Weekly rota template
Type the names, type the shifts, print. The template adds up each person’s hours and tells you while you are still planning if a break is missing or the eleven-hour rest is too short — not after the rota is on the wall. Free, no sign-up, and the names never leave your computer.
| Employee | Week |
|---|
How to type it: 8-16 or 08:00-16:30, with the break in brackets after it: 08:00-16:30 (30). Night shifts running past midnight are recognised. "Off", "Holiday", "Annual leave" or "Sick" stay as text and do not count as working time.
Week total: 0:00 h
The names stay with you. This page loads nothing from other servers, sets no cookies and sends nothing — the rota is built in your browser. Reload it and the table is empty again.
A rota is not a working-time record
This is where it usually goes wrong. The rota is the plan: who is meant to work when. What protects you in a dispute is the record of what actually happened. Since 1 January 2024 regulation 9(3) says you need not record each worker’s daily hours as long as you can show the limits were kept — but you still have to be able to show it, and a printed rota on the wall does not show that anyone worked to it.
For the actual side there is the timesheet template, or an automatic record if you would rather stop retyping it.
Where rotas usually fail
- The break is missing. Once the day runs past six hours a worker is entitled to twenty uninterrupted minutes (reg. 12), and thirty minutes for workers under eighteen once the day passes four and a half hours. The template flags it.
- Late shift, then an early one. Eleven uninterrupted hours belong between working days (reg. 10). That is the check built into this template.
- Nobody is watching the 48-hour average. Reg. 4 caps the week at an average of 48 hours over 17 weeks unless the worker has opted out in writing — a rota for one week cannot see that, and a run of heavy weeks is how it quietly breaks.
- Night workers. Reg. 6 caps night work at an average of eight hours, and reg. 7 requires a free health assessment before someone starts.
- Changes that do not reach everyone. A sheet edited on Tuesday is invisible to whoever was off on Monday.
When a template stops being enough
While the rota covers one week and rarely changes, a printed sheet is completely fine — that is why it is here. It gets tiring when shifts get swapped, when somebody calls in sick, when there are several sites, or when at the end of the month somebody asks how many hours actually went in. Then the same hours get typed three times: into the rota, into the timesheet, and into payroll.
irot Time makes it one path: the rota lives in the same system as the clocked hours, swaps go between colleagues themselves, and the monthly record falls out of it. Free for up to 3 employees.
Questions we get
Is the template free?
Yes — no sign-up and no e-mail address. You type the shifts and download the week as a landscape PDF, ready to pin up. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent.
How do I type a shift?
The way you would say it: 8-16 or 08:00-16:30. The break goes in brackets after it: 08:00-16:30 (30). Anything else stays as text — "Off", "Holiday", "Sick" — and does not count as working time.
What does it check?
Two things, the two that actually go wrong: the rest break (twenty minutes once the day runs past six hours, reg. 12 WTR 1998) and daily rest of eleven uninterrupted hours between shifts (reg. 10). Both appear under the table while you are still planning.
Does the eleven-hour rule always apply?
No, and that is why it is a prompt rather than a verdict. Regulation 21 allows the daily rest to be modified for special cases — shift changeovers, security and surveillance, work split across the day — with compensatory rest instead, and a collective agreement can vary it. This page does not know your agreement.
Do we have to record daily hours by law?
Not individually. Since 1 January 2024 reg. 9(3) says records need not show each worker’s daily hours as long as you can demonstrate compliance some other way. What you do have to keep are records adequate to show the 48-hour and night-work limits were kept, including who has opted out — for two years. A record of hours is simply the cheapest way to be able to show it.
How much notice does a rota need?
The Working Time Regulations set none, so the answer comes from the contract, a collective agreement, or custom and practice — check what yours says before you change a rota at short notice. What the Regulations do fix is the rest that has to survive the change: eleven hours between shifts, and a day off each week.
Sources: Working Time Regulations 1998, regs. 4, 9, 10, 12 and 21; reg. 9(3) as amended with effect from 1 January 2024. Position: September 2026. This page is not legal advice, and a contract or collective agreement may give more than the minimum.