Online rota maker
Create a rota online for the week: add your team, pick a shift and click the grid to place it. Hours and wage cost add themselves up, and the finished rota downloads to Excel or prints straight from the page. No sign-up, no email.
Team
hourly rate is optionalShift types
pick one, then click the grid- 8 h
- 8 h
| Employee | Mon26/10 | Tue27/10 | Wed28/10 | Thu29/10 | Fri30/10 | Sat31/10 | Sun01/11 | This week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anna | 56 hShifts: 7 | |||||||
| Mark | 56 hShifts: 7 | |||||||
| Sofia | 24 hShifts: 3 | |||||||
| Hours per day | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 136 hShifts: 17 |
The draft stays in your browser. We never see it and never send it anywhere.
When the team needs to see it too
This page holds one week in your browser. The moment the rota has to reach people, take swap requests and add up hours at the end of the month, it needs an account: up to 10 people on one site run on the Free plan, and the team gets the rota as an app on their phones.
Start for freeHow to create a rota in three steps
Start with the team. The Team box comes with a sample crew: rename them, delete them, add your own. An hourly rate is optional. Leave it out and you get hours only; put it in and the rota tells you what the week costs, per person and in total.
Then the shifts. A morning and an evening shift are set up already, and you can change the times, rename them or add your own. A shift that runs past midnight is counted the way you would expect: 20:00 to 08:00 is twelve hours, not minus twelve.
Now the grid. Pick a shift type, click a cell, and it lands there. Click it again to clear it. Hours per day run along the bottom, hours per person down the right, and the weekly total sits in the corner. Nothing is submitted anywhere while you do this.
Rota, schedule or roster
All three words mean the same grid. Rota is British, roster is common in Ireland and Australia, and in the United States it is usually called a work schedule or a staff schedule. People also call the tool a rota planner or a rota generator. Whichever word you searched for, this is it: a rota maker and employee schedule maker that works online, with nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
The one habit worth keeping from any of them is publishing early. A rota that lands on Friday for a week starting Monday is the reason people swap shifts by text message at eleven at night.
Where your rota is saved
In your browser, and nowhere else. We do not see the draft, it is not sent to a server, and no email is asked for. Close the tab and it is still there when you come back.
The flip side is the same fact: the draft belongs to this browser. It will not be on your phone or your colleague's laptop, and there is no link to send anyone. If the rota has to be shared, that is what an account is for, and it takes about a minute to set up.
Is it a rota generator?
Not in the sense of filling the rota for you. There is no auto-assign here that reads availability, holiday and skills and decides who should work Tuesday: you place the shifts. What the tool does is take the arithmetic off you: hours per person, hours per day, cost at the rates you set, and a file you can hand to whoever does the payroll.
Frequently asked questions
Is there really no sign-up?+
None. The online rota maker asks for no email and no phone number. Open it, build the rota, download the file. An account only comes into it when the rota has to reach the team on their phones; up to 10 people on one site run on the Free plan, and larger teams pay per person.
How many staff can I put on the rota?+
As many as you like. On a phone the grid scrolls sideways, so a big team still works. The practical limit is your own head: past twenty or so people a week is hard to hold, and that is usually the point where a rota wants to live in an account with swaps and notifications rather than in a browser tab.
Can I make a monthly rota, not just a week?+
Build the first week, then press Repeat on the next one. The pattern carries forward and you only fix the holidays and the days off. Four presses give you a month. Each week downloads as its own file.
Does it handle night shifts that run past midnight?+
Yes. Enter the times as they are, for example 22:00 to 06:00, and the tool reads it as eight hours rather than an error. The same rule runs inside InShift itself, so the numbers match when you move over.
Can I open the rota in Excel or Google Sheets?+
The download button gives you a .csv file, which opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers. If you would rather start from a spreadsheet, there are ten ready-made rota templates on our templates page, with the hours already adding themselves up.
Can I print it or turn it into a PDF?+
Print from the page and the form controls disappear, leaving a clean grid with the totals. Choosing Save as PDF in the print dialogue gives you a file to email or pin up in the back room.
Does the rota maker work out overtime and night pay?+
It works out hours and pays them at the flat rate you enter. Enhancements for nights, weekends and overtime are set by the contract rather than by law in the UK, so the percentages differ from one employer to the next and are applied by whoever runs the payroll on top of these hours.
For managers: the rota for the whole team
Start, finish and break per day: hours for the week, overtime and pay at your rate.
One rota the whole team sees on their phones, with swaps, requests and hours in the app.
The manager’s side: the planner, requests, payroll and every location in one account.
A weekly rota, a monthly rota and a timesheet for Excel. The hours add themselves up.
The rota you published becomes the timesheet: hours per person, ready for payroll.
Seven steps that keep a rota from falling apart by Wednesday.