RotaCloud vs. Excel: Which is the best employee scheduling software?

When you think of rotas, you think of one thing: spreadsheets. When you think of spreadsheets, you think of Excel or Google Sheets. So, it’s only natural that, when starting a business or moving to shifts and irregular hour models, your first thought would be to use Excel for your rotas.

But is Excel good for scheduling?

Excel is a great tool for what it does, don’t get us wrong. But, when looking at efficient scheduling, how much time, money, and patience are you losing by juggling manual spreadsheets - especially as a growing business? 

Using Excel for scheduling can hinder effective management leadership styles and operations. With everything manual, from calculating labour percentages and Bradford Factor points to running payroll and manning reports... It drains your time and energy - both of which should be better spent on growing your business.

So, what is your alternative?

Workforce management software like RotaCloud takes all that admin juggling and puts it into one online space. RotaCloud combines rota planning, timesheets, annual leave, payroll, and so much more into one easy-to-use web and mobile app.

Let’s break it down and compare Excel and RotaCloud to see which is the ​​best employee scheduling software for you. 

Building rotas

You either start from scratch or use a template you found on Google. Now the structure of your rota is there, it's just filling it with shifts. Easy, right…?

Excel

When creating Excel rotas, you have a lot of information to check first.

You work from emails, texts, forms, or even in-person requests for staff’s availability or preferred shift times - then must rely on remembering. Then, if you want to repeat a week, month, or shift pattern, it’s a copy-and-paste job. It’s simple enough, sure, but could be better.

Annual leave is usually kept in a separate spreadsheet or calendar, which you keep switching to - and requests are sent in just like availability. As for calculations for holiday accrual, hours worked, and budgeting, calculations are made manually by setting up complex formulas. One misplaced cell or wrong piece of data breaks it. Then, the errors begin.

Completing everything manually makes it easy to make mistakes and difficult to ensure compliance with staffing levels, contracted hours, and more. What’s more, managers have to stay in the know for any new legislation and make any necessary updates themselves to ensure they meet regulatory requirements.

RotaCloud

As for RotaCloud, all the information you need to build your rotas is right there on the screen as you plan.

• Availability: Staff submit their availability directly through the employee scheduling app, selecting days and times of day they can or can’t work. No need to make a note or remember - if accepted, those days and times will automatically block out, ensuring you don't schedule them during those periods.
• Holidays: All holiday requests are created, managed, and responded to in one place. Managers get notified of new requests, staff get notified of the response, and any approved time off is immediately added to the rota.
• Budgets: The total costs and hours spent are visible on the rota in real-time as you plan, highlighting if you are over budget or not meeting employees’ contracted hours. You can even track and forecast labour costs with reports.
• Duplication: Copy and paste still exists, but using built-in templates allows you to quickly save and reuse common shift patterns - even duplicating weeks or months at a time.
• Compliance: With contract hours always visible, it’s much easier to stay compliant. You even have an audit trail and Working Time Regulations reports. Plus, new legislations are automatically updated.

Shift planning

Build rotas in seconds. View staff availability, leave, and absences all in one place - and just drag & drop to make changes and create shift patterns.

Learn more

Sharing rotas

The rota is ready and it’s time to distribute! So, what is the best way to share rotas with staff?

Excel

You might print the spreadsheet and pin it to the notice board, maybe take a photo and send it via WhatsApp or email. Either way, it often results in people mixing up their shifts and either not turning up or, instead, turning up when they’re not needed.

Ah, miscommunication.

RotaCloud

As soon as your rota is ready, hit publish - and it’s out. Staff are immediately notified by SMS, email, or push notification for new and changed shifts.

With the employee app, too, staff always have their work schedule with them, meaning no more confusion, no-shows or expensive staffing mistakes!

Sharing rotas & communication

Keep your team in the loop with automatic notifications of updates to staff.

Learn more

Managing changes

Shift changes are inevitable: sicknesses, appointments, social plans, childcare, and so much more. Expecting employees to plan their lives around work often leads to decreased performance, extremely stressed employees, poor mental health, and increased staff turnover.

Allowing shift flexibility leads to a far better employee experience. But, due to the amount of admin in an Excel schedule, many people may be reluctant to be flexible. 

