Weekly Crew Scheduling Template

Weekly Schedule Grid

The foundation of crew scheduling is a grid that maps crews to sites for every shift in a week. This is not complicated, but most cleaning companies outgrow their mental tracking around the 8-10 site mark and start making mistakes: double-booking a crew member, forgetting a site, or burning out the same person with back-to-back shifts.

Grid structure:

Your schedule grid has three axes:

1. Day of week (columns): Monday through Sunday
2. Shift window (rows within each day): Morning (6 AM - 2 PM), Afternoon (2 PM - 10 PM), Night (10 PM - 6 AM). Not every company uses all three windows. Most commercial cleaning happens in the night window after the building closes.
3. Crew assignment (cell contents): Who is going where, what time they start and end, and which site they are cleaning.

Example layout for a single day:

Monday - Night Shift
| Crew Member   | Site            | Arrive  | Depart  | Hours |
|---------------|-----------------|---------|---------|-------|
| Maria T.      | Oakridge Office | 6:00 PM | 10:00 PM| 4.0   |
| Carlos R.     | Oakridge Office | 6:00 PM | 10:00 PM| 4.0   |
| James P.      | Metro Medical   | 7:00 PM | 11:30 PM| 4.5   |
| Anh L.        | Metro Medical   | 7:00 PM | 11:30 PM| 4.5   |
| DeShawn M.    | Riverside Plaza | 9:00 PM | 1:00 AM | 4.0   |
| Priya K.      | Riverside Plaza | 9:00 PM | 1:00 AM | 4.0   |

Fill this out for every day of the week. The immediate benefit: you can see at a glance who is working when, where there are gaps, and who is approaching overtime.

Site requirements column:

Next to or below each site entry, note the minimum crew size and any special requirements:

• Oakridge Office: 2-person crew, client provides alarm code weekly, key held by Maria
• Metro Medical: 2-person crew, HIPAA training required, biohazard bags needed
• Riverside Plaza: 2-person crew, loading dock access only after 8 PM

These notes prevent the mistake of sending someone who does not have access or the right training.

Travel Time and Route Planning

Travel between sites is unpaid labor for your crew and wasted time for your business. If you have crew members working two sites in one night, the time they spend driving between them is time they are not cleaning.

Travel time log:

For every crew member who works multiple sites in one shift, document the travel:

Carlos R. - Monday Night
| From           | To              | Drive Time | Distance |
|----------------|-----------------|------------|----------|
| Home           | Oakridge Office | 20 min     | 8 mi     |
| Oakridge Office| Metro Medical   | 35 min     | 14 mi    |
| Metro Medical  | Home            | 25 min     | 10 mi    |
Total drive time: 80 min (unpaid but affects scheduling)

Route optimization rules:

1. Cluster nearby sites on the same crew. If two buildings are 5 minutes apart, assign the same people to both. If they are 40 minutes apart, split them into separate crews.

2. Sequence sites by closing time. If Building A closes at 6 PM and Building B closes at 8 PM, clean A first. Do not have your crew sitting in a parking lot for two hours waiting for Building B to close.

3. Account for drive time in your schedule. If a crew finishes Site A at 9:30 PM and needs 30 minutes to drive to Site B, they cannot start Site B at 9:30 PM. Schedule Site B for 10:00 PM. This sounds obvious, but compressed schedules where drive time gets ignored are the leading cause of crews running behind.

4. Track mileage if you reimburse. The IRS standard mileage rate changes annually. If you reimburse crew for using personal vehicles, log the mileage per shift and per site for accurate reimbursement and tax deduction.

When to restructure routes:

Revisit your routing when you add or lose a site, when a client changes their cleaning schedule or building access hours, or when you notice a crew consistently finishing late. Late finishes often trace back to unrealistic drive time assumptions rather than slow cleaning.