How to use the Shift Planner
- Add your staff with + Add Employee. Each person gets a row.
- Type the shift into each day's cell, for example
09:00-17:00 or Off. Use the copy control on Monday to fill the whole week in one click, then adjust the exceptions.
- Set the week's start date, then Download PDF to print it for the staff room or send it to the team.
When to use it
This suits businesses with a handful of people on rotating hours: cafés, small retail, clinics, cleaning crews, security rotas. If a full scheduling app with logins and mobile notifications is more than your team needs, a weekly grid you can fill in five minutes and pin to the wall is usually the better fit.
How the grid works
Rows are people, columns are the seven days of the week starting from the date you set. A cell holds whatever you type: a time range such as 09:00-17:00, a label such as Off, Holiday or Training, or a shift code your team already uses. The copy control on Monday fills that person's whole week with Monday's entry, so a fixed pattern is one entry and a few exceptions. The grid is saved in this browser between visits, and the PDF is the copy for the wall and for the team's phones.
Worked example
A café with four staff, week starting 28 September. Ayşe opens Monday to Friday: type 07:00-15:00 on Monday, copy across, change Saturday and Sunday to Off. Mehmet closes: 12:00-20:00, copy, Off on Monday and Tuesday. Two part-timers cover the weekend: 08:00-16:00 on Saturday and Sunday, Off elsewhere. Eleven entries and two copies, and every day has an opener and a closer; the PDF goes up on Friday for the week after. The week Ayşe is on holiday, her row reads Holiday and the part-timers' rows get the extra mornings.
Common mistakes
- Publishing on Sunday night for Monday. Staff plan lives around the rota; a week's notice is the minimum, and in some countries a legal one.
- No opener or closer on a day. Read down each column, not just across each row.
- Copying Monday over a week that had exceptions. The copy overwrites; do it first, then add the exceptions.
- Only one copy of the rota. The browser can be cleared; keep the PDFs.
When this tool is the wrong one
It plans one week for a handful of people. It does not count hours, check rest gaps between shifts, handle swaps, or notify anyone. When the team passes about ten people, or you need hours totals against contracts, that is scheduling software. For what a week of hours costs, the Timesheet & Hourly Wage Calculator; for paying the month, the Payroll Calculator.
Good to know
The plan is saved in your browser, so next week you start from this week's rota instead of a blank page. On a phone, turn the device sideways or use the full-screen toggle to see all seven days at once. There are no accounts, so anyone you share the PDF with sees exactly what you see.