Free Employee Schedule Template

An employee schedule template is a grid with your team down the side and the days across the top, so everyone can see who works when. Most small businesses plan one week at a time: people’s availability changes from week to week, and a weekly schedule is short enough to post by the time clock or send in a group chat.

A monthly employee schedule helps when your shifts follow the same pattern every week, or when staff want to plan time off further ahead. Build the week first, then switch to Month above the schedule and pick a month. Every date of that month is filled by repeating your weekly schedule, with each person’s total hours for the month. Download it as a one-page PDF on US Letter paper or as an Excel sheet with one column per date.

Not sure which template to start from? The weekly employee schedule is a simple 7-day layout with an opening and a closing shift. There’s also a hotel front desk template for 24/7 coverage with an overnight shift, a small office template for Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, and a blank printable work schedule with empty rows to fill in by hand.

A restaurant schedule has to cover two jobs at once. The back of house needs enough cooks on the line, and the front of house needs servers on the floor, and the busiest times need more of both. The restaurant template shows this with two roles:

• Lunch, 10:30 AM to 3 PM: one cook and one server.
• Dinner, 4 PM to 10 PM: two cooks and two servers.

The restaurant is closed on Mondays, and the eight-person team includes one person who can work either side. Change the shift times to match your hours, add a host or a dishwasher role, and mark the days each person can’t work.

Open the restaurant template

Stores usually split the day into three shifts: an opening shift that gets the floor ready before the doors open, a mid shift that covers the lunch and afternoon rush, and a closing shift that runs until the last register is counted.

The retail template follows that pattern. Every opening and closing shift has a keyholder, the person trusted with the keys and the alarm code, plus one sales associate. A mid shift adds a third person on Friday and Saturday. Each shift includes a 30-minute unpaid break, so the hours column shows paid time.

Open the retail template

1. Pick a template that’s closest to your business, or the blank one if nothing fits.
2. Add your team. Open Auto-fill with my team and list each person with their maximum hours for the week and the days they can’t work.
3. Set your shifts. In the same panel, enter each shift’s start and end time, the days it runs and how many people it needs.
4. Fill in the week. Tap an empty cell to put someone on a shift, or tap Generate and let the auto schedule maker fill it in for you. It follows everyone’s availability and hours, and spreads weekend shifts fairly.
5. Check the hours. The last column shows each person’s paid hours, so you can spot anyone scheduled too much or too little.
6. Add dates and share it. Tap Add week dates, then download the schedule or use Share to send a link your team can open on their phones.

Your schedule is saved in this browser as you work. If your team works a fixed rotation, such as 12-hour shifts on a 2-2-3 pattern, the rotating shift schedule generator is a better fit. To build a new schedule from your team’s availability, let the auto schedule maker fill it in for you.

Tap Download, then Excel (.xlsx). The file has one row per person and one column per day, with shift times in each cell, each person’s color and a total hours column. The top rows stay in place when you scroll. It opens in Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers and LibreOffice.

To use it in Google Sheets, open Google Sheets, choose File > Import, then Upload, and pick the .xlsx file you downloaded. Choose Create new spreadsheet, or Insert new sheet to add it to a spreadsheet you already share with your team.

For a printed copy, choose PDF or Print. Either one fits the whole week, or the whole month in Month view, on one landscape US Letter page.