A care home's rota lived in a spreadsheet.
We rebuilt it as a system.

How a fragmented monthly roster for a UK care home became one place to plan shifts, watch cost, and stay compliant.

Built by Alchemetryx · Real UK care home · Site and staff names anonymised

Before

Roster_JUNE_2026.xlsxUpdated 05/06

RNs / SENIOR
R. Owusu	48
A. Marie	48
D. Owusu	38
CARER — DAY
D. Pun	44
E. Nyeche	44
K. Giri	38
NEED		11	12	13	14	15	16	17
M. Pascual	40

OFFICEAncillaryKing GeorgeUnion JackThames

After

The before

Five tabs, and a lot of trust.

The home planned every month in one shared Excel file. Five tabs, one per area: Office, Ancillary, and the three floors, King George, Union Jack and Thames. Staff were typed into a grid by hand, week after week stretched across ninety columns, and the file was updated whenever someone remembered.

No running cost

Nobody could see the wage bill against budget until the month was already spent.

No coverage check

Whether a floor was actually staffed for a shift was worked out by eye, row by row.

Leave lived in heads

Annual leave, maternity and sick sat in side notes and memory, not next to the rota they affected.

The build

One system that understands a care home.

Not a generic scheduler. A tool shaped around how a care home actually runs: floors, bank staff, statutory leave and a live budget. Built and hosted by Alchemetryx.

One view, every floor

The five tabs become one screen.

Live cost against the budget cap, coverage across all three floors, pending leave and compliance alerts. All current, all in one place, instead of scattered across a workbook.

Dashboard showing cost, coverage, leave and compliance

A rota that does the maths

Cost is visible while decisions are still open.

Build and publish the month by role and floor. Cost and scheduled hours update as shifts go in, so the wage bill is in front of the manager while there is still time to change it, not after payroll.

Monthly rota grid with live cost and scheduled hours

Leave and cover, tracked

Statutory leave sits next to the rota it affects.

Annual leave, maternity and sick on one timeline, tied to entitlement. What used to live in a side note now sits beside the schedule it changes.

What this is, and what it isn't

A capability build, not a savings headline.

The system is real and running on our own infrastructure, shaped around the way a UK care home operates. We are not putting a number on hours or pounds saved, because the honest measure of this work is the jump you can see above: a fragile spreadsheet becomes one system that holds cost, coverage and compliance in a single place.

If your rota still lives in a spreadsheet, that is a conversation worth having. alchemetryx.com