Duty Roster Template for Excel and Google Sheets

A duty roster is a published schedule of who works which shifts on which days. In the UK people often say rota; in the US you may search for a staff schedule Excel template or staff roster. A duty roster Excel template gives you that grid ready-made: shift times, formulas for working hours, and weekly totals per employee without rebuilding a blank sheet every month.

Clear rosters cut no-shows, make shift swaps visible, and give payroll a defensible hour picture. When the plan is missing or late, overtime creeps up, part-time caps get missed, and staff cannot plan around their shifts.

Further reading: Shift differential and holiday pay calculator.

Duty roster vs shift plan vs weekly schedule

Choose this download when you want a rolling staffing roster (including a rota template in Excel for UK teams) with people, days, shifts, and hour totals in one workbook. Use the shift plan Excel template when you run fixed rotations or 24/7 coverage (early/late/night blocks). Use the weekly schedule template for a single-week wall planner without the longer roster tabs and cost overview.

Industry presets speed up common patterns in hospitality, retail, healthcare, and trades.

US and UK compliance (general information)

US and UK compliance (general information): Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), US employers must track hours and overtime for non-exempt staff; state laws may add meal, rest, and predictive scheduling rules. In the UK, the Working Time Regulations set weekly limits and rest between shifts; National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage apply to paid hours. Confirm rates, classifications, and sector rules with your payroll provider or adviser, this template is not legal advice.

The workbook is free for Excel and Google Sheets and does not require a paid account to download. Open the Instructions sheet first, then Employees and Roster.

These two scenarios show how the Roster sheet totals hours per person and week. Run the same checks on your live file before you lock payroll or send the rota to staff.

• Café team (8 staff, one week)Four baristas work 09:00–17:00 (8 h) Monday–Friday; two cover 14:00–22:00 (8 h) on weekends. Each row totals 40 h for the week; anyone above 40 h in the FLSA workweek stands out on the Compliance sheet before you run payroll. After the period closes, compare roster totals with the timesheet template or your time-tracking export.
• UK care home (split shifts)Three carers rotate early (07:00–15:00) and late (15:00–23:00) with at least 11 hours between the end of one shift and the start of the next. Weekly hour totals help you stay within Working Time Regulations limits; the Compliance sheet highlights rest gaps before you publish the roster.

Planning habits

• Track overtime and part-time hour caps on the Compliance sheet before payroll closes.
• For rotating patterns, copy a clean week forward instead of retyping names and times.
• Save a monthly master file (for example roster-2026-09.xlsx) so you keep formulas and only change dates and absences.
• Version PDFs or dated exports if you need to show what was published for a given week.

Legal compliance

• United States: Confirm FLSA overtime for non-exempt staff; many states add meal, rest, split-shift, or fair workweek rules.
• United Kingdom: Plan daily rest under the Working Time Regulations 1998 and check NMW/NLW against paid hours (see common mistakes below for rest-between-shifts examples).
• Give staff reasonable notice of shift changes where your policy or sector guidance requires it.
• Reconcile the roster with actual hours from time tracking or timesheets, small drifts add up across a team.

• Insufficient rest between shifts: UK Working Time Regulations often require 11 hours between the end of one shift and the start of the next. If someone finishes at 23:00, a 07:00 start the next day is risky. US teams should check state meal, rest, and split-shift rules alongside FLSA hour records.
• Late or unclear publication: Publishing the next week on Friday leaves little room for swaps or childcare. Aim for one to two weeks ahead when possible, and keep a dated PDF if you need proof of what was posted.
• Overtime discovered in payroll: Without weekly totals, non-exempt US employees can pass 40 hours unnoticed. The Compliance and Cost overview sheets exist so you fix hours before the pay run.
• Double bookings and gaps: Two people on the same shift, or nobody on a cover slot, happens quickly when you edit manually. Scan the roster grid before export.
• Unfair rotas: The same employees on every close or weekend drives attrition. Rotate weekends and nights using copy-forward weeks so the pattern is auditable.

A five-minute review of hour totals, rest gaps, and coverage beats rework after staff push back, or after a wage-and-hour question.

Both formats work with the Ordio download. Pick Excel when you plan offline or on a single manager laptop; pick Google Sheets when two or more leads edit the same rota in the browser.

Young workers on the roster

In the UK a young worker (over school leaving age and under 18) may work no more than 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. If they also work for someone else, the hours for both jobs are added together (WTR reg. 5A). Ask students about other jobs when they join, and mark their rows so the weekly totals are easy to check.