A free call schedule generator that counts the weekends.
Type the names, pick the month, tick the holidays your group observes. It hands out weekdays, weekends and holidays so nobody ends up more than one ahead, then lets you change any day and download the month for Excel.
It runs in your browser. The names you type are not sent anywhere and are not saved. Close the tab and they are gone.
Build a month
One name per line, 2 to 12. Initials are fine.
Who has what
Change a day
Pick a different name on any day. The calendar and the counts above follow.
How it splits the month
- Holidays first. They are the scarcest days, so they are given out before anything else, one per person until everyone has one.
- Weekends next. If your group covers a weekend as one block, the block goes to one person and is never split. A holiday kept with its weekend counts as that person’s weekend.
- Weekdays last. Each remaining day goes to whoever has the fewest so far.
- Days off are respected. If someone is away, their share moves to the others as evenly as it can. When days off make an even split impossible, the page says so instead of pretending.
- Then it tidies. It swaps like-for-like days between people to cut down back-to-back call and the same person on two weekends in a row. The counts do not change when it does this.
It tries 24 different starting orders and keeps the most even month. Rebuild gives you another one with the same counts and different names on the days.
What it does not do
- It has no memory. It builds one month from nothing. It does not know who worked Christmas last year or who is owed a weekend