Template vs. generator
Searching for an employee schedule template in Excel? You probably don’t want a spreadsheet — you want next week’s rota, finished. ShiftCraft is a free online work schedule generator with no signup and nothing to install: it gives you the template and does the maths — hours totalled per person, coverage counted per day — ready to print or save as a PDF in about two minutes.
No download, no signup. Print or save a PDF in two minutes — or export a CSV for Excel any time.
| Employee | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Hrs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Bauer | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | · | · | 40 |
| C. Diallo | 6 | 6 | · | 8 | 8 | 8 | · | 44 |
| E. Fischer | · | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 35 |
| G. Haddad | 4 | · | 4 | · | 4 | 6 | 6 | 24 |
| Coverage | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 143 |
No SUM formulas — totals are live. Open a blank week →
A spreadsheet template is just an empty grid with your name on it. The moment you add or remove someone, change a shift, or want a coverage count, you’re back to building formulas. Here’s how a static Excel employee schedule template compares to a live generator.
| Excel / Sheets template | ShiftCraft generator | |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly hours per person | Build a SUM formula yourself | Totalled live as you type |
| Daily coverage count | Another formula, easily broken | Counted automatically each day |
| Add or remove staff | Rows shift, formulas drift | One click, totals re-flow |
| Setup | Find, download, unblock, open | Open the page, start typing |
| Print a clean sheet | Fight page breaks & columns | One-tap print view |
| Spreadsheet copy | Native .xlsx | Export CSV for Excel/Sheets |
| Price | Free templates exist | Free, no account |
Whether you build it in a spreadsheet or use a generator, a usable weekly staff schedule needs the same bones:
ShiftCraft ships with all five built in, which is the whole reason it beats starting from a blank weekly staff rota template.
The vertical guides below show the generator set up for specific trades — the shift shapes, coverage rules and a worked sample week for each. They’re a faster start than any blank template if your team is a restaurant, shop, café or clinic.
Restaurants & bars
split shifts
Front- and back-of-house cover built around the Friday and Saturday dinner rush. Restaurant guide →
Shops & retail
open / close
Key-holder cover for every open and close, reinforced for weekend peaks. Retail guide →
Clinics
minimum cover
Clinical and reception cover that never drops below your minimum. Clinic guide →
This isn’t an anti-Excel pitch — a spreadsheet still wins for a few jobs, and it’s worth being honest about them. If you consolidate multiple sites into one master view, pivot tables and lookups across tabs do something a single-week tool doesn’t. If payroll wants a specific column layout to import, a bespoke .xlsx mapped to that schema saves re-keying every period. And if you need a long audit trail — version history, who-changed-what, locked cells for sign-off — a shared workbook in Google Sheets or Microsoft 365 carries that natively. The trick is to use each tool for what it’s good at: build and total next week’s rota here, where the maths is automatic, then export a CSV into your spreadsheet for the consolidation, payroll import or archive that genuinely needs it.
No. ShiftCraft runs in your browser, so there’s nothing to download or install. You get the structure of a schedule template plus live hour totals, without opening Excel or Google Sheets.
Yes. When the week is done you can export a CSV, which opens directly in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers if you need a spreadsheet copy for payroll or records.
Yes — completely free with no account, trial or card. Your schedule saves in your own browser.
It adds up weekly hours per person and counts daily coverage as you type, with no formulas to build or break, then prints a clean sheet. A static template makes you do all of that by hand.
Free online work schedule generator. No download, no login, CSV export when you need it.
Open the generator →