Spreadsheets are cheap and easy to use, especially for basic purposes. You can use them to keep track of payroll, expenses, simple schedules, or inventory of your stock. Over the years, companies that eventually computerized their data used spreadsheets like Excel to manage their employees’ schedules.

Managers and back offices used worksheet templates for various purposes at work. These templates were often modeled after printouts or chalkboard calendars. They typically had employee names in one cell and assigned shifts in other cells. Copies are then usually printed and distributed to everyone in the office for reference, or sent via email.

Of course, this simplicity is not true for all companies, due to many factors. One thing to keep in mind is that the complexity of the schedule and workload varies from organization to organization. That said, other spreadsheet programs are more complex than others and require the use of more cells, formulas, and calculations.

Issues with employee scheduling spreadsheet
While it’s possible to use spreadsheets to schedule tasks, workloads, and other management-related items, this approach has its own drawbacks. These are some of the disadvantages that most people experience when using spreadsheets for staffing and employee tasks.

• It is difficult to integrate information from different departments, such as workload distribution, attendance, payroll and administration. So incorporating all of this into one file takes time and effort.
• Lack of multi-user access. If you’re sharing the file across the office, not everyone can immediately make changes or access the same file if other users are updating it.
• Most white-collar employees spend too much time with Excel files, taking time to update and re-enter data. Resizing, aligning, and color coding cells manually takes valuable time away from other tasks.
• It is complicated to use and can seem intimidating, especially for newbies or uninitiated users. While companies can make the spreadsheet available for everyone to access, a simple mistake or change in cells can wreak havoc on the entire content. This requires care for all users, a need that can be difficult to meet in an office with hundreds of employees.
• Simple spreadsheets make it difficult to detect conflicts for worker and employee shifts. In fact, people who use the programming material still have to look and check thoroughly to see which slots have not been filled or allocated.
• Spreadsheets limit you to fixed schedules with fixed hours, and it can take time and effort to model flextime or multi-hour workweeks.

Enhance your spreadsheet programming experience
If you’ve been relying on spreadsheets for the past few years, then it may be time to upgrade and upgrade your experience. This can be done by using reliable programming software. Good scheduling software is basically like the typical version of a spreadsheet, but much more flexible and powerful. They are generally designed for many purposes, these include:

• task assignment
• work schedule
• employee assistance
• record of leaves and absences
• paysheet
• reservation of facilities and resources

Most scheduling software is designed with the entire workplace in mind, allowing you to plan and schedule as many needs as possible, so you don’t need separate software for each one. They are easy to use and easy to share too, allowing workers to use the program and do things for themselves. Programs like these save time, effort, and money by reducing administration tasks and the time needed to focus on planning employee schedules.

While most programs cost a bit compared to free Excel templates, switching to this type of technology is not without significant benefits. By saving time, effort and manpower and avoiding lack of resources for other tasks, great scheduling software is an office must-have.

So, what are you waiting for? Take your scheduling to a new level and find out more about employee scheduling software today!