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FREE TEMPLATE Last updated 8 September 2026

Free staff availability template (Excel)

A form each person fills in, and a summary sheet that shows the whole team at once. Collect availability before you build the rota, not after somebody tells you they cannot work Thursday.

Staff availability form

Excel format (.xlsx) • Ready to download

One form per person, plus a team summary
Available / unavailable / preferred
Max hours a week per person
Valid-from date so it can be re-collected

No signup required. Works with Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.

This rota template is a planning tool, not legal or payroll advice. It does not check working time limits, rest breaks or minimum wage for you. Check GOV.UK, or take advice, before relying on a rota 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.

References HR Hub disclaimer UK employment guides GOV.UK Acas

Build this rota online instead

The spreadsheet works until you are chasing availability and recalculating hours by hand. Build and share the same rota in the browser — free, no signup.

Open the free tool

What's in this template

Availability collected once, readable at a glance

An individual form

Morning, afternoon and evening across seven days, with a status per slot. Print it or share the tab.

A team summary

Everyone on one grid, so you can see who is available on Thursday evening without opening seven files.

Preferred, not just possible

A third status between available and unavailable. Rotas built only on "can" burn people out faster than rotas built on "would rather".

Maximum hours a week

A per-person cap. Useful for students, second-jobbers, and anyone whose combined hours approach the 48-hour average.

A valid-from date

Availability goes stale. Dating it makes clear when it needs collecting again rather than assuming last term still applies.

A notes field

Fixed commitments, caring responsibilities, travel constraints — the context behind an unavailable slot.

Availability at a glance

Three statuses rather than two. The distinction between can and would prefer is what stops a rota that technically works from being one nobody wants to be on.

NameMon amMon pmThu eveSatMax hrs/wk
Grace Bennett Available Available Preferred Unavailable 24
Zainab Ahmed Unavailable Preferred Available Available 16

The max-hours column is the one people skip and then need. It is where a student on a 20-hour visa condition, or someone whose second job already takes 30 hours a week, gets caught before the rota is published rather than after.

How to collect staff availability

Four steps

1. Send the form with a deadline

Availability without a cut-off arrives after the rota is published, which is the same as not having it.

2. Consolidate onto the summary

Copy each response onto the team grid. One place to look beats seven forms in an inbox.

3. Build on preferred first

Fill the rota from preferred slots, then available ones. It costs nothing and materially changes how the rota lands.

4. Re-collect on a schedule

Every term, quarter or season. Stale availability is worse than none, because it is trusted.

Availability is an input to the rota, not a promise of shifts — and for a zero-hours worker it is not an acceptance either. The zero-hours rota keeps offers and acceptances separate.

Who uses this template

UK teams with variable availability

Hospitality

Student and second-job teams whose availability changes with the academic term.

Retail

Seasonal hires taken on for a peak, where availability was never collected properly at the start.

Care

Bank staff whose availability shifts week to week and is otherwise held in a WhatsApp thread.

Once you have availability, build from it with the weekly rota template.

Or let staff keep their own availability up to date

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 — so the rota cannot be built against it by accident.

Start free trial See rota software

Building the rota around it

What availability feeds

How to make a rota in Excel

Building one from scratch, step by step, with the formulas that matter.

Read the guide

Rota changes and communication

Changing a published rota without losing the team, and what notice you actually owe.

Read the guide

Managing holiday requests

Notice, refusal, and requiring leave to be taken at a particular time.

Read the guide

More free UK templates and tools

The rest of the set

Attendance and timesheet templates

Attendance register, timesheets, overtime tracker and a 17-week hours tracker.

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Holiday entitlement calculator

Pro-rata 5.6 weeks for part-time, irregular and part-year workers.

Open the calculator

UK employment guides

Holiday, pay, rota law, sick pay and shift patterns — written for employers.

Browse the guides
FAQ

Availability template FAQ

  • It depends entirely on the contract. A contract with fixed or minimum hours can specify when they are worked; a zero-hours contract cannot compel availability, and an exclusivity clause in one is unenforceable. Collecting availability is a planning exercise, not a way of creating an obligation that the contract does not.

  • 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.

  • No, and conflating the two is the most common mistake. Availability says a person could work; it is not an acceptance and, for a zero-hours worker, not an agreement to work. Keep offers and acceptances in the zero-hours rota.

  • You need a lawful basis to hold them — normally legitimate interests — and should keep them no longer than necessary. Notes about caring responsibilities or health can be special category data, so keep the notes field factual and minimal. See our employee records and UK GDPR guide.