Free staff schedule template: a weekly schedule to print or save as PDF

How do you make a work schedule for your employees?

Start from the hours when you need people, place one shift per employee per day, check each person’s hours, then hand out the schedule early enough: an employee may refuse to work if they were not given their schedule 5 days in advance.

A weekly schedule says who works, on which day and from what time to what time. The template above adds up the hours of each employee and each day; you print it or save it as a PDF to post it and send it.

Building a restaurant or shop schedule

• Coverage, hour by hour. Write down your opening hours and how many people you need each hour: few at opening, more at lunch and dinner, enough at closing to clean up and cash out.
• Shifts that overlap at peak hours. An 11-to-2 shift, or a split shift from 11 to 2 then 5 to 9, adds hands without making the days longer.
• Breaks in the schedule. Plan who covers for whom during the meal break: one extra person for half an hour beats an empty station in the middle of the rush.
• Each person’s hours. Look at the total per employee: past 40 hours, hours cost 50% more; below the hours promised when you hired them, the employee will look elsewhere.

Example: a café open from 7 am to 3 pm. Two employees from 7 to 3, with an unpaid 30-minute meal break, each get 7.5 paid hours a day; a third from 11 to 2 covers lunch. Over five days, the first two work 37.5 hours: no overtime.

The Quebec rules a schedule must follow

• Weekly rest: at least 32 consecutive hours of rest each week.
• Meal break: 30 minutes after 5 consecutive hours of work, unpaid, unless the employee cannot leave their workstation. Coffee breaks are not mandatory, but they are paid if you grant them.
• Overtime: past 40 hours in the week, the standard work week for most employees, hours are paid at time and a half. Some jobs have a longer standard week, security guards for example.
• The right to refuse: an employee may refuse to work more than 2 hours over their regular hours or more than 14 hours per 24-hour period (12 hours if their hours are flexible or non-continuous), more than 50 hours in the week, or if they were not told their schedule 5 days in advance, unless their duties require them to remain available.
• Reporting indemnity: an employee who reports for work, on their schedule or because you called them in, and works less than 3 consecutive hours, for example because you shortened their shift, is entitled to 3 hours’ pay.
• Time before and after the shift: if you ask someone to arrive 10 or 15 minutes early, or to stay after, that time is paid.

Between two shifts, the law sets no number of hours of rest: the 14-hours-per-24 limit and the 32-hour weekly rest are what frame the schedule.

Sources, checked on November 11, 2026, on the CNESST website: Right to refuse to work overtime, Time worked, breaks and 3-hour indemnity, Overtime and Standard work week.

Posting and sharing the schedule

Print the schedule and post it where the whole team sees it, or save it as a PDF and send it by email or text. Hand it out on the same day each week, at least 5 days before the first shift. A change? Tell the person affected, then print and send the schedule again, so the posted version is always the right one. Keep a copy of each week: together with the hours actually worked, it answers payroll questions.

When a template is no longer enough

A printable template suits a small team whose schedule rarely changes. It reaches its limits when shift swaps pile up, when several people prepare the schedule, or when planned hours have to be compared with the hours actually worked for payroll. That is the time to keep the team’s schedule and hours in one place, in software.