over Reason has been added to HR Data Imports and Employee Batch Update, requiring a reason to be specified against each carried-over holiday balance. This has been introduced ahead of the Fair Work Agency's Holiday Record Keeping obligations (Section 35 of the ERA 2025), which require employers to maintain adequate records demonstrating compliance with Working Time Regulations holiday entitlements, including evidencing why unused holiday was carried over rather than lapsed. These will feed into the employee Holiday Record Keeping Audit, currently in development and targeted for a future release

New Release | WFM UK: Absence in Hours (Part Day), CSP Enhancements, Override FTE for Flexible Employees | 17 Sep 2026

• Absence in Hours (Part Day)
  Absence (sickness) can now be recorded at individual day and hour level, giving greater flexibility and accuracy for partial day absences, variable working patterns, and complex sickness scenarios. Absences in Hours can be created and managed via the UI, the UK HR API, or Data Imports (including a dedicated Absence in Hours Update Import for bulk updates), and integrate fully with SSP, CSP, Rota, and Scheduling
• Company Sick Pay (CSP) Enhancements
  A series of improvements to CSP configuration and management:
  • Entitlement in Weeks
    CSP entitlement can now be configured in weeks as well as fixed days. The system converts this to a days figure automatically, based on FTE (or 52-week average for flexible employees)
  • Entitlement Calculation Breakdown
    A new pop-up on the employee's Absences screen shows the full entitlement calculation, including employment and contract details, plus warnings where a change could create a negative CSP balance
  • Entitlement Employee Override
    CSP entitlement can now be overridden at employee level, bypassing contract configuration. Overrides apply to a defined CSP year, can persist into future years, and are fully logged for audit
• Override FTE for Flexible Employees
  Override FTE is now available for Flexible employees, not just Full Time and Part Time, letting an FTE value be assigned for downstream calculations including Absence — particularly relevant given CSP Entitlement in Weeks above. Can be set via the UI, data import, or the UK HR API

New Release | Scheduling: Shift Preferences | 24 Sep 2026

• Shift Preferences
  Employees can now record their preferred (and non-preferred) working times in MySchedules, and those preferences appear directly in Scheduling when managers build the schedule, so availability no longer needs to be tracked separately or remembered. For customers using Fourth's Auto Scheduling Solution, preference data also feeds into automatically generated schedules. Shift Preferences is new functionality, switched off by default, and is enabled per location. Contact your Fourth representative or Customer Support to have it enabled

New Release | Scheduling: Restrict Student Visa Employee hours on a Monday–Sunday New Visual Indicator for Calendar Week Hours | 30 Sep 2026

• Student Visa Hour Calculations Indicator and Tooltip
  Student visa hours are capped per Monday–Sunday calendar week, but many customers run work weeks that don't align to that — e.g. Sunday–Saturday. Without a visual aid, it wasn't clear to schedulers how many hours a student employee had already been scheduled across each calendar week. A new Visa hours indicator now appears on the schedule. Clicking it opens a tooltip showing which work-week days fall into each calendar week and the hours used against that week's cap — so managers can see and manage compliance accurately even when the two weeks don't line up

New Release | Scheduling: Deployment Graph for Customers Without Labour Data | 30 Sep 2026

• Deployment Graph for Non-Productivity Customers
  For customers using a non-productivity version of Scheduling, a new deployment graph is now available to provide greater visibility of how scheduled labour is deployed throughout the trading day. The graph plots forecast sales against scheduled employees, alongside a breakdown of forecast sales and scheduled labour cost as a percentage of sales. This gives customers who are not using a productivity-based Scheduling package an at-a-glance view of their deployment across time intervals and how staffing aligns with forecast demand. The graph is enabled through a new setting, configurable at both organisation and department level. Users require the Manage Customer Organisation Settings and Manage Locations and Departments permissions to access the setting. If your Admin cannot see the new setting, please contact your Fourth representative or Customer Support

Purchase-to-Pay & Inventory

New Release | RME: API Import Review Screen - More Information Displayed | 1 Jul 2026

