Excel scheduling or planning software?

Scheduling in Excel is enough as long as one person plans, the week fits on one screen and a mistake costs no customer or trip. Once several people plan in the same schedule, drivers or crews need their own rota on their phone, or rules come in such as leave, rest periods and day and night routes, software that shows conflicts by itself pays off. A standard scheduling tool costs from a few euros per employee per month; you build your own planning board when your rules fit no package.

We build such boards as custom software. Planning trips and drivers? See transport software.

Scheduling in Excel: where it is strong

Excel is fast and everyone can use it. A rota per week, a tab per month, a colour per crew: in an hour you have a workable schedule. For a builder with two crews, a cleaning company with five staff or a holiday home with a handful of bookings a month, that is often enough.

You can also make Excel smarter than most people do. A drop-down list of names prevents typos. Conditional formatting with COUNTIFS colours a name that appears twice on the same day. A separate leave tab that the schedule looks up makes absences visible. With Microsoft 365 or Google Sheets, several people plan in the same file at once instead of in copies.

Making your Excel schedule stronger before you switch

If you stay in Excel for now, these five changes remove most mistakes:

1. A tab with your people, and in the schedule a drop-down (Data Validation) that only allows those names.
2. A duplicate check: conditional formatting with =COUNTIFS(that day's column, name)>1 turns any name red that appears twice on the same day.
3. A leave tab, and formatting that greys out anyone on leave.
4. One file in the cloud (Microsoft 365 or Google Sheets) that everyone edits at once, never copies by email.
5. One owner who alone changes the structure; the others only fill in.

That does not solve double bookings when two people plan at the same moment without seeing each other's change, but it catches most.

Why Excel does not see a conflict

The classic problem with Excel scheduling is not that Excel calculates badly. It is that Excel does not know what is in its cells. If Lien puts Wout on the Ghent route for Wednesday on Monday evening, and Omar puts Wout on the Brussels route for the same day on Tuesday, Excel keeps both names without a word. You find out on Wednesday morning, when one route has no driver.

Scheduling software knows your people, routes, days and rules. It knows a driver can only be on one route a day, that someone on leave cannot be scheduled and that a night route needs rest before the next day shift. When something goes wrong it shows the conflict at once, and a good planning board also suggests a fix.

Excel, a scheduling tool or your own planning board

Shiftbase prices are billed monthly and before VAT; yearly billing saves 10 percent. Premium costs 72 euros for 12 employees and 5 euros per extra employee, with skill-based scheduling and labour cost insights among other things.

Worked example: twenty drivers, three ways

A transport company with twenty drivers and two planners. Per year, before VAT. Hours at 40 euros wage cost; the planning board build is an example, see custom software development cost. Put in your own wage cost: the higher it is, the more the hours weigh.

In this example a standard scheduling tool wins, if it can handle your rules. Your own planning board pays off when the standard tool does not know your routes, vehicles, fuel or rest rules, and your planners keep working in Excel next to the tool. The hours are an example; count your own for a week before you decide. The general trade-off between a package and your own build: build vs buy software.

What your own planning board does differently

For DA Logistics, a transport company, we built a weekly planning board. It knows the fixed routes, day and night, routes you pause or stop, and temporary routes. Conflicts appear at once and the board suggests a fix. The week exports as a PDF, and drivers see their schedule in their own app, in Dutch, English or Turkish; what such an app costs is in app development cost. The same platform also runs at Zuco Logistics.

Bookings in Excel next to Airbnb and Booking.com

A booking system in Excel works for a few bookings a month, as long as you only rent directly. If you also rent through Airbnb or Booking.com, you have several calendars that do not know each other. For the holiday home No.4 Lange Ast we built an availability calendar that reads the Airbnb and Booking.com calendars together, with a request form on the owner's own site. Nobody can book a night that is already gone.

Mistakes when switching

• Choosing a tool on the demoTest with your real week, your real exceptions and your planners.
• Not writing down your rulesWho may drive which vehicle, how much rest after a night route: if it is in nobody's head anymore, no tool can check it.
• Keeping Excel next to the toolTwo versions of the truth are worse than one. Agree a day on which Excel stops.
• Forgetting your peopleA schedule drivers cannot see on their phone delivers only half the gain.

Your first week towards a better schedule

1. Count for one week how many hours your planners spend planning, calling and fixing mistakes.
2. Write down your scheduling rules: routes, crews, vehicles, leave, rest.
3. Try a standard scheduling tool with your own week; Shiftbase has a free plan up to 15 employees.
4. If that does not work without Excel alongside, write your scope in the software requirements template. More on leaving spreadsheets behind: replace Excel with software.