Weekly Shift Planner

A weekly shift planner answers a simple question: what does your week actually look like? Many people know their shifts one day at a time but never see the whole week together. That blind spot causes surprises: too many hours in one week, a very short rest between two shifts, or a weekend that quietly disappears. Seeing the week as a whole prevents all three.

This free planner works from lines you can type in seconds. Each line holds one shift, written as a day plus a start and end time, for example Mon 09:00-17:00. You can also write overnight shifts, such as Fri 22:00-06:00, and the tool counts them correctly across midnight. Lines that do not follow the pattern are simply skipped, so a typo cannot break your whole week.

The output starts with the two numbers that matter most: total hours and overtime hours. You set the threshold where overtime begins, forty hours by default. If your week adds up to forty-four hours, the tool shows four hours of overtime at once. That number is useful for pay checks, for rest planning, and for honest talks with a manager about workload.

Next comes the day-by-day breakdown. You see hours for Monday through Sunday in one line, which makes uneven weeks obvious. A week with four long days and one short day looks very different from a week with five even days, even when the totals match. The breakdown helps you plan energy, childcare, study time, and appointments around the real shape of your week.

The rest-gap check is the feature most people overlook until they need it. The tool finds the shortest gap between any two shifts in your week. A gap under eleven hours means you barely have time to travel home, sleep, and return. Spotting that gap on paper, before the week starts, gives you time to ask for a swap or prepare properly. Discovering it after a long night shift is far worse.

Use the planner before you accept extra shifts. When a manager asks whether you can cover Saturday, add the shift to your week and look at the new total and the new rest gaps. If the extra shift pushes you into overtime you did not want, or cuts a rest gap below a safe level, you have clear numbers to explain your answer. Numbers make a polite no much easier to give.

The planner also helps students and part-time workers who juggle two jobs. Put both jobs into the same week view, and clashes and double-booked hours show up at once. You can then move one shift, drop one shift, or talk to one employer with facts in hand. Two separate calendars hide clashes; one combined week reveals them.

Remember that this tool is a planning aid, not a legal guide. Overtime rules, rest rules, and night-work rules differ by country, contract, and sector. Your contract and your local working-time rules decide what counts, not this calculator. Use the numbers here to plan and to ask good questions, then confirm anything that affects pay or rights with your employer or a trusted adviser.

Try it with the sample week already loaded, then replace it with your real shifts. Add an overnight shift and watch the hours still add up correctly. A clear week view takes a minute to build, and it turns vague worry about a busy week into a plan you can actually act on.

Keep the planner open on your phone during the week, and update it the moment a shift changes. A week view that matches reality helps you rest well, arrive on time, and spot problems while there is still time to fix them.

Versión en español