Free Employee Schedule Template (Excel, Google Sheets & PDF) for 2026

Both files are genuinely free: no email gate, no watermark, no usage limit. Download them, share them with your managers, and when you outgrow the spreadsheet, the upgrade path to teamsly is at the bottom of this page. First, the downloads.

Download the free schedule templates

Both templates use the same column layout, the same formulas, and the same labor-cost logic. Pick weekly if you publish a fresh schedule every Sunday; pick monthly if you plan in four-week blocks or want a printable wall calendar. Each file prints cleanly to PDF in landscape from either Excel or Google Sheets.

Each download includes a “Read me” tab with the two-minute setup, how to adjust the overtime threshold for your state, and how to import the CSV into Google Sheets without losing the formulas.

What's inside the template

Both files open to the same structure, so your team can move between weekly and monthly without re-learning anything.

• Employee roster — name, role, department, hourly rate, and a notes column for certifications or restrictions.
• Daily hours — type the hours worked each day as a decimal, already net of any unpaid break (an 8.5-hour shift with a 30-minute unpaid break is 8.0).
• Weekly and monthly totals — per employee and per day, with subtotals at the bottom of every column.
• Overtime flag — anyone over 40 hours in a week lights up red automatically (federal threshold; change the constant for state-specific rules).¹
• Labor-cost column — regular hours × rate, plus overtime hours at 1.5×, with a grand total at the bottom.
• Printable layout — landscape, single page, with headers that repeat across page breaks.

The formulas, already done for you

You do not have to write any of these — they ship inside the file. They are here so you can see exactly what the sheet is doing and adjust it if your rules differ.

• Total hours — =SUM(Mon:Sun) adds each person's daily hours into a weekly total.
• Overtime — =IF(Total>40, Total−40, 0) counts only the hours past the threshold. The 40 lives in one labeled cell, so you change it once.
• Labor cost — =Rate×MIN(Total,40) + Rate×1.5×OT pays regular hours at the base rate and overtime at time-and-a-half.

Conditional formatting handles the rest: any weekly total over the threshold turns red before you publish, so overtime shows up on the schedule instead of as a surprise on payroll day.

Using it in Excel vs Google Sheets

Both files are designed to round-trip cleanly. There are two small differences worth knowing before you customize.

Microsoft Excel

Open the .xlsx directly. The formulas and conditional-formatting rules carry over from the file as-is. If you want shared editing, save it to OneDrive or SharePoint — local copies on different managers' laptops do not merge changes between them.

Google Sheets

Upload the .csv to Drive, open it, then choose File → Save as Google Sheets so the formulas persist. Google's import turns the CSV into a fully native Sheets file with no formula loss; conditional formatting takes a few seconds to re-add once. Real-time co-editing then works out of the box.

Free template vs. teamsly: where the spreadsheet stops being enough

Templates are great until the team grows past about ten people, opens a second location, or starts swapping shifts faster than you can re-publish. Here is what each one actually does on a normal week.

The spreadsheet is free, simple, and quietly expensive. It is published by emailing a PDF or a screenshot, so there is no push and no read receipt. Swaps happen in a group text and the sheet falls out of date. Overtime shows up after payroll runs, not before publish. Two locations means two files and two versions of the truth, and a manager spends four to six hours a week keeping it alive. Past about ten to fifteen people, that maintenance is the real cost.

What you get when you graduate from the template

The same things the spreadsheet pretends to do, done by software built for shift-based teams — on a single flat per-location plan, with no per-feature pricing and no per-user creep. AI auto-scheduling drafts next week from historical coverage, availability, and overtime exposure, so you edit instead of build. One tap sends the schedule to every phone in English and Spanish, with read confirmation. Employees swap shifts in-app and managers approve in-app. A geofenced time clock on kiosk, mobile, and web captures the hours and exports them clean to payroll. Overtime alerts fire on the canvas before you publish, not on payroll day. And every column your spreadsheet calculates by formula — daily hours, weekly totals, the overtime flag, the labor-cost column — becomes a live number that updates as you drag shifts.

Grab the templates now, upgrade when you outgrow them

Download the weekly and monthly files above, build this week the same way you always would, and let the formulas handle the totals, overtime, and labor cost. When the spreadsheet stops keeping up, import the exact same columns into teamsly — name, role, hourly rate, and availability — and watch it publish, message, time-clock, and report on the schedule without you running back to a browser tab. Try teamsly free — flat per-location pricing, no card to start.

FAQ

Are these templates really free?

Yes. No email gate, no watermark, no usage limit. Modify, re-brand, and share them with your managers — the only thing we ask is that you do not resell the files as your own product.

Do they work in Excel for Mac and Numbers?

Excel for Mac opens the .xlsx with full formula and formatting support. Numbers opens it too, but conditional-formatting rules sometimes need to be re-applied. If you live in Numbers full-time, the .csv import is the cleanest route.

Why a CSV for Google Sheets instead of a native file?

Google's import flow turns a CSV into a fully native Sheets file with no formula loss, and it avoids the read-only quirks that sometimes appear with an uploaded .xlsx. Once it is in Sheets, save it as a Google Sheets file and conditional formatting takes seconds to re-apply.

Can I import the template into teamsly when I'm ready to upgrade?

Yes. teamsly has an import-employees step that takes a CSV with name, role, hourly rate, and availability columns — the exact columns this template already uses. Most teams are up and running in a single sitting.

Is there a limit on the number of employees?

The weekly template comfortably handles up to 30 employees on one page; the monthly handles 40 by week. You can add rows freely, but beyond about 50 the spreadsheet stops being faster than a real scheduling app — which is the point at which most teams upgrade.

What about overtime, breaks, and tip rules in my state?

The overtime formula assumes the federal 40-hour weekly threshold.¹ States with daily-overtime triggers, mandatory meal-period rules, or specific tip-pool requirements need a tweak to the formula — or, more reliably, a tool that enforces them automatically. Always verify the current rules with your payroll provider or employment counsel before you act on a calculation.²