Every shift on record, and in the CEO's inbox every morning.
Digital shift reporting that replaced the daily Excel update. Safety, quality and production are recorded on every shift from a phone, every report is kept, and the CEO and owner get the full picture at a fixed time each morning.
600
shift reports a year, each with safety and quality recorded
200 hours
of reporting time saved a year
Every morning
last night's and today's shifts with the CEO and owner, at a fixed time
9 months
to pay for itself
The problem
Genesis Bakery in Northern Ireland runs day and night shifts, six days a week, making own-label cakes and baked goods for UK supermarkets. The results of every shift went to the CEO in one spreadsheet: the Genesis Bakery Daily Update.
Most weeks, at least one shift's report was missing, late or incomplete. Nobody could easily tell which.
The CEO got the update whenever it arrived. Some days that was first thing, some days it wasn't.
A production manager spent part of every day putting the update together and sending it, on top of running the floor.
Each shift lead wrote up their shift by hand on the sheet, then the figures had to be added up.
The CEO and owner saw yesterday. Seeing how the weeks were trending, or how absence was building up, meant going back through old files.
How it worked before
One shared Excel workbook, the Genesis Bakery Daily Update, with a sheet each for Bakery Days, Bakery Nights, Goods In and Dispatch. It was filled in from each shift and emailed to the CEO every day. The workbook did the sums. Everything else, from chasing the shift leads to checking the figures and sending the email, was done by hand.
What we did
Started from the real workbook (May to June 2026). We turned each sheet of the daily update into a form, then rebuilt its calculations and checked them against a real day from the spreadsheet: the same plan attainment and staff attainment, to the decimal place, before anything went live.
Put the report on the floor. A QR poster on the wall, tap your name, enter a short PIN, and file the shift's report on your phone. It installs like an app. Totals, variances and attainment work themselves out as the shift lead types, and counts such as annual leave, sickness and unauthorised absence use plus and minus buttons.
Made safety and quality part of every report (July 2026). A Day Shift and a Night Shift Production Report, each covering health and safety, food safety and quality, production against plan, packing and labour. Any variance from plan needs a reason before the report can be sent, and a night shift's report is dated the day the shift started.
Kept every record. Reports can be searched by date and shift. Every sign-in, report, change and send is logged, and a changed report keeps its full history of who changed what and when.
Sent the CEO and owner the full picture. A designed email at a fixed time each morning, with last night's shift and today's day shift side by side, each attached as a one-page PDF, and a link to the dashboard. If a shift hasn't reported, the email says so.
Gave them the trends. A dashboard with plan and staff attainment over days and weeks, absence (annual leave, sick and unauthorised) charted daily, and output. A form builder lets the office change what a report asks without coming back to us, and old reports always show exactly as they were filed.
Secured it properly (August to October 2026): sign-in limits, a weekly security scan, password reset by email, and its own domain.
Worked alongside the people using it. The forms, the labels and the timing of the email all came from what the shift leads and the office said once they were using it. Michael Lyttle, CEO, backed the build. Rob Grundy, Assistant Production Manager, shaped the reports around how the shifts run.
The results
The biggest changes here are in record keeping and in what the CEO and owner can see. The time saved is real but modest: about 200 hours a year of reporting time, worth about £4,000.
Compliance and record keeping
Health and safety, food safety and quality are built into every shift report, so they are recorded every time.
Every report is kept and found in seconds by date and shift. Every change shows who made it and when.
A missing report no longer slips by. The morning email says plainly when a shift hasn't reported.
When the next BRCGS or retailer audit comes round, every shift's record will be a search away.
Insight for the CEO and owner
The report arrives at a fixed time every morning, not whenever someone gets to it.
Last night's and today's day shift side by side, so the two shifts can be compared at a glance.
Plan and staff attainment trending across weeks, not just yesterday's figure.
Absence counted on every shift and charted daily, so a pattern shows up before it becomes a problem.
Every miss on plan comes with the reason, from the people on the floor.
Efficiency
Nobody builds the daily update any more. It goes on its own.
Shift leads save 10 to 15 minutes on every report, with the totals worked out as they type.
About 200 hours a year handed back to the production team.
Saving
Per year
How it was worked out
Building the daily update
100 hours
Under 30 minutes a day for a production manager to put the update together and send it, taken as 20 minutes, over six days a week and 50 weeks. Genesis's own estimate. It now sends itself.
Shift leads' write-ups
100 hours
10 to 15 minutes saved on each shift report, taken at the low end, over two reports a day, six days a week, 50 weeks: about 600 reports a year. Genesis's estimate.
Total
200 hours
About £4,000 a year
Modelled from Genesis's estimates. The app has been in daily use since September 2026, with under 100 reports filed so far, so the yearly figures are projected rather than measured. It hasn't been through an audit yet, and the CEO and owner haven't yet acted on a trend it surfaced. We'll update this page when they do.
The dashboard: plan and staff attainment over time, and absence charted daily.
What Genesis say
"
The update used to land whenever it landed, and some weeks a shift just hadn't been written up. Now both shifts are in my inbox at the same time every morning, and if one hasn't reported it tells me. I can see how we're trending week to week, not just how yesterday went.
Michael Lyttle, CEO, Genesis Bakery
"
I fill it in on my phone before I leave the floor. The totals add themselves up, the safety checks are part of it, and that's me done. No sheet to hand in and nobody chasing me for it.
Rob Grundy, Assistant Production Manager, Genesis Bakery
Verona AI
