HR, Scheduling & Payroll Templates for Excel and Google Sheets
HR software makes sense once you have enough employees to justify onboarding a platform, but a lot of small teams are tracking PTO balances, shift coverage, and skill gaps for a handful of people, where a spreadsheet is genuinely the faster tool. The catch is that PTO accrual math and overtime rules are easy to get subtly wrong in a homemade sheet, which is where most DIY versions fall apart.
The templates here include the paid PTO Tracker, built around accrual rates and running balances, plus free templates for workforce planning across shifts, employee scorecards, and competency matrices for tracking who's trained on what.
Premium templates
Free templates
Workforce Planning Template (Excel + Google Sheets, Free)
FreeEmployee Scorecard Template (Excel + Google Sheets, Free)
FreeFree Competency Checklist Template (Excel Skills Matrix)
Accruing PTO correctly in a spreadsheet
PTO accrual isn't a flat annual number divided by twelve in most policies — it typically accrues per pay period, sometimes at a different rate after a tenure milestone, and has to net against time actually taken without letting the balance go negative unless your policy allows it. The PTO Tracker calculates a running balance per employee from an accrual rate and logs requests against it, so the number on the screen matches what payroll would actually owe someone if they left tomorrow.
That running-balance approach is what most free PTO templates skip — they'll log requests but won't calculate what's actually accrued to date, which means someone still has to do the accrual math by hand before approving a request.
Timesheets, overtime, and shift coverage
A timesheet has to handle more than clock-in and clock-out: overtime rules kick in after a threshold that varies by state and by whether pay is calculated weekly or biweekly, and workforce planning across shifts needs to show coverage gaps before they turn into an understaffed shift. The workforce planning template lays out shift assignments against required coverage per slot, so a gap shows up as a gap rather than getting discovered when someone doesn't show.
That same shift-by-shift view is what makes it possible to catch a coverage problem a week out instead of the morning of, which matters most in roles where a single no-show directly affects service — retail floor coverage, a restaurant shift, or a site that needs a minimum headcount for safety reasons.
Competency matrices for skills and training gaps
A competency matrix maps each employee against the skills or certifications a role requires, so you can see at a glance who's cross-trained, who's due for a certification renewal, and where you're single-point-of-failure on a critical skill. The employee scorecard and competency matrix templates are built for that view — rows of employees, columns of skills, with a status per cell rather than a paragraph of notes per person that no one reliably keeps updated.
Frequently asked questions
Does the PTO Tracker calculate accrual automatically, or do I enter balances manually?
It calculates a running balance automatically from an accrual rate you set, netting against logged time-off requests, so you're not manually recalculating each employee's balance before approving a request.
Can the timesheet template handle overtime rules?
The workforce planning and timesheet templates are built around standard hourly tracking and shift coverage; overtime threshold rules vary by state and pay schedule, so you should confirm your specific threshold applies correctly to your setup.
What's the difference between an employee scorecard and a competency matrix?
A competency matrix maps employees against specific skills or certifications to show training gaps. An employee scorecard tracks broader performance metrics per employee over time. They're complementary, not duplicates.
Are the free HR templates full-featured, or a limited version of the paid PTO Tracker?
Workforce planning, the employee scorecard, and the competency matrix are separate free templates covering different HR needs, not stripped-down versions of the PTO Tracker.
Do these templates work in Google Sheets, or only Excel?
Both. Every template in this category is available as a matching Excel and Google Sheets build, with identical formulas and no macros on either platform.