• API Import Review Screen - More Information Displayed
  The Code (used for import API purposes) and the Intolerance Name (as displayed on the Ingredient Nutrition > Intolerance Data screen) will both be displayed on the API Import Review screen.
  This change will help reduce confusion that can arise when the Code and Intolerance Name do not match. In particular, the code Wheat refers to the Intolerance named Cereals that Contain Gluten while the code CerealsWheat refers to the Intolerance named Wheat

New Release | RME: API Endpoints for Ingredient Sellable Portions | 15 Sep 2026

• API Requests for Ingredient Sellable Portions
  Requests are available to create, update, retrieve and delete ingredient sellable portions. These endpoints are not enabled by default. To request access, contact Fourth Support and ask for the Sellable Ingredient Portions API endpoints to be enabled for your integration

New Release | RME: Digital Recipe Viewer (StarChef Light) UI Enhancements, Ingredient CO2 Report, Sellable Ingredients Refinement | 16 Sep 2026

• Digital Recipe Viewer, UI Enhancements
  The recipe intolerance screen in RME's digital recipe card viewer (aka, StarChef Light) has been enhanced to make it easier to understand the intolerance values at a glance
• Sellable Ingredients and Promote Alternate to Parent Ingredient Refinement
  When a parent ingredient is designated as a 'sellable item' and an alternate ingredient of that parent is promoted to be the parent ingredient, the 'sellable item' property and any 'portions' will remain as properties of the new parent ingredient
• Ingredient CO2 Report
  A report for Ingredient CO2 values is available to support customers using RME's CO2 recipe calculation functionality. It has been made available to all customers by default. It has been designed for Excel output and displays the following: Ingredient Product Key, Parent Ingredient Name, Supplier Product Name, Supplier Name, Supplier Code, KG CO2e per Kilo

Fourth Engage/Mobile apps

New Release | Fourth iQ: Manager | Action Center Filtering & Team View | 15 Jul 2026

• Action Center Filtering
  Filtering is now available in the Action Center on web and tablet, allowing managers to narrow their view by due date, received date, closed date, and location. Active filters are shown as dismissible chips, with an overflow panel and badge count when multiple filters are applied. This reduces noise in the feed and enables faster, more targeted triage of actions.
• Team View in the Action Center
  A modernized Team View is now available in the Action Center on web and tablet, presenting a hierarchical two-panel layout: a scrollable list of team members with their action counts on the left, and the selected team member's actions on the right. An All Team Actions row at the top provides an aggregate view across the team. Managers can search within the team member list and toggle between Open and Closed action tabs in Team View.

New Release | HCM iQ: New Alert Expiry Dates | 30 Jul 2026

• New expiry dates on HCM iQ Alerts
  Some low-priority alerts within the manager feed will now automatically expire and be removed once they are no longer relevant. For example, a birthday alert will disappear after the birth date has passed. This means managers will only ever see timely actionable alerts in their feed, without needing to manually dismiss anything that is already out of date.
• More information available on the Holiday Request Action
  To help Line Managers make decisions about approving employees' holiday requests, more information has been added to the Action.

New Release | Counting App: Line Checks | 25 Aug 2026

• Line Checks Can Be Completed in the Counting App
  Line Checks created in Inventory are now synchronised with and displayed in the Counting App. Counts can be completed and submitted directly from the app. One Line Check per location is currently supported

Fourth Analytics

New Release | Fourth Analytics EMEA: Sales & Labour KPI (Mobile-Responsive) Dashboard | 26 Aug 2026