Excel

You need to find cover - and fast. You ring around, send WhatsApp messages, and post in the Facebook group until you find cover (or be left on read!). If you find someone in time, and calm that stress, you need to update that rota. But not even that is as easy as it should be. Simply dragging a cell (shift) to another cell can alter any linking formulas and formatting.

Once those amends are made, back you go to printing out the rota, taking a photo, and sharing it once more. Back we are to the issue of missing messages and updates!

RotaCloud

There are two choices if someone can no longer work a given shift.

• Shift swaps: If someone has found a colleague to swap shifts with, all it takes is submitting a request and, if approved, the shifts are automatically swapped and the rota updated.
• Open shifts: The employee can submit a drop shift request which, if accepted, creates an open shift. Relevant staff are notified of this new shift and can claim it if they want to work extra hours. Managers can even create multiple open shifts for staff to pick from, giving them more freedom and flexibility over when they work.

Or, if you do find yourself changing things manually, it’s just a simple drag-and-drop of the shift. Hit ‘publish’ once more and it’s instantly sent to the relevant employees!

Open shifts

Need to fill a gap in the rota? Find cover fast by creating open shifts for staff to pick up.

Learn more

Recording hours (Time & Attendance)

How do you record staff clocking in and out? Could it be better?

Excel

You make a timesheet or use a template, print it out, and leave it for staff to fill in when clocking in and out. But that’s the thing: you have to rely on accurate timings. What’s more, when it comes to payroll, you’re comparing paper timesheets to the scheduled hours and then manually inputting that data into the computer. Then errors and staff complaints start piling up…

Whether payroll is run weekly or monthly - it’s time-consuming and, quite frankly, a pain.

RotaCloud

Staff clock in and out through the fixed terminal or mobile app, which records the exact time and location they start and end their shift. This data feeds to automatic timesheets, flagging any lateness or overtime, so you know the information you receive couldn’t be any more accurate.

All the information you need to run payroll is there in reports, making it easy to import into accounting software or send to your accountant. All of that in just a few clicks.

Time & Attendance

Mobile clocking in, automatic timesheets, holiday accrual, payroll and attendance reports - the whole works.

Learn more

Reports and compliance

Ensuring compliance and accurate records is important from an employment law perspective to help safeguard a business. Plus, it comes in handy when calculating holiday entitlement and managing absences (to name a few). 

Excel

Manual processes and data handling often lead to mistakes, down to employee contracts and employment law. Whether calculating Bradford points yourself or using a Bradford Factor calculator, it’s still a manual process of working out individuals’ scores and building a tracking report. 

But it isn’t just absences, it’s staffing levels and costs and having that audit trail to ensure compliance. When manually creating reports on Excel spreadsheets, you’re using valuable time that could be spent elsewhere - plus, human error is only natural. One false move of a cell or an incorrect formula or figure can put your whole process in jeopardy, meaning starting over.

RotaCloud

It’s so much simpler with RotaCloud. Automatic timesheets and reports mean total and constant control - and complete accuracy. You aren’t generating them by hand like in Excel. The real-time data is already there in RotaCloud: costs, attendance, staffing levels, and, more importantly, an audit trail. That’s a lot of pressure, once on your shoulders, now gone!

All data is automated and collected into one-click reports, meaning you constantly oversee labour costs, Bradford points, hours worked, and holiday entitlement - all without pulling the figures and building the report yourself.

Reporting tools

Back up decisions with data on hours, costs, time off, cover, attendance, and Bradford Factor.

Learn more

Wrap-up

The better employee scheduling software? All the Excel formulas in the world can’t make workforce management any easier than RotaCloud. 

By choosing RotaCloud over Excel, not only do you enhance operational efficiency, but also empower your management team and entire staff towards success. You replace the endless juggle between spreadsheets, the stress of managing requests, and the time lost building rotas for workforce management software that has it all (and more) in one place. Now you have more time to focus on your business, enhancing operations and adopting more effective leadership styles, all while creating a better workplace environment for employees. 

By simply switching from Excel to RotaCloud for your shift scheduling system, you cut down on costs, errors, and stress while improving employee experience and retention.

Imagine making so many improvements to your operations without any extra work - and in far less time than it currently takes you. That’s quite the exchange.

FAQs

Can you use Excel to make a work schedule?

