Free staff availability template (Excel)
A form per person and a team summary — plus a field for agreed hours, because in New Zealand availability beyond them is a contractual question with a price attached.
Staff availability form
Excel format (.xlsx) • Ready to download
No signup required. Works with Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.
This roster template is a planning tool, not legal or payroll advice. It does not calculate holiday pay, alternative days or minimum wage for you. Check Employment New Zealand, or take advice, before relying on a roster for compliance. It does not constitute legal, HR, or professional advice and should not be relied on as a substitute for advice specific to your business, workforce, or circumstances.
Build this roster online instead
The spreadsheet works until you are chasing availability and recalculating hours by hand. Build and share the same roster in the browser — free, no signup.
What's in this template
Availability, and the agreement behind it
An individual form
Morning, afternoon and evening across seven days, with a status per slot.
A team summary
Everyone on one grid, so you can see who is free on Thursday evening without opening seven files.
Agreed hours per person
Straight from the employment agreement, which in New Zealand must record them. This is the number availability sits on top of.
An availability-provision flag
Yes or no, per person. Requiring availability beyond agreed hours needs genuine reasons and reasonable compensation.
Preferred, not just possible
A third status between available and unavailable. Rosters built only on "can" burn people out faster than rosters built on "would rather".
A valid-from date
Availability goes stale. Dating it makes clear when it needs collecting again.
Availability against agreed hours
The two right-hand columns are the New Zealand-specific part. Availability is a preference; agreed hours are a term of the agreement, and asking someone to be available beyond them is a separate arrangement that has to be paid for.
| Name | Mon pm | Thu eve | Sat | Agreed hrs | Availability provision? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aroha Ngata | Available | Preferred | Unavailable | 32 | No |
| Mei Lin | Preferred | Available | Available | 20 | Yes — compensated |
Mei has agreed hours of 20 and an availability provision on top, with compensation for it. Aroha does not — so she can decline work outside her 32 agreed hours, and the roster should not be built assuming otherwise.
How to collect staff availability
Four steps
1. Start from agreed hours
Copy them from each employment agreement. Availability is what sits around them, not a substitute for them.
2. Send the form with a deadline
Availability without a cut-off arrives after the roster is published, which is the same as not having it.
3. Consolidate onto the summary
One place to look beats seven forms in an inbox.
4. Check the provision flag before rostering over
No compliant availability provision means the employee can decline work outside agreed hours — and is entitled to.
Then build the roster from it with the weekly roster template.
Who uses this template
New Zealand teams with variable availability
Hospitality
Student and second-job teams whose availability moves with the academic year.
Retail
Seasonal hires taken on for a peak, where availability was never properly collected.
Aged care
Casual and relief staff whose availability changes weekly and otherwise lives in a group chat.
Agreed hours belong in the agreement itself — see digital employment contracts.
Or let staff keep their own availability current
A form is out of date the week after you collect it. In RosterElf staff set their own availability in the app, and it appears against every shift you try to assign.
Agreements and records
Where agreed hours actually live
Digital employment contracts
Agreements recording agreed hours, signed and stored against the employee record.
See contractsDigital HR records
The wage, time and leave records the Employment Relations Act requires you to keep.
See HR recordsLeave management
Holidays Act annual holidays, sick leave, bereavement leave and alternative days in one place.
See leave managementRostering in software
Building against real availability
Rostering software
Build the roster once, publish it to phones, and let swaps update it without a reprint.
See rosteringAI rostering
Generate a first-draft roster from availability, skills and cover requirements.
See AI rosteringMobile roster app
The published roster on every phone, so the wall copy is never the only version.
See the appAvailability template FAQ
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A term in an employment agreement requiring an employee to be available to work beyond their agreed hours. It is only enforceable where there are genuine reasons based on reasonable grounds for having it, and the employee is paid reasonable compensation for making themselves available. Without one, an employee can refuse work outside their agreed hours and cannot be treated adversely for doing so.
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No. Availability says a person could work; it is not an acceptance and it is not a variation of agreed hours. Conflating the two is how a roster ends up assuming an obligation the agreement does not create.
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Every term for a student-heavy team, quarterly otherwise, and always before a seasonal peak. The valid-from date exists so a stale form is visibly stale rather than quietly wrong.
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Yes. A written employment agreement must record the agreed hours of work — including, where they are agreed, the number of guaranteed hours, the days of the week, the start and finish times, and any flexibility in them. This has been the position since zero-hour contracts were made unlawful on 1 April 2016.
Before you download
General information only — not legal advice
This document is a general HR template provided for informational purposes only. It is not legal advice and may not reflect the latest changes in legislation or apply to every workplace situation. RosterElf Pty Ltd and the template provider accept no liability for any loss arising from reliance on this document. Users should seek independent legal advice and customise the template to ensure it complies with all relevant laws, employment agreements and workplace requirements.