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Putting a rotating shift into a spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is the best of the do-it-yourself options: one formula generates a whole year. It is also the one you will never open at two in the morning.
Why a spreadsheet is good at this
A rotation is arithmetic. If you know the cycle length and the day it started, the shift on any date is just a remainder — count the days since the start, divide by the cycle length, and the remainder tells you which position in the pattern you are on.
That is one formula. Fill it down a column of dates and you have a year of your rotation in a few minutes, which is faster than any other method including ours.
The method that works
- One column of datesA year, filled down
- One cell for the cycle startThe day a cycle began, that you are certain of
- One row holding the patternD, D, O, O, D, D, D, O, O, D, D, O, O, O for a Panama
- A remainder formulaDays since the start, divided by cycle length, remainder points at the pattern
- Conditional formattingColor the cells so it reads as a calendar rather than a list
Where it stops
It lives on a computer. The schedule you need is the one you can check standing in a corridor with a coordinator on the phone. A spreadsheet on a laptop at home is not that.
One-off changes break the elegance. The formula is beautiful until you swap a shift, take leave, or get moved for a week. Then you are overwriting generated cells by hand, and the sheet stops agreeing with itself.
It does not carry the money. You can add columns for off-duty jobs, and people do, and then the file becomes something you maintain rather than something that helps you.
When it is the right answer
For working out what a pattern does before you bid on it, a spreadsheet is genuinely excellent. Build it, look at where the weekends fall, decide, and then never open it again.
Where BlueShifts differs
The same arithmetic, on the phone in your pocket, with one-off changes recorded on top of the pattern rather than overwriting it — and with the off-duty work, the pay and the mileage attached to the days they belong to.
Where to go next
Comparing patterns before a bid · Every pattern, with its cycle length · The part a spreadsheet cannot carry
The same arithmetic, in your pocket
Save the pattern once and the calendar fills itself in — as far ahead as you want to look, and back over the months you have already worked.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
