Work schedule template: 4 free templates to copy

A work schedule template saves you from rebuilding the same grid every week. Below are four free templates you can copy with one click: a weekly employee schedule template for a coffee shop, restaurant or store, a monthly calendar, a 24/7 shift schedule template for four teams on 12-hour shifts, and a simple weekly schedule for an office or hybrid team. Every template is plain text with tab-separated columns, so it pastes cleanly into Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers with each name, day and shift in its own cell. After the templates, you will find one shown as a finished table, a step-by-step method for building a schedule, the laws to check before you post it, and an honest look at when a spreadsheet stops being enough.

Work schedule templates to copy

Click "Copy text", click cell A1 in a blank sheet, and paste. The sample names come from Northfield Coffee, our example coffee shop in Austin, Texas. Swap in your own people, roles and times. Hours assume a 30-minute unpaid meal break on any shift of 8.5 hours, so a 7:00 to 3:30 shift counts as 8 paid hours.

Want a different 24/7 pattern? Our guides to the 2-2-3 schedule, the Pitman schedule and the DuPont schedule explain how each four-team rotation works and which weeks get heavy.

Example: a filled-in weekly employee schedule

Here is Template 1 as a finished table, the way it might look once it is pasted into a spreadsheet and formatted. It is the same week Northfield Coffee published on Monday, October 26, two weeks ahead of the first shift.

A few things this week gets right, and that are worth copying:

• Every opening is covered by a role, not just a body. The kitchen opens at 6:00 with Sam or Emily, the bar at 7:00 with Jordan or Tyler, and the counter at 9:00 with Maya or Aisha.
• Approved time off is already in. Chris has Monday as PTO, so Dana, hired on November 2, picks up the Monday close. PTO hours are paid but are not hours worked, so they do not count toward overtime.
• Nobody crosses 40 hours. Jordan, Maya and Sam sit exactly at 40. One extra shift for any of them is overtime at 1.5 times their regular rate, which is why the schedule is the cheapest place to catch it. Our time card calculator adds up a week like this from start and end times if you want to check the totals.
• No close is followed by an open. Nobody who leaves at 8:00 p.m. is back at 6:00 or 7:00 the next morning. The shortest turnaround is Aisha's Saturday close to her Sunday 9:00 start, 13 hours.

After this week was posted, Jordan offered his Thursday opening shift and Tyler took it. In a spreadsheet, that swap means editing the file, re-sending it and hoping everyone saw the new version.

How to build an employee schedule, step by step

A template gives you the grid. These steps fill it in a way that covers the business, respects people's lives and stays inside your budget.

1. Forecast demand by hour

Start with when you need people, not who is available. Look at the last four to six weeks of sales or traffic by hour and day, plus anything coming up: a holiday, a local event, a big catering order, a delivery day. Write down the minimum staff for each block. For a coffee shop that might be two people from 6:00 to 7:00, four through the morning rush, and three for the afternoon. Shifts then go where the gaps are.

2. Collect availability and time off

Keep a standing availability list for each person (classes, a second job, childcare, days they cannot work) and ask them to update it when it changes. Add approved PTO and requests before you start, not after. Scheduling someone who already has the day off approved is the most common, and most avoidable, schedule mistake.

3. Place the fixed shifts first

Fill the shifts that need a specific skill first: openers who can run the register count, a shift lead on every close, a certified person where your industry needs one. Then fill the remaining slots, spreading weekends and closes fairly. People notice when the same two names always get Saturday nights.

4. Check hours against the labor budget

Add up each person's hours and the week's total. A simple way to set a budget is to multiply forecast sales by your target labor percentage, then divide by your average hourly wage. As an illustration only: $16,000 of forecast weekly sales at a 28% labor target is $4,480, and at an average of $18.00 an hour that buys about 249 hours. If the schedule shows more, trim the slowest hours first. Also check each person against 40 hours in your fixed workweek, because non-exempt employees earn 1.5 times their regular rate for hours over 40 under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Night and weekend premiums change the math too; see our shift differential guide.

5. Review, then post early

Read each row as if you were that employee. Is there a close followed by an open with too little sleep in between? A split weekend? Fix those, then post the schedule as early as you can, ideally two weeks ahead.

Which shift schedule template fits your team

The right shift schedule template depends on how often your hours change and whether you run nights.

Office teams have other options too. A 9/80 work schedule fits 80 hours into nine days every two weeks, so each person gets every other Friday off. If your question is mostly which days people come in, our guide to hybrid work schedules has example patterns and a sample policy.

Scheduling laws to check before you post

No template can know where you operate, so check these rules for your state and city before the schedule goes up.

Predictive scheduling and fair workweek laws

Federal law does not say how early you must post a schedule. Oregon and a group of cities, including New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, have predictive scheduling (fair workweek) laws for covered employers, usually larger retail, food service and hospitality businesses. They typically require posting schedules about 14 days ahead, extra pay for changes the employer makes on short notice, and rest time between a closing and an opening shift. Coverage, premiums and exceptions differ in each place. Our scheduling page has a table of the main laws, with who is covered and the notice each one requires; confirm the current details with your city or state agency.

Minors' hours under federal child labor rules

If you schedule teenagers, the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division sets these limits for 14- and 15-year-olds in non-farm jobs under the Fair Labor Standards Act:

• Only outside school hours.
• No more than 3 hours on a school day, including Fridays, and no more than 18 hours in a school week.
• No more than 8 hours on a non-school day, and no more than 40 hours in a week when school is not in session.
• Only between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., except from June 1 through Labor Day, when the evening limit is 9:00 p.m.

Federal rules do not limit hours or times of day for 16- and 17-year-olds, although hazardous jobs are off limits until 18. Many states do limit hours for 16- and 17-year-olds, and when federal and state rules both apply, the stricter one wins. Add a birthdate column to your staff list so the schedule flags anyone under 16.

Meal and rest breaks

Federal law does not require meal or rest breaks for adult employees. If you give short breaks, usually 5 to 20 minutes, the Department of Labor counts them as paid work time. Meal periods of 30 minutes or more can be unpaid when the employee is fully relieved of duty. The FLSA also requires reasonable break time and a private space that is not a bathroom for employees to pump breast milk for one year after a child's birth. Some states require meal or rest breaks; California and New York are well-known examples. Texas, where Northfield Coffee operates, has no general state break law, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Write your break rule into the schedule notes so the hours column matches what payroll will pay.

Reporting time and overtime

Some states require reporting-time or call-in pay when someone shows up for a scheduled shift and is sent home early. And every schedule should be checked against the 40-hour overtime line in your fixed workweek. In the rotating template, the five-shift week is 60 hours for those teams, so 20 of those hours are overtime unless your workweek is set up differently. Night shifts that cross the end of the workweek split their hours between two workweeks. Our overtime calculator shows what a heavy week costs.

How to post and share the work schedule

• Post it where people already look. A shared Google Sheet set to "view only", a PDF in the team chat, and a printed copy by the time clock or in the break room. Keep one current version and say where it lives.
• Put the date and version on it. "Week of Nov 9, posted Oct 26, updated Oct 29" ends arguments about which version was current.
• Write down how changes work. Who approves swaps, the deadline for time off requests, and how to reach the manager on duty. Templates 1 and 4 have a line for this.
• Announce changes, do not just edit the file. When a shift changes after posting, tell the affected people directly and note the change and the date. Where a fair workweek law applies, keep a record of who asked for the change.
• Keep old schedules. Save each posted week. Planned schedules next to actual time cards help you settle pay questions and show what you posted, and when.

When to switch from a spreadsheet to a scheduling app

A spreadsheet is a perfectly good employee schedule template for many small teams. It is free, everyone knows how to use it, and you control the layout. If you have five people, steady hours and few swaps, you may never need more.

The spreadsheet starts to cost you time when:

• You re-send the schedule more than once a week because of swaps and changes.
• Staff ask "am I on tomorrow?" because they are not sure which version is current.
• Time off is approved in one place and the schedule is built in another, so people get scheduled on days they have off.
• You only find overtime when you run payroll, not when you build the week.
• You need a record of swaps and changes for a fair workweek law.

A scheduling app fixes those, with trade-offs. You give up some layout freedom, everyone needs the app, and switching takes a little setup. In Workzenly, you build next week's schedule by dragging people into shifts, staff see it in the app as soon as you publish, and they can pick up an open shift or swap one with a teammate from their phones. Approved PTO shows while you build, and the schedule shares a record with the time clock and payroll, so you hear before a shift goes uncovered and worked hours flow into pay. The trade-off is that you are changing how you clock in and run payroll too, so many teams plan the switch around the start of a pay period.

Frequently asked questions