Move your staff roster out of Excel without losing the week
How to decide whether it is time, what to have ready, how to run your first week alongside the spreadsheet, and how to back out if it does not suit.
When a spreadsheet is still enough, and when it is not
- One venue, and the same few people on the same shifts most weeks
- Nobody needs to clock in, because hours are fixed or salaried
- One person builds it, reads it and does the payroll
- Casual availability changes every term, and you find out on the day
- More than one venue, or people who work across them
- Somebody types the hours from the sheet into payroll every week
- A disagreement about hours worked has nothing written down to settle it
- Staff check the roster through a photo in a group chat
What to have ready
About half an hour of gathering, and most of it is the email addresses.
- A list of your people with the email address each one uses
- Your venues, with an address each for the clock in check
- Pay rates and your weekend and holiday loadings, if you want the estimated cost
- Each person’s availability, by the hour rather than just the day
- The week you want to start with, open beside you
Moving in
There is no import of shifts from a file, so the first week is typed once. People can be brought across from Xero or MYOB.
- Open the accountFree for up to 5 active people, with no card. A bigger team starts a free trial instead.
- Add your venuesName and address each one, and set the radius for the clock in check if you want it.
- Bring your people acrossImport them from Xero or MYOB, matched by email address, or add them by hand with their job title and venues.
- Type the first week onceWith the spreadsheet open beside you. Copy a shift across several days rather than placing each one.
- Publish and inviteInvitations go by email. Somebody without an address can be given a password to change at first sign in.
- Copy it forwardNext week starts as a copy of this one, and you change what moved.
Run one week in parallel
Keep the spreadsheet for one week. At the end of it, check these six things, and you will know whether you can stop.
- Every shift in the spreadsheet is on the roster, and nothing extra is
- Everyone opened their invitation and can see their shifts
- Each day has a clock in and a clock out for everyone who worked
- The hours Roster Flow recorded match what you would have paid from the sheet
- Any difference has a reason: a late start, a missed clock out, a correction
- The approved week reaches payroll, or the CSV export has what your bookkeeper needs
The roster to payroll checklist covers the end of that week step by step.
If it does not suit you
Go back to the spreadsheet. Export the reports you want to keep as CSV first, including the hours by employee for the weeks you ran. On the free plan there is nothing to cancel. On a paid plan the owner cancels from the billing screen and the plan runs to the end of the period already paid for.
Questions
Can I import my roster from a spreadsheet?
Not yet. People can be imported from Xero, or added by hand, but shifts are not imported from a file. In practice the first week is typed once, and every week after that is a copy with the changes made.
Should I keep the spreadsheet going for a while?
For one week, yes. Build the same week in both, let staff clock in, and compare the hours Roster Flow records with what the spreadsheet would have said. After one pay period you know whether you can stop.
What do my staff need to do?
Open the invitation, choose a password and add the site to their phone. Somebody without an email address can be given a password by a manager, and they choose their own the first time they sign in.
What happens if we decide it is not for us?
Nothing is locked in. The free plan costs nothing, a paid plan can be cancelled from the billing screen and runs to the end of the period already paid for, and the reports export to CSV whenever you want them.