Your 'free' rota spreadsheet is costing you more than you realise
Apr 2025 ⋅ 8 min read
Wait, really? Yes. The spreadsheet you use for your work rota costs more than you realise, even when it’s free.
Let us explain.
The problem with using Excel for your work rotas
Many businesses start with an Excel spreadsheet for their rota – it’s a familiar tool for many, whether beginners or pros. Seeing as most of us learn the basics in primary school, it’s no wonder it’s our default system for tables, reports, data handling, tracking, and scheduling.
However, as your team grows and client or service demand increases, Excel formulas just can’t keep up. You’ve got manual data entry, endless printouts, WhatsApp messages, changes, more WhatsApp messages, and staff complaining they never saw the update. These lead to an inefficient use of your time, money, and energy, which should be better spent on growing your business.
Let’s explore why Excel and manual rota spreadsheets hold you (and your business) back with employee scheduling and how workforce management systems are far better (and easier).
How Excel is holding you back with employee scheduling
1. “Why am I spending so much time on these rotas instead of focusing on my business?”
Building rotas is time-consuming and stress-inducing, and you’ll be used to staff complaints about them (despite your hard work).
Yes, we know there are pre-made rota spreadsheet templates for Excel, but you’re still manually inputting every piece of data, learning and maintaining formulas, and ensuring it’s constantly up to date. It’s tedious. Every shift change, time-off request, or availability update needs manual adjustments.
2. “What do you mean you didn’t see the shift update?”
You print the rota, stick it to the notice board or door, and email or WhatsApp it. But somehow, people still don't see it! It leads to overstaffing and no-shows, which impact your service quality and bottom line.
Then there are the dreaded (yet expected) changes to the rota, sudden absences, and ringing around to find appropriate cover (if anyone answers!). With holiday, shift swaps, and availability requests, too – it’s too many messages to juggle (and most likely miss).
3. “All I ever do is create rotas and then change it again.. and again”
You finish the perfect rota only for requests and complaints to come through. Missed or forgotten messages about holidays, availability, or simply shift preferences mean frustration – from both staff (for not feeling listened to) and you (for having to start again).
Manually making these amends is cumbersome and error-prone - not to mention a hassle. You end up pouring more time into a duplicated task, and some staff still miss the updates! What makes it better? Doing it all again next time.
Happy Groundhog Day!
4. “Payroll takes days - why is tracking hours so complicated?”
You aren’t just creating and printing rotas but timesheets, too. What’s worse is the expected inaccurate data from the rounding up or down of hours – if people even remember to clock in!
Then comes payroll. You’re comparing multiple spreadsheets, weeks or a month’s worth of timesheets and rotas. It’s far too time-consuming, and errors become too frequent – meaning more time (and money) wasted to later amend them.
5. “Audits terrify me - I can’t afford compliance mistakes”
The manual effort of ensuring you’re compliant is extra stress you don’t need. But when everything you’re tracking (holidays, sicknesses, labour costs, working hours) is on separate pieces of paper - and you’re never quite sure if they’re up-to-date or accurate – it makes the process complex and exposes your business to significant penalties and reputational damage.
“You've got to compare what you're saving — and if it saves money and time, and is beneficial to the team, then I think it's a no-brainer, really!” - Rhiwbina Dental
The hidden costs of using Excel for work rotas
In all, your ‘free’ rota spreadsheet in Excel (amongst your timesheets, reports, annual leave calendar, and more) is costing you far more than you realise. ‘Free’ can only get you so far – and, in terms of workforce management, it creates more cost implications than paying for a digital workforce management solution.
Cost implications like:
- Time theft in repetitive admin & inaccurate timesheets
- Pay errors from miscalculations & human error
- Realising you’ve overspent once it’s already happened
- Frustrated staff, leading to poor retention & costly hires
- Being understaffed from poor staff visibility & unexpected absences
- Ensuring working hours meet contract hours
- Unfair share of shifts, often leading to costly overtime
The costs add up. That’s why it’s time to upgrade your employee scheduling solution to one that eliminates all of the above.
How free IS ‘free’ when constant amends, poor communication, costly mistakes, and uncertainty hide in its shadows? It pays to know what to expect.
