Fourth vs HotSchedules Inventory
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Fourth
This app streamlines hospitality operations by centralizing workforce management, purchasing, and inventory. It enhances team collaboration, simplifies scheduling, and improves inventory accuracy for efficient business management.
- Workforce management
- Purchase-to-pay
- Inventory management
- Shift scheduling
- Holiday requests
- Stock counting
- Order management
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Fourth is the world's leading provider of innovative software services to the hospitality industry and the Fourth App is the mobile gateway to access all of Fourth's and our partner's capabilities. Using our purpose built platform, where team collaboration is at the center of everything we provide, the Fourth App brings to life the processes required to run an efficient and effective hospitality business that customers love. Evolving the employee experience while at and away from work, Fourth has a variety of mobile apps, which help run your business with our Workforce Management, and Purchase-to-Pay and Inventory solutions. Allowing employees to collaborate with each other, apply for holidays, view and manage their scheduled shifts, count stock, order and receive deliveries, and much, much more. Fourth’s Workforce Management solution: Makes the lives of your managers and employees easier. Managers save hours every week by quickly building accurate schedules, and approving shift changes at the touch of a button. They can also publish open shifts, keep connected and stay on top of business performance on the go. Employees get more exact schedules, and can quickly and easily requests swaps, suggest unavailability, volunteer for open shifts, request time off and view payroll information, while staying connected with the business, their managers and their colleagues. Managers get out of the back office so they spend more time with their teams and customers, and employees feel happier and more engaged with the business, improving productivity, company culture and employee retention. Fourth’s Purchase-to-Pay and Inventory Management solution: Keeps operators on top of inventory by ensuring regular valuations are quickly and easily captured. Placing orders, completing inventory counts and goods receiving are completed on mobile devices, saving hours of time and eliminating errors caused by re-keying data. Actual Cost of Sales (COS) is easily calculated, and the gap between actual and theoretical is effectively highlighted and can be driven down as actual COS factors in all transactional data, daily sales and other account transfers and inventory movement. The result is better inventory management, ensuring you have sufficient products to meet demand while reducing waste and removing unnecessary administration. Getting started with the Fourth App: The Fourth App requires a Fourth Account to login, your employer needs to have given you access through an activation email and if you have any problems with access you should contact your line manager.
HotSchedules Inventory
This app helps independent and small regional restaurants efficiently manage their inventory. It allows for quick counting of on-hand stock, queuing orders for low items, and tracking food and beverage costs to reduce waste and improve profits. The system is customizable and easy to set up.
- Efficient inventory counting
- Queue orders for low stock
- Control food and beverage costs
- Vendor management
- Customizable inventory lists
- POS integration
- Real-time count actions
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YOU CAN COUNT ON IT Nothing eats away at time and profits like poorly managed inventory. And if you’re an independent or small regional restaurant chain, the existing tools to help deal with inventory include old school spreadsheets or technology products that are overly complex, expensive, incomplete or ill-suited to smaller operations. That is, until now. HotSchedules Count is a mobile application that allows independent and small regional, restaurants to efficiently count their on-hand inventory and queue orders for products that are below their defined ideal on-hand quantities. It saves hours of time by making the counting process smart and efficient and significantly improves inventory management accuracy, which leads to lower food costs. Even better, HotSchedules Count is fully customizable to your operation, as well as easy to get up and running fast! REDUCE ERROR, SAVE TIME Efficiently count your on-hand inventory and queue orders for products that are below their defined ideal on-hand quantities – right from your phone. Integration with Aloha POS now available. CONTROL WASTE & COSTS Get control on both food and beverage inventory, understand the true cost of your menu, track variances, reduce food costs, food waste and internal theft. MANAGE YOUR VENDORS HotSchedules Inventory is fully customizable to your operation and makes it easy to add or remove vendors and print purchase orders. FEATURES OVERVIEW • Designed to be used on mobile devices • Designed specifically for independent and small regional operators • Set-up quickly and easily: minutes versus weeks or months • Customize inventory lists and make necessary updates as needed • Control both food and beverage inventory • Link to ordering to drive efficiency in maintaining stock on hand • Managing items in your store is as simple as managing your playlist thanks to easy-to-use, intuitive design Customizable Dashboard & Reports • POS integration pulls in sales, sales mix and variance data • View outstanding orders • View receiving costs by category • Review location or category totals • On-hand report provides point-in-time views of product • based on most recent count and receivings • COGS Report analyzes Cost of Goods Sold between two count events by category and item Real-Time Count Actions • Review location or category totals for accuracy • Drill into the count detail • Return to count to correct any mistakes • See counted on-hand quantity versus par • Queue items with one touch to order from the count review • Receive spreadsheet file of on-hand values to your email • Receive spreadsheet of purchase order to your email Vendor Management • Easy vendor setup and management • Rapidly add items manually or import items from spreadsheets • View receiving costs by vendor • Review previous orders by vendor • Add items, print a purchase order or download a file that can be emailed to your vendor Real-Time Counting • Count food and beverage inventory • Count vendor items • Count in multiple units of measure • Sort items in their storage location for accurate sheet to shelf counting • Count offline and synchronize when back online • Supports left or right-hand data entry Recipe Management • Drag and drop ingredients into recipes • Easily modify the most expensive ingredients • Setup menu pricing and food costs • Automatic profit calculation as you build the ingredient’s conversion • Ensure you have the right stock on-hand with easy ordering links Store Management • Organize items by location and sub-location to speed the counting process • Identify high cost/high loss items that need to be counted more frequently • Set par levels for your items • Perform catalog import to bring in all the items and prices list from vendors
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ratings volume: Fourth at 134 against HotSchedules Inventory's 1. Fourth also leads on rating (1.3 vs 1.0) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months). HotSchedules Inventory's advantage is iOS requirement (7.0 vs 12.0). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Fourth holds the better App Store score, 1.3 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Fourth has 134 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 4% of Fourth's written reviews are positive against 0% of HotSchedules Inventory's.
Fourth ships an update every 3 weeks, HotSchedules Inventory every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 19, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Fourth | HotSchedules Inventory |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 1.3 (134 ratings) — better | 1.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 3.7% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 134 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 | 7.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 74 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Fourth Limited | HotSchedules |
Customer experience
Fourth
HotSchedules Inventory
Bugs and requests
Fourth
Reported bugs
4 issues- Blank screens
- Login failures
- Scheduling issues
- Payslip access problems
Requested features
3 requests- Dark mode option
- Improved calendar integration
- Better employee communication tools
HotSchedules Inventory
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Fourth
No in-app purchases
HotSchedules Inventory
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Fourth free?
Is HotSchedules Inventory free?
Which has better reviews, Fourth or HotSchedules Inventory?
Do Fourth or HotSchedules Inventory have ads?
Which is updated more often, Fourth or HotSchedules Inventory?
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