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Free call schedule generator

Type your team, pick the month and get a fair on-call rota: calls and weekends shared evenly, a free day after every call, leave days respected. Download it for Excel or print it.

Runs entirely in your browser. Names and dates are never sent to a server or stored by us — close the tab and they are gone.

One person per line: name, a colon, then days of the month. Ranges like 10-14 work too.

Weeks start on Monday. Weekend = Saturday and Sunday.

How the generator decides

It walks through the month and, for every open slot, looks at who is free that day. Someone is free if they are not on leave, not already on call that day and, with the rest option on, not on call the day before or the day after. Among the free people it picks:

  1. whoever has the fewest calls so far,
  2. then whoever has the fewest weekend calls (on Saturdays and Sundays this comes first),
  3. then whoever's other calls are furthest away, so calls are spread through the month.

At the end it hands single calls from anyone who is two or more ahead to someone who is behind, as long as that doesn't break a rule. With a reasonably sized team you get call counts and weekend counts that differ by at most one. If the team is too small for your settings, the empty slots are marked in red instead of quietly breaking the rest rule.

Tips for a schedule people accept

  • Collect leave before you generate. Changing one day afterwards is easy; changing ten means starting over. Our guide on handling leave and swaps covers what to do once the schedule is out.
  • Publish the summary table. Showing calls and weekends per person ends most "why me again?" conversations before they start.
  • Carry fairness across months. If someone had an extra weekend this month, list them lower next month. See how to make a fair on-call schedule for residents.
  • Check your rest rules. A free day after a call is a common minimum, not a legal guarantee. Read what the rules say about rest after night shifts and call and check your local regulations.

What this free tool doesn't do

It handles one call type and one team. It doesn't know about clinics, theatre lists, day and night shifts, seniority mix, people who can't work together or a fairness history from previous months. For a simple monthly call rota that is often enough; if you are still stitching the rest together by hand, the comparison in Excel vs scheduling software may help.

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Rules more complicated than this?

FasterShift is an AI-powered scheduling assistant for hospital teams. Describe your rules in plain language and it drafts a balanced schedule you can edit, including:

  • clinics, theatre and ward duties next to on-call
  • person-specific exceptions and preferences
  • day, evening and night shifts
  • several units or departments

Try FasterShift free for 14 days — no card needed. After the trial, plans start from US$12 per team per month.

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