Regardless of whether you wish to surprisingly, the fact of the matter is that there are still thousands of businesses out there that are using Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet solutions to schedule their employees.
Spreadsheets are certainly great for a lot of things. They are great for storing, archiving and calculating data, particularly when you are coping with numbers. But scheduling is definitely an entirely different story, it’s a very dynamic process and formulas are only able to do so much.
If you are a manager still using spreadsheets to plan your team, or an employee getting shifts assigned to you via spreadsheet, it can’t be very fun.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, spreadsheets are not an ideal solution for employee scheduling, which is why.
It’s Too Time Consuming
This really is, essentially, the biggest problem that comes with scheduling your team using spreadsheets - it takes too long! Shifts are rarely set in stone and are usually changing on a daily basis. So managers are continually editing their spreadsheets and sending out new ones to staff.
The whole point of creating schedules is to save time and avoid confusion. Scheduling with spreadsheets can sometimes have the exact opposite effect.
It Can’t Be Automated
Spreadsheets are great for calculating data because you can enter formulas where you can perform calculations automatically. However, there are no formulas that may handle the intricacies of scheduling workers. Workforce management software solutions allow you to automate just about every process. You can set up recurring shifts to repeat, automatically get suggestions for workers who can cover open shifts, create timesheets for payroll, and much more.
Working with spreadsheets does not afford you these luxuries. Everything needs to be entered manually, which decelerates the process and doesn’t help make your job any easier.
It’s Error-Prone
Spreadsheets are all subject to human error. You can use formulas to calculate some things, but if you make a mistake writing your formula, all of your data will be wrong. And when a person have lots of information and tons of formula’s throughout your spreadsheet, locating the problem can be a huge hassle as well.
Cheap you need to enter everything manually and constantly improve your spreadsheets makes the likelihood of making an error even greater.
It’s Not Intuitive
Spreadsheets won't notify you for those who have shift conflicts. They won’t tell you for those who have an open shift that you simply haven’t allotted to anyone. They can’t help you do your job because there is simply no way to make your spreadsheets more dynamic and proactive.
Basically, all the responsibility is on you and just how diligent you're when creating and updating your spreadsheets.
It Lacks Serious Analytical Capabilities
While you could make some basic graphs and charts from your data when using Excel spreadsheets, it’s not exactly a strong analytical tool. Essentially, you've got a lot of data about your business inside the spreadsheet, but you aren’t utilizing it to its full potential.
This info can be used to forecast labor costs, track your expenses, and generally assist you to run your business better. But it’s hard to harness this data if you are still using spreadsheets to schedule.
Conclusion:
All of these shortcomings of scheduling employees with spreadsheets may be overcome by switching to some workforce keeper like ours.
Bookafy enables you to cut the time it takes you to schedule drastically, automate all of your processes, receive automatic notifications when you’ve made scheduling errors, avoid shift conflicts, and analyze all of your business data using only one tool.
Spreadsheets are certainly great for a lot of things. They are great for storing, archiving and calculating data, particularly when you are coping with numbers. But scheduling is definitely an entirely different story, it’s a very dynamic process and formulas are only able to do so much.
If you are a manager still using spreadsheets to plan your team, or an employee getting shifts assigned to you via spreadsheet, it can’t be very fun.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, spreadsheets are not an ideal solution for employee scheduling, which is why.
It’s Too Time Consuming
This really is, essentially, the biggest problem that comes with scheduling your team using spreadsheets - it takes too long! Shifts are rarely set in stone and are usually changing on a daily basis. So managers are continually editing their spreadsheets and sending out new ones to staff.
The whole point of creating schedules is to save time and avoid confusion. Scheduling with spreadsheets can sometimes have the exact opposite effect.
It Can’t Be Automated
Spreadsheets are great for calculating data because you can enter formulas where you can perform calculations automatically. However, there are no formulas that may handle the intricacies of scheduling workers. Workforce management software solutions allow you to automate just about every process. You can set up recurring shifts to repeat, automatically get suggestions for workers who can cover open shifts, create timesheets for payroll, and much more.
Working with spreadsheets does not afford you these luxuries. Everything needs to be entered manually, which decelerates the process and doesn’t help make your job any easier.
It’s Error-Prone
Spreadsheets are all subject to human error. You can use formulas to calculate some things, but if you make a mistake writing your formula, all of your data will be wrong. And when a person have lots of information and tons of formula’s throughout your spreadsheet, locating the problem can be a huge hassle as well.
Cheap you need to enter everything manually and constantly improve your spreadsheets makes the likelihood of making an error even greater.
It’s Not Intuitive
Spreadsheets won't notify you for those who have shift conflicts. They won’t tell you for those who have an open shift that you simply haven’t allotted to anyone. They can’t help you do your job because there is simply no way to make your spreadsheets more dynamic and proactive.
Basically, all the responsibility is on you and just how diligent you're when creating and updating your spreadsheets.
It Lacks Serious Analytical Capabilities
While you could make some basic graphs and charts from your data when using Excel spreadsheets, it’s not exactly a strong analytical tool. Essentially, you've got a lot of data about your business inside the spreadsheet, but you aren’t utilizing it to its full potential.
This info can be used to forecast labor costs, track your expenses, and generally assist you to run your business better. But it’s hard to harness this data if you are still using spreadsheets to schedule.
Conclusion:
All of these shortcomings of scheduling employees with spreadsheets may be overcome by switching to some workforce keeper like ours.
Bookafy enables you to cut the time it takes you to schedule drastically, automate all of your processes, receive automatic notifications when you’ve made scheduling errors, avoid shift conflicts, and analyze all of your business data using only one tool.
