How to make a rota with the rota maker
- Add your staff. Type a name and, if you like, a role and the hours each person is contracted to work a week. You can change any of them in the rota itself, and move people up or down the list.
- Pick the week. The rota opens on this week’s Monday. Change Week starting to any date to start the week on another day, or use Previous week and Next week to move along.
- Type the shifts. For each day, type the start and finish times and the unpaid break in minutes. Times can be typed as 9, 9:30, 0930, 17:30 or 5:30pm, and are tidied up to 09:30 style when you move on.
- Mark who is off. Type a code in the start box instead of a time: OFF for a day off, A/L for annual leave, S for sick or T for training. Codes are coloured and count no hours.
- Check the week. Each person’s week hours sit next to their contracted hours, with the difference. The bottom rows show how many people work each day and the hours rostered that day. Anything amber, or any time the page cannot read, is listed under the rota.
- Plan the next week. Press Next week, then Copy previous week to bring last week’s shifts forward, and change what is different.
- Share it. Print the week on one landscape page for the staff room, or download it as an Excel file or CSV to send round.
How the hours and warnings are worked out
The rota maker uses the same sums as the free staff rota template for Excel, so the two agree:
- Hours for a shift are the finish time minus the start time, less the break, in hours and hundredths: 7.5 is 7 hours 30 minutes. A finish earlier than the start, such as 22:00 to 06:00, counts as the next morning.
- Week hours add up each person’s shifts. Difference is week hours minus contracted hours, so −4 means 4 hours short of their contract.
- People working counts the people with hours that day. Total hours adds up that day’s hours.
- Amber break: more than 6 hours worked, after the break, with a break under 20 minutes. Workers aged 18 or over are usually entitled to one uninterrupted 20-minute break when they work more than 6 hours a day.
- Amber start: less than 11 hours since that person finished the day before. Workers aged 18 or over are usually entitled to 11 hours’ rest between working days. The first day of the week is checked against the day before it if you filled that day in here.
The rota maker does not check weekly rest, the 48-hour average or the stricter limits for under-18s, and some jobs and shift patterns have exceptions. The template page explains the UK rota rules on breaks, rest and the 48-hour week, and gov.uk has the full rules on rest breaks at work.
What the rota maker does not do
- It lives in one browser. The rota is not saved anywhere else and does not sync between your phone and your computer. There is no way to load a downloaded file back in.
- No sharing. There is no link to send. Staff see the rota only when you print it or send them the file.
- No notifications. Nobody is told when the rota is ready or when their shift changes. You have to tell them.
- No holiday or absence records. A/L and S are labels you type. The page does not know who has booked holiday, or how much they have left.
- No swaps, pay or clocking in. It plans hours. It does not cost the rota, handle shift swaps or record when people actually worked.
The Excel and CSV files
Download Excel saves the week on screen as an .xlsx file laid out like a week sheet of the staff rota template: a start, finish, break and hours column for each day, each person’s week hours against their contracted hours, and the people working and total hours along the bottom. The hours and totals are formulas, so you can keep editing the rota in Excel and the sums and amber cells update. It prints on one landscape A4 page. In the file, the first day’s rest check is a fixed amber with a note, because the day before is not in the file.
Download CSV saves one line per person per day, with these columns: Week starting, Date, Day, Name, Role, Contracted hours a week, Start, Finish, Break (mins), Hours, Code and Warning. Dates are saved as YYYY-MM-DD. It suits pasting into another system or a payroll sheet.
Both files hold one week. For four weeks with a summary of each person’s hours, use the Excel rota template.
When you need rota software instead
A rota in one browser suits one person planning a small, steady team. It starts to slip when staff keep asking when they are on, swaps are agreed by text and the printout is out of date by Tuesday, or you build next week without seeing who has booked holiday.
Rotaleave has a rota built in, next to holiday and sickness:
- A week grid with a row for each person. Type the times, add the break, and each person’s rostered hours show against their contracted hours as you plan.
- Copy and repeat. Copy last week or any earlier week, fill the week from each person’s working pattern, or save up to four weeks as a template and apply it up to 13 times.
- Holiday on the grid. Approved and pending leave shows in each person’s row, because staff request their holiday in the same system.
- Publish and tell people. Publishing the week emails everyone whose shifts are new or changed, with a push notification if they use the app. Staff see their own published shifts on the web and in the iPhone and Android apps.
- Shift swaps, once an admin switches them on: one person proposes a swap, the colleague accepts and a manager approves.
- Clock-in and timesheets. Staff clock in on their phone or on a shared tablet with a PIN, and the hours land on a weekly timesheet.
One thing this page does that Rotaleave’s person-by-person grid does not: the amber break and rest checks. See rota scheduling in Rotaleave or how to build and publish a rota. Rotaleave is free for teams of 10 or fewer, then £5 a month plus £1 for each person over 10, plus VAT where it applies; see pricing.