Why using spreadsheet rotas is no good for business

You will need 22 columns. Label the first column NAME. Label the next 3 columns IN, OUT, HOURS. Repeat step 3 for each day of the week…..

Stop right there!

This is what you get when you google ‘how to create a rota spreadsheet’. Sound complicated or time-consuming or that there might be room for errors? Or all three of those things?

We think so and we hope you do too.

Using a spreadsheet for your rota is clunky, it’s complicated (to get it right anyway), it’s time consuming and therefore costly (because remember time is money) and it’s easy to make mistakes.

The upshot is that it makes managing your staff difficult, frustrating and unreliable and not just for you either.

Even if you’re an Excel pro, you really shouldn’t even be thinking about using it for your staff rota. Building it is one thing but adjusting it and communicating every change becomes a challenge.

Believe us, we know.

You may think we’re biased, after all we’ve got a product to sell, but trust us – rota software, which incidentally is probably much less costly than you think it is, is what you should be looking for.

Rota building doesn’t have to be time consuming and be that job that fills you with dread. It doesn’t add any value to your business – unlike training or marketing – so we’re on a mission to change that.

Here’s why:

1. Save time and reduce cost

Rota software is about making time-consuming tasks quick and easy, no matter what sector you’re in. It’s basically all about automating tasks so that you no longer have to do the manual work. We want to make your life easy.

2 Reduce mistakes

If you’re manually recording your staff’s hours and planning a rota based on what someone told you last week, then the room for error is pretty big. This can then lead to mistakes in someone’s pay packet at the end of the month.

3. Improve staff coverage

Adjusting a spreadsheet rota for busy and quiet periods in your business can get tricky as is ensuring you’re not over or under-staffed on any particular shift. Software makes these kinds of adjustment a breeze.

4. Improve communication

If you’re emailing a spreadsheet, can you be confident that people are really reading it? With software you can save yourself a lot of hassle, cut out more admin, emails and phone calls to fill that last shift, which will then send a notification to your staff once the new rota is ready to view. Simple. Need to make changes? It will let them know too. SMS and app-messaging make it easier to keep your team up to speed.

5. Make better business decisions

If all that wasn’t enough to convince you, we think this one will. Times are hard for many businesses right now.. Many have been closed and starting to think about reopening. Others have been busy like never before, so whichever camp you fall in to, time and money are probably in short supply so making better business decisions is a no-brainer.