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

Managers and administration offices used worksheet templates for various purposes at work. These templates were often modeled from whiteboard prints or programs. These generally had the names of employees in one cell and assigned shifts in other cells. Copies are usually printed and distributed to everyone in the office for reference, or sent via email.

Of course, this simplicity is not true for all businesses, 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.

Spreadsheet Employee Scheduling Issues

While spreadsheets can be used to schedule tasks, workloads, and other related administrative items, this method is not without its drawbacks. Here are some of the drawbacks most people experience when using spreadsheets for staffing and employee assignments.

• It is difficult to integrate information for different departments, such as workload distribution, attendance, payroll and administration. So incorporating all of these into one file takes time and effort.
• Lack of multi-user access. If you share the file across the office, not everyone can immediately make changes or access the same file if other users are updating it.
• Most admin employees spend too much time on Excel files, taking the time to update and re-enter data. Resizing, aligning, and color-coding cells manually takes up valuable time for other tasks.
• It is complicated to use and can seem intimidating, especially for beginners or uninitiated users. While companies can make the spreadsheet available to everyone, a simple mistake or change in cells can wreak havoc on all content. This requires the care of all users, a need that can be difficult in an office with hundreds of employees.
• Simple spreadsheets make it difficult to detect conflicts in worker and employee shifts. In fact, the people who use the programming material still have to look and check thoroughly to see which spaces have not been occupied or allocated.
• Spreadsheets limit you to fixed hours with fixed hours, and it can take time and effort to create a model for flex time 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 improve and update your experience. This can be done using reliable programming software. Good programming 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 permits and absences
• paysheet
• reservation of facilities and resources

Most scheduling software is designed with your 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 also easy to share, 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 required to focus on planning employee schedules.

While most programs cost quite a bit compared to free Excel templates, a switch to this type of technology is not without great benefits. By saving time, effort and manpower and avoiding a lack of resources for other tasks, excellent scheduling software is essential in the office.

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