• Sales & Labour KPI Dashboard (Productivity version & Non-Productivity version)
  Introduction of a new Sales & Labour KPI Dashboard for EMEA customers, built with GoodData KPI Dashboards. This brings Fourth Analytics EMEA in line with the mobile-responsive KPI dashboard already released for US customers, giving a streamlined view of Sales, Labour, and Budget performance. The dashboard is available in two versions, depending on your Fourth Analytics configuration:
  • Mobile-responsive layout
    Automatically adapts widget sizing and layout for smaller screens, making it easier to review key metrics on the go
  • Sales KPIs
    Actual Sales, Manager Forecast Sales, Actual vs Manager Forecast Variance (%)
  • Labour KPIs
    Labour Cost, Labour Cost (as % of Actual Sales), Sales per Labour Hour
  • Budget metrics
    Budget Sales, Budget Labour Cost, and related variances shown alongside the Sales and Hours KPIs
  • Productivity version
    Also includes Hours KPIs — Actual Hours, Required Hours, Actual vs Required Hours — plus WAPE %
  • Non-Productivity version
    Hours KPIs limited to Actual Hours; Required Hours, Actual vs Required Hours, and WAPE % are not included

AI Forecast

New Release | Forecast Manager: Weather Forecast Display & View Forecast Explanations | 2 Jul 2026

• Weather Forecast Display
  Forecast Manager now shows daily weather forecasts directly within the forecast management interface. When reviewing and adjusting forecasts, users can see the expected weather conditions for each day alongside their forecast figures, giving them the environmental context they need without having to check an external source.
  With weather data surfaced in the same view as the forecast, managers can make more informed adjustments and avoid unnecessary changes driven by conditions the system has already accounted for
• View Forecast Explanations
  Forecast Manager can now provide explanations as to why the system has generated a particular forecast value. For each day, a natural-language explanation can be requested that reveals the key drivers behind the numbers. For example, noting that the forecast is higher due to a factored in Notable Day such as Father's Day.
  Explanations appear in a side panel, keeping the main forecast view uncluttered while making the reasoning easy to access on demand.
  Previously, users could see what the forecast said, but not why, which could undermine trust and prompt manual overrides that weren't necessary. By making the system's reasoning transparent, this update helps store-level managers engage with the AI-generated forecast with greater confidence, supporting faster and more accurate decision-making

New Release | Forecast Manager: Calendar Date Picker & Date Formatting | 9 Sep 2026

• Calendar Date Picker
  Forecast Manager now opens a month calendar when a user clicks the date field, replacing the weekly/daily dropdown list. Rather than stepping through every week in between, users can jump straight to any week or day in a month, and navigate months independently of the current selection.
  This change makes navigation easier, instead of scrolling through the dropdown one period at a time, users can jump to any point, and see at a glance where the selected week sits in the month.
• Consistent Date Formats on the Forecast Summary Page
  The Forecast Summary page now uses the same date formats as the rest of the product, so dates read consistently as users move between pages. The Go to Week field uses the new calendar component and displays the selected week in full — for example, Sun 06 Sep – Sat 12 Sep. The week rows in the summary table have been reformatted to match, showing ranges such as 03 – 09 Aug, and expanding to 31 Aug – 06 Sep where a week crosses a month boundary.
  These changes give consistency across the differing date formats our customers use.
• Calendar Picker on the Bulk Upload Page
  The weekly picker on the Bulk Upload page has been replaced with the same shared calendar component, so there is no second date control to learn. Behaviour matches the Forecast Manager picker — week band, month navigation and greyed adjacent-month days — and any existing constraints on which weeks can be selected, such as upload windows, are preserved.

New Release | Forecast Manager: Restrict In-Line Adjustments Permission | 9 Sep 2026

• Restrict In-Line Adjustments
  A new permission, Restrict In-Line Adjustments, can now be assigned to a profile in CUP. Where it is assigned, users can no longer type sales values directly into the editable forecast fields in the forecast table — those in-line fields become unavailable to them.
  The permission is applied per profile in CUP by an administrator. Please contact your Fourth Customer Success contact if you would like the restriction set up for your business.

MacromatiX

Q3 2026

• Enhanced inventory ordering and vendor transmission workflows
• Digital temperature capture in production processes
• Improved inventory variance and movement reporting
• Scalable near real-time POS integration architecture
• Improved POS authentication and cash reconciliation
• Consolidated banking and financial reporting enhancements
• Cloud-based label printing improvements
• Numerous quality, performance, and stability updates
• 56 defects resolved

Please see here for the full MX Release Notes - 2026.3 PDF