The only thing hidden in workforce management systems like RotaCloud is the efficiency you never thought you needed.
What happens when you switch to a digital workforce management solution like RotaCloud?
1. Creating rotas takes minutes
Everything from staff availability to annual leave is recorded on the calendar before you even start that week or month’s rota. Create and copy any shift patterns and edit with a simple drag-and-drop. Hit ‘Publish’ and the rota is sent out to your team. The same goes for any amends!
Get the rota right first time
There's no need for extra sheets or screens, calendars or lists. Availability and approved and pending holiday requests are already on the rota. Have complicated shift patterns, too? It's just a few clicks to create and copy templates.
2. Your team always know when they’re working
Everyone has constant visibility of the rota through our web app or mobile app. Staff are notified via SMS, email, or the app when the rota is published and updated, or if any open shifts become available. You can even leave notes (or memos) on shifts so that staff know what to expect that day. No need to ring around ever again!
3. Staff requests are handled in 1 click, not countless phone calls
Annual leave requests, staff availability, and shift drop and swap requests are all submitted, managed, and responded to in one place. Requests are approved or denied with a simple click, automatically updating the rota.
You can even set a leave embargo to automatically reject holiday requests if the maximum is reached during your busiest periods.
Employee requests
Holiday requests, shift swap & drop requests, and open shifts automatically notify the right people once accepted or available, keeping everyone in the loop (and you never understaffed).
4. Automatic timesheets & painless payroll
Staff clock in and out through a fixed terminal or the RotaCloud app. This data automatically feeds into timesheets and attendance reports that you can upload to your payroll system, meaning preparing payroll is painless. No need for comparing timesheets to scheduled shifts - there’s an automatic report for that! When everything is automatic, you can be confident that the data is accurate.
Time & Attendance
Automatic timesheets, mobile or terminal clocking in, and no more inaccurate payroll.
5. Comprehensive reporting & compliance
You can track real-time labour costs as you plan shifts and know you have a comprehensive audit trail. Confidently schedule with our traffic light tool and automated calculations, allowing you to be in constant control of contracted hours, correct staffing levels, and your budget.
Our one-click reports also help you oversee data and patterns, automatically tracking attendance, Bradford Points, holiday usage, and hours worked.
An audit trail for everything
Detailed accounts are automatically recorded, from tracking labour costs to staffing levels. Never feel out of control again.
5,000+ companies like you have switched from Excel to RotaCloud and haven’t looked back
“Excel’s got its place, and it does a good job at what it’s built for. But I think, if you’ve got a product that’s purpose-built to solve a problem, it’s inevitably more efficient, and you don’t know what those efficiencies are until you’ve used a product like RotaCloud." - Lake Country House
“To easily be able to see what shifts are available, to pick shifts, to make your own swaps, to book your holidays, to see what holiday allowance you personally have left — Excel doesn’t do that” - Vets for Pets
“If you think about it in terms of the staff member who's doing it — my time per hour that they're paying me as an employee — and the amount of time doing the rota on RotaCloud versus paper or Excel, then effectively it pays for itself.” - Rhiwbina Dental
Wrap-up
So, why is your rota spreadsheet costing you more than you realise? Because of the time, patience, and efficiency you’re wasting – all leading to wasted money that could be better spent growing your business.
Excel is something we’re all familiar with, something we’ve all grown to use, and it certainly does the job. However, when it comes to efficient scheduling and team management, relying on outdated methods can hold your business back.
As workforce management evolves with the modern world of work and technology, Excel is too complex when 1) you don’t fully know how to use it and 2) some systems can calculate and create all that you need in an instant.
With RotaCloud, you:
- Save time
- Can be flexible
- Improve staff retention
- Cut costs
- Can grow your business
- Improve leadership skills
RotaCloud simplifies scheduling, vastly improves team communication, and aids the growth of your business.
Plus, you’ve got support behind you. Where do you go if a formula breaks or your spreadsheets aren’t pulling data correctly? With RotaCloud, we’re just a message or call away. Your very own back office person.
Having everything you need all in one place, with everything just a click away, benefits you more than any Excel rota template can.
…Want to give it a go?
