A staff roster template that still works when you have 20 people
Most Australian venues still start on a spreadsheet. That is fine for five people and one site. It becomes expensive around 15–20 staff, two locations, or the first public-holiday week.
Below is a template you can copy today, and a clear list of what to stop doing in Excel.
The weekly grid (copy this)
Use one tab per location. Rows are people (grouped by role). Columns are Mon–Sun. Each cell is start–end, role if it differs from the row, and a note if the shift is unpublished.
| Name | Role | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Chen | Supervisor | 07:00–15:00 | 07:00–15:00 | — | 07:00–15:00 | 07:00–16:00 | — | — | 33 |
| Sam Okeke | FOH | — | 11:00–19:00 | 11:00–19:00 | — | 16:00–23:00 | 10:00–18:00 | 10:00–16:00 | 38 |
| Open (grab) | Barista | — | — | — | — | 06:30–12:00 | 06:30–12:00 | — | 11 |
Add a second block under the grid:
- Unavailability this week (name + reason + approved?)
- Open shifts still to fill
- Labour $ vs budget
- Published? date and who sent it
Colour unpublished shifts differently from published ones. If the team cannot tell a draft from a live roster, they will not trust either.
Rules that belong next to the template
- Week starts Monday (Australian hospitality habit). Say so on the sheet.
- Hours = paid hours, breaks deducted in a separate column if unpaid.
- One person, no overlapping cells. Excel will not stop you double-booking.
- Closes then opens get a highlight. Anything under 10 hours rest is a conversation, not a default.
- Version in the filename (
Rundle-week-2026-09-07-v3.xlsx) and one owner. Group-chat copies are how last year’s Christmas roster comes back from the dead.
When the spreadsheet starts lying
You have outgrown it when any of these are true:
- Staff text “am I on Thursday?” after you already posted the file
- Two managers edit two copies
- Casual loading and Sunday rates are “we’ll fix it in payroll”
- Someone works while marked unavailable
- You cannot answer “what did we spend on labour last Saturday?” without rebuilding the week
That is the job of rostering software: one source of truth, publish notifications, unavailability blocks, and a labour number that matches the timesheet later.
Move off the sheet without a six-month project
- Recreate roles and locations first (not people).
- Import or invite the team.
- Build one real week beside the spreadsheet. Do not delete the sheet until that week has been published and worked.
- Turn on timesheets the week after, not the same day.
ShiftRova’s getting started path is settings → roles → pay rates → team → first roster, for this reason.
Copy the structure into a $1 trial if you are done emailing FINAL-v7.xlsx.