Creating employee work schedules in Excel can be a great compromise between the time-consuming pen & paper approach and full-featured employee scheduling software.
Table of contentsThis guide explains step-by-step how to make an employee shift schedule in Microsoft Excel.
To make things even easier for you, we’ve included a free Excel schedule template that you can download and use right away to create work schedules for your team.
There are several good reasons why a small business may decide to create a rota in Excel:
Microsoft Excel is highly flexible and customizable. You can design your work schedule templates to match your specific needs, including different shifts, roles, and time periods.
If your business already uses Microsoft Office, then Excel is effectively free to use for scheduling employees. It doesn’t require any additional subscription like many specialized scheduling software, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses on a tight budget or with simpler scheduling needs.
The calculation features in Microsoft Excel can automate totaling work hours, overtime, or days worked per employee, making it easier to track labor hours and costs.
Microsoft Excel is a widely used tool and most people are familiar with its basic functions. This can make it easier for both managers and employees to use and understand the shift schedule.
There are numerous free Excel templates available online that you can use as a starting point for your daily schedule, which can save time.
Microsoft Excel can integrate data from other sources or export data to other systems, which can be helpful if you need to feed scheduling data into a payroll system or other HR software.
Here’s how to allocate work to employees in Excel in 3 easy steps:
The vertical X-axis is for your employees. The horizontal Y-axis is for days of work. Enter the information as shown below. Leave an empty row below each employee. This row will be used for employee positions.
💡 Q uick tip: Click the bottom right corner of a cell containing a date, hold the left mouse button, and then drag the cursor over adjacent cells to create a logical series of dates.
Enter the hours of work and relevant employee positions under each day of work. The end result should be bare yet functional work schedule.
To make your work schedule easier to read, customize it by bolding key information or editing the borders, cell size, text position, and fill colors.
Since there’s a near-limitless number of ways of customizing your Excel schedule, you could easily spend a couple of hours tweaking everything. Keep things simple.
If you’re still planning on using Excel for your schedule, feel free to download our free work schedule Excel template, which will let you get started quickly and save time.
This free scheduling template makes it easy to create a rota in Excel. Simply add employee names, positions and hourly rates, and start scheduling. You can also automatically calculate your weekly labor costs. Once you’ve filled out your employee work schedule template, you can simply print it out and put it up on the wall.
While Excel is a versatile tool, it is not specifically designed with employee scheduling in mind. If you decide to create a rota in Excel, you should keep the following drawbacks in mind:
Microsoft Excel doesn’t automatically update employee schedules based on changes in employee availability or business needs. This can make managing schedule changes time-consuming.
Unlike specialized scheduling software, Microsoft Excel doesn’t have the ability to automatically generate optimal schedules based on factors like employee skills, preferences, or labor laws.
Manual entry in Microsoft Excel can lead to mistakes, which can cause issues like overstaffing, understaffing, or non-compliance with labor regulations.
Excel doesn’t offer real-time communication or notifications to schedule employees. This can make it harder to inform employees about schedule changes promptly.
Excel doesn’t integrate with time tracking or HR systems, which can make payroll processing and schedule adherence tracking more difficult.
While Excel files can be shared, controlling who can view or edit the schedule can be difficult. For businesses with more complex scheduling needs, dedicated employee scheduling software like Agendrix may offer more value. It provides real-time updates, automated scheduling based on various factors, integrated time tracking, and communication features. Unlike most Excel spreadsheets, Agendrix minimizes manual errors, improves schedule adherence, and facilitates easier compliance with labor laws.
