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Staff rota template for restaurants

A weekly rota you can fill in and hand to the team this afternoon. Enter start and finish times, and the hours and the wage cost work themselves out, including for shifts that run past midnight.

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Download the rotaExcel .xlsx · 11 KB

Direct download. No email, no sign-up, and nothing to unsubscribe from afterwards.

What it is

One spreadsheet with three sheets: the weekly rota itself, a daily cover summary, and a short page of instructions.

The rota holds up to 25 people. For each person you enter a name, a role from a dropdown, an hourly rate, and a start and finish time for each day they work. Everything else calculates: hours per person, cost per person, and the totals for the week.

The daily cover sheet then tells you how many people are on and how many hours are rostered for each day, so you can see a Tuesday that is over-staffed or a Saturday that is not.

What is in it

Weekly rota sheet25 rows, seven days, start and finish for each. Frozen headers so the names stay visible when you scroll right.
Automatic hours and costHours per person and cost per person fill in from the times and the hourly rate, with weekly totals at the bottom.
Overnight shifts handledA finish time earlier than the start is treated as the next morning, so a bar closing at 02:00 totals correctly.
Role dropdownChef, sous chef, kitchen porter, waiter, bar, host, manager, cleaner. Keeps the column consistent so the summary stays reliable.
Daily cover summaryPeople on shift and hours rostered for each day of the week, updating from the rota sheet.
Instructions sheetFive steps, plus notes on breaks and on what this sheet is and is not.

How to fill it in

01Set the weekPut the week commencing date at the top of the Weekly rota sheet.
02Add your peopleOne row each. Pick the role from the dropdown and put the hourly rate in the rate column. Leave the rate blank if you do not want cost totals.
03Enter the shiftsStart and finish as 24h times, for example 17:00 and 23:30. Leave both blank on days off.
04Read the totalsHours and cost per person appear on the right, the weekly total at the bottom, and the per-day picture on the Daily cover sheet.

Who it is for

Independent restaurants, cafes, bars and takeaways with a team small enough that rota software is more trouble than it is worth. If you are currently doing this on paper or in a notes app, this will take about ten minutes to adopt.

It is a planning tool, not a payroll system and not a working-time compliance record. It will tell you what a week costs before you commit to it; it will not tell you whether your rest breaks are lawful.

Please noteUnpaid breaks are not deducted automatically, and the sheet does not check rest breaks, night work or young worker rules. Those obligations sit with you, and the current guidance is on GOV.UK.

Questions

No. The download link is a direct link to the file. There is no form, no account and no follow-up sequence.
Yes. A start of 18:00 and a finish of 01:00 counts as seven hours rather than minus seventeen, so late bar and kitchen shifts total correctly without a workaround.
Not automatically, because break rules vary too much between venues. If you deduct breaks, either enter the paid hours directly or add a break column of your own next to the finish time.
Yes. It is a standard .xlsx file. Google Sheets and Numbers both open it and keep the formulas working. The role dropdown survives in Google Sheets; Numbers may drop it, and you can type the role instead.
Download the rotaExcel .xlsx · 11 KB

Direct download. No email, no sign-up, and nothing to unsubscribe from afterwards.

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Want the rest of the admin handled too?

Email us your restaurant name and city. We will tell you what the subscription would take off your plate, from the website and the QR menu to the reviews, and what it would cost.

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