Volunteer rota from a spreadsheet
Community groups, churches and food banks run on people who give their time for free, and the least you can do is hand them a rota that is easy to read. Upload the sheet you already keep — a CSV from a shared drive or an Excel workbook a coordinator maintains — and Rowmill lays every date and name out in a tidy PDF you can print, pin or email round the group.
1 Load your rotaCSV or Excel, as you already keep it
Your file never leaves your browser. The spreadsheet is read by JavaScript running on your own device, and nothing is uploaded or stored.
2 Check the columnsmatched for you - change any that are wrong
Once a file is loaded, each column is matched to a name, role, date or time here.
3 Title it and downloada printable PDF, built in this browser
Your roster appears here, grouped by date, before anything is downloaded.
Recognised column names
The tool recognises these column names: Volunteer, Task, Date, From, To, Location
Why a proper rota matters
Volunteers juggle shifts around jobs, study and family, so a confused schedule costs you no-shows. A clean document with one block per date, names, tasks and times in consistent columns removes the guesswork and cuts the number of what-time-am-I-on messages your coordinators answer every week.
How it works
Drop your file onto the page. Rowmill reads the headers and guesses which column holds the volunteer, the task, the date and the start and end times. Confirm or adjust the mapping, choose day-first or month-first dates, then watch the preview build. Entries sit grouped under their date heading, so a reader scanning for Sunday sees only Sunday.
Built for real volunteer sheets
Real sheets are untidy. Some rows have a first name but no surname. Time cells hold 9, 09:00 or an Excel fraction. A few carry a note like brings own hi-vis. Rowmill tolerates all of it: it normalises times, keeps notes alongside the entry, and reports any rows it skipped so nothing disappears.
Private by design
Volunteer names are personal data, and you should not have to upload them to an unknown server. Everything here runs in your browser: the file is read locally, the PDF is assembled locally, and nothing is transmitted, stored or logged. Close the tab and it is gone.
Who uses this
Church welcome teams, readers and coffee duties. Food banks scheduling warehouse sessions and drivers. Scout groups covering parent helpers. Charity shops planning till shifts. Village halls, litter picks, festivals and fun runs — anywhere a spreadsheet of names and times needs to become something you can pin to a door.
Questions
My sheet has extra columns like phone numbers. Will they break it?
No. You map only the columns you want on the rota; anything extra is ignored.
Can I use this for a one-off event with lots of helpers?
Yes. As long as each row is one person with a date and times, it works for a festival weekend as well as a weekly rota.
Does it work with Google Sheets?
Download your sheet as CSV or Excel and drop that file in. The result is identical.
Is any volunteer data uploaded?
No. Reading, mapping and PDF generation all happen in your browser, so names never leave your device.
Can I add a subtitle like the group name?
Yes. Type it before you build the preview and it prints under the title on the first page of the PDF.