Technically, yes. But that’s just it - it can be technical. Whether making it from scratch or using a template, you’re manually making and changing shifts, as well as inputting formulas for any automation. Using a workforce management system like RotaCloud takes away all the manual work.

Is there a rota template in Excel?

Excel itself doesn’t have a rota template, but you can download a free rota template for Excel to save you from starting your work schedule from scratch.

What is the formula for time schedule in Excel?

There are a few ways to calculate time and hours in Excel. It involves:

• Using a formula to calculate the difference between two specific times
• Adding another formula for a duration
• Creating a timesheet with formulas to calculate working hours (including, more complex ‘IF’ formulas for illnesses and holidays)
• You can use the TIME function to represent time: =TIME(hour, minute, second)

Alternatively, you could use RotaCloud - where all of this is already set up and done for you. No formulas, steps, or manual calculations are required.

Is Excel good for tracking?

Data and reporting is Excel’s bread and butter, but you must build and keep it up to date manually. 

With RotaCloud, data for costs, hours worked, attendance and holidays are automatically collated and recorded into one-click reports. There’s an audit trail for everything, too.

What are the key differences between RotaCloud and Excel for shift planning?

• Everything is manual in Excel, from separate sheets & keeping on top of them to data input & formulas. RotaCloud automates data & prepares reports with a click.
• Compliance and budgeting rely on zero human error in Excel. With RotaCloud’s real-time updates, incorrect staffing levels & contracted hours are flagged as you schedule.
• With Excel, you print out timesheets & compare them with rotas for payroll. With RotaCloud, this is automatically done for you.
• Shift amends in Excel mean updating the rota and sending messages or pinning up the new one, hoping it’ll be seen. In RotaCloud, staff are instantly notified about shift changes and request responses.
• In Excel, any shift and annual leave requests mean making a note, remembering, and updating the rota yourself. You have a more hands-off approach in RotaCloud. Staff can find their own shift covers, request leave, and update availability. All managers need to do is approve or deny them.

Can RotaCloud integrate with other tools or systems better than Excel?

From payroll to HR tools, RotaCloud integrates with the likes of Sage, Breathe, Zapier, and Staffology. See our full list of integrations here.

What features does RotaCloud offer that Excel does not?

• Time & Attendance tools (including automatic timesheets & digital clocking in)
• Annual leave & absence management
• Staff availability requests automatically block out said days
• Mobile notifications for better communication
• Real-time data insights as you plan (labour costs & staffing levels)
• One-click reports for attendance, hours worked, labour costs & more
• Secure document signing & employee profiles
• Open Shifts for staff to pick up for extra hours

Is RotaCloud user-friendly for non-technical users compared to Excel?

You don’t need to be a data or computer whiz to use RotaCloud. Its simple drag-and-drop interface for shift planning and automatic calculations for costs, staffing levels, hours worked, and holiday accrual makes the system easy to learn.

RotaCloud also provides free resources, webinars, and a UK-based onboarding team to walk you through any specific features during a live chat or call. We know switching to something new is daunting, so that’s why there’s no limit to the number of questions you can ask and a free 1-to-1 set-up call is always here to get you up and running.

How does the cost of RotaCloud compare to using Excel for shift planning?

A one-time cost for Excel is £159.99 or starts from £8.60 per user per month for a Microsoft 365 subscription.

RotaCloud starts from £2 per employee per month, bringing you all the essentials for efficient shift planning.

Comparing the costly mistakes and lost time from manual rotas, you’re likely losing more money than you realise by using Excel. With RotaCloud, you see savings in labour costs, wage bills, agency fees - and more. 

Can RotaCloud help with compliance and labour laws better than Excel?

Yes. RotaCloud automatically keeps an audit trail of detailed records and ensures compliance with employment laws like Working Time Regulations and holidays.

What type of businesses benefit most from using RotaCloud over Excel?

Small-to-medium-sized businesses benefit the most from RotaCloud, particularly companies wishing to scale up. From hospitality and care to retail and cleaning, many shift-based businesses sign up to RotaCloud, experience how easy shift management can be, and don’t turn back.

How do RotaCloud's reporting capabilities compare to those of Excel?

RotaCloud’s one-click reports remove all the manual data inputting and maintaining you’re used to in Excel. No formulas needed - RotaCloud automatically collates attendance, labour costs, and payroll data into reports ready for you.