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Monthly rota template
Who's in on the 14th? Covered for the bank holiday weekend? A monthly rota template answers all of that in one view, instead of piecing it together a week at a time. You plan cover further ahead, spot the gaps while there's still time to fix them, and give your team enough notice to plan their lives around their shifts. This free monthly rota template does the basics well: shifts laid out day by day across the month, with total hours and labour costs worked out for you.
How to use the template
Once you've downloaded the monthly rota template, add your team's names and hourly rates, then fill in their shifts for each day of the month.
Set the first day of the month at the top and the dates fill in for you. You can also set which day the week starts on. Make sure the shift times match your contracts, and keep an eye on the totals and labour costs the sheet works out as you go.
What's included?
This monthly rota template covers a full calendar month on one sheet, with a day-by-day breakdown for each person underneath the month view.
It calculates total hours and labour costs for you, per person and per week, based on the hourly rates you enter. There's a separate tab for your team's names and rates, and another for shift types, so you can mark each day as a workday, time off, sick leave, or holiday.
A spreadsheet, until it isn't
A monthly template works while the pattern holds. It starts to creak when someone needs to swap a shift, when a new starter joins mid-month, or when you're rekeying the same rota into a group chat so everyone can see it. Rota & Time Clock, the newest part of Timetastic, lets you build the month in minutes and publish it straight to your team's phones, so they see their shifts the moment it's live.
Post an open shift and only the right people get notified. And because leave and rotas sit together, booked holiday shows up on the rota automatically. Used by over 200,000 people. Start a free trial, no card needed. Or keep the template. It does the basics well.
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The policy wording
Monthly rota template
Note booked leave against each person's name on the days they're off, so you can see it as you assign shifts around it. The advantage of a full-month view is that you can see several people's leave at once: overlaps with a busy period or a thin week show up early, while there's still time to arrange cover, rather than on the day.
Aim for as much lead time as possible, ideally sharing the schedule at least seven days before the new month begins. While the UK currently has no fixed legal notice period for rotas, staying ahead of the curve is simply good practice. This landscape is shifting: the Employment Rights Act 2025 will soon require employers to provide reasonable notice and compensate for late cancellations for those on zero-hours or irregular contracts, with rules phasing in throughout 2026 and 2027. For sectors like hospitality, retail, and care, adopting these habits early makes sense. Ultimately, giving your team more visibility reduces shift-swap requests and absenteeism while helping everyone balance work and life. Providing that full month of clarity is exactly why you use a monthly rota in the first place.
You can reuse a fixed rota month to month if your team works a stable, repeating pattern, and it saves a lot of time when it fits. Duplicate the sheet, update the start date, and adjust for anything that's changed, like new starters, leavers, or booked holiday. Just check each month that the pattern still keeps everyone inside their Working Time Regulations limits.
It helps you see the picture, but staying compliant is on you. Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, most workers in the UK can't average more than 48 hours per week over a 17-week reference period. They're also entitled to at least 11 consecutive hours of rest between working days, and one uninterrupted day off per week. A monthly view makes it easier to track hours building up towards these limits, but check each rota is compliant before you publish it, and speak to an employment law specialist if you're unsure.
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