Vet practice rota template: the structure that holds, and where it breaks.

The four columns that matter.

• Cover: for each day and slot, how many vets and how many vet nurses you need (consults, surgery, inpatients).
• Hours: each person’s contracted hours, and the 48-hour weekly average that applies in Ireland and the UK.
• Rest: 11 consecutive hours’ rest in every 24 (section 11 of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 in Ireland, regulation 10 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 in Great Britain), and weekly rest.
• Leave and absences: marked before spreading people, not after.

How to lay out the sheet.

1. One row per person, grouped by team: vets, then vet nurses.
2. One column per day of the month, with weekends and bank holidays highlighted.
3. In each cell, a short code: D (day), AM, PM, N (night), OC (on-call), L (leave), O (off).
4. Along the bottom, a count per day: people present per slot against the need.
5. On the right, a count per person: hours this month, nights, Saturdays, Sundays.

Where it breaks.

The template checks, but it doesn’t build. Every holiday, every sick day, every swap means redoing the 11-hour rests, the cover and the counters by hand. One badly copied formula and the whole month is wrong. And a fair share of on-call needs a memory of previous months, which a fresh sheet every month doesn’t have.

The alternative: an engine that builds the month.

Djed starts from the same data as your template (needs, people, rules) and builds the whole month, on-call included, in a few seconds. Vets and vet nurses are two separate teams on the same rota, by day or by shift. The hard rules you set in days (days off, limits, rest days after on-call, closures) are never broken; limits counted in hours, on the other hand, are not checked. A fairness index per person replaces the counters at the end of each row. You can compare it with your sheet in a demo: see plans and pricing.

Before you fill in the grid, the rules it has to respect.

A template doesn’t know the law: the limits are yours to set. Three reads head off the usual mistakes:

• the working time limits and rest that apply, in Ireland and in Great Britain;
• what the law asks you to record, since a template only holds planned hours: three years of records in Ireland and regulation 9 in the UK;
• how three long days change cover before you promise them, in Ireland and in the UK.

Sources and date checked.

• Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, revised edition (sections 11 to 17 and 25).
• Working Time Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/1833), regulations 4 to 12. Northern Ireland has its own regulations, the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016, with the same limits.

Texts checked on 5 October 2026. This guide is not legal advice: for your own situation, speak to your HR or employment adviser.