Free staff availability form template
This free staff availability form template — printable PDF or editable Excel — collects when every team member can and can't work for the coming week or rota period, so the rota gets built from real availability instead of a round of individual messages.
Free — just enter your email and the staff availability form downloads straight away.
A rota built before availability is collected is a rota you rewrite. Chasing it person by person after the fact — "can you do Thursday?", "actually I can't do mornings now" — is where most of the lost time in rota-building actually goes. Collecting availability on one sheet before you start writing shifts turns that back-and-forth into a single pass.
This is especially sharp for casual, part-time and multi-job staff, who are the people most likely to have availability that changes week to week — a student with changing term hours, someone covering a second job, a parent around a childcare rota. Asking once, in writing, removes the guesswork rather than relying on whoever remembers to mention a clash.
The form separates "can work" from "prefers not to" deliberately. Treating a preference as an unavailability shrinks the usable rota for no reason; treating a hard unavailability as a preference is how someone ends up rostered on the one day they told you they couldn't do it.
Set a submission deadline and hold it. Availability collected after the rota is published is a change request, not availability — handle it through a shift swap rather than reopening shifts you've already confirmed to everyone else.
What's on the sheet
Log sheet — blank rows to fill in · Landscape A4 · PDF, Excel and CSV
Header fields
Venue / site · Week / period this covers · Return this form by
Columns
- Staff name
- Mon — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Tue — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Wed — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Thu — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Fri — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Sat — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Sun — Available / Prefer not / Can't
- Notes — Fixed commitments, max hours, anything else
Extra columns in the Excel version
- Max hours this period
- Earliest start / latest finish
These are left off the printable version so the columns stay wide enough to write in by hand.
16 blank rows per sheet.
What you get
- ✓Printable PDF, landscape A4, 16 staff rows per period
- ✓Editable Excel (.xlsx) version for building the rota straight off the same sheet
- ✓CSV version for import
- ✓Available / prefer not / can't rated separately for every day
- ✓Notes column for fixed commitments and constraints
- ✓Spreadsheet-only columns for maximum hours and earliest start / latest finish
How to use it
- 1
Set the period the form covers and a clear return deadline, and share it with enough notice to actually get answers.
- 2
Have each person mark every day as available, prefer not, or can't — a blank cell should be followed up, not assumed.
- 3
Ask for any fixed commitments (second job, school run, caring responsibilities) in the notes column rather than guessed from past rotas.
- 4
Build the rota against the "can't" column first as a hard filter, then use "prefer not" and the max-hours column to balance who gets what.
- 5
Keep the submitted sheets with your rota records so a hours or scheduling query can be checked against what was actually declared.
- 6
Reissue the form every time the period's working pattern is likely to have changed, rather than reusing one submission indefinitely.
Questions
What's the difference between availability and a holiday request?
Availability is the standing pattern of when someone can generally work; a holiday request form is for a specific, approved block of time off within that pattern. Collect availability every rota period and keep holiday requests as their own record.
How is "prefer not" different from "can't"?
"Can't" is a hard constraint — a clash with another job, caring responsibilities, or something that makes the shift physically impossible. "Prefer not" is a preference you can still roster against if the week needs covering. Treating the two the same either over-restricts the rota or breaks a genuine commitment.
How often should staff submit availability?
Whenever it's likely to have changed — weekly for staff with variable commitments, less often for a stable team. Reusing one old submission for someone whose circumstances have changed is how the rota ends up fighting their actual life.
What happens if someone doesn't return the form by the deadline?
Follow it up before you publish the rota — a missing row is not the same as full availability. Agreeing what happens by default (held over from last period, or excluded from that rota) in advance avoids a dispute after shifts are already assigned.
Or stop printing it altogether
Rotahr does this check on a phone — timestamped, with the person who did it attached, reminders when one is due, and a PDF export when somebody asks for a month of records. Same job, no folder to search through.
Templates that go with it
Weekly staff rota
This is a free weekly staff rota template you can download as a printable PDF for the staff room wall or as an Excel sheet that adds up each person's hours for you — Monday to Sunday, one line per team member.
Shift swap request form
This free shift swap request form template — printable PDF or editable Excel — records both sides of a swap and the manager's approval, so a shift is never left uncovered because two people agreed something verbally.
Holiday request form
This free holiday request form template — printable PDF or editable Excel — captures the dates requested, how many working days that uses, the balance left afterwards, and the manager decision with a date, so approvals never get disputed later.
Free to print, copy and use in your venue — no attribution required. Written for an international audience: where a threshold is a widely used figure it is printed as one, but food safety and employment rules differ by country and change. Check yours before relying on this sheet.
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