Free weekly staff rota template
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.
Free. No email address, no sign-up — the weekly staff rota downloads straight away.
A rota only works if a person can find their own name in under five seconds. That means one row per person, days across the top, and nothing else competing for space. This template deliberately has no colour coding, no section splits and no notes column in the middle of the grid — those are the three things that turn a readable rota into a puzzle by Thursday.
Write shifts as start and finish times, not as "early" or "late". Every kitchen has an argument at some point about what "late" meant, and the argument always happens on the busiest night. Times remove it. If a shift has a fixed break, write it into the cell as well: 17:00–23:00 (30).
The Excel version totals contracted hours per person down the right-hand column, which is the number that matters when you are checking someone is not about to tip into overtime or breach a rest-period rule. It also totals hours per day at the bottom, so you can see at a glance whether you have front-loaded Saturday and left Sunday thin.
Publish it in the same place at the same time every week. The single biggest cause of no-shows in hospitality is not people forgetting — it is a rota that changed after they looked at it. If you do change a published shift, tell the person directly rather than editing the sheet and hoping they check again.
What's on the sheet
Log sheet — blank rows to fill in · Landscape A4 · PDF, Excel and CSV
Header fields
Venue / site · Week commencing · Published by · Date published
Columns
- Team member
- Role — Kitchen / bar / FOH
- Mon — Start–finish
- Tue
- Wed
- Thu
- Fri
- Sat
- Sun
- Total hrs
Extra columns in the Excel version
- Contracted hrs — For comparing against the total
- Notes — Training, holiday, unavailability
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, Monday to Sunday grid with 16 staff rows
- ✓Excel (.xlsx) version with per-person and per-day hour totals
- ✓CSV version for importing into another system
- ✓Role column so you can see section cover at a glance
- ✓Contracted hours and notes columns in the spreadsheet version
- ✓Published-by and date-published fields so there is only ever one current version
How to use it
- 1
Print or open one sheet per week and fill in the venue, week commencing date and who published it.
- 2
List your team down the left, grouped by section so the kitchen block and the bar block stay together.
- 3
Fill each day cell with a start and finish time, putting any fixed break in brackets.
- 4
Write H for holiday, T for training and U for unavailable rather than leaving cells blank.
- 5
Check the total hours column against each person's contracted hours before you publish.
- 6
Publish at the same time every week, in the same place, and date-stamp the version so everyone knows which sheet is current.
Questions
How far in advance should a staff rota be published?
Two weeks is the standard people plan their lives around, and one week is the practical minimum. Some jurisdictions have specific advance-notice rules for scheduling, so check your local employment rules — but the operational reason for publishing early is simpler: late rotas cause no-shows.
Does the Excel version calculate hours automatically?
The spreadsheet has a total column per person and a total row per day. Enter shift times and the totals give you the weekly figure to check against contracted hours.
Can I use this rota template for split shifts?
Yes — write both blocks in the same cell, for example 11:00–15:00 / 18:00–23:00. If split shifts are the norm rather than the exception in your venue, use the Excel version so the column widens to fit.
What is the difference between this and rota software?
A spreadsheet is fine for one venue and a stable team. It stops working when you need to know who actually turned up, handle swap requests, or turn hours worked into payroll — that is where a rota tool earns its keep, because the same shift data feeds clock-in and pay without being retyped.
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
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.
New staff induction checklist
This free new staff induction checklist template — printable PDF or editable Excel — splits induction into day one, week one and month one, with a signature from both the new starter and the manager against each stage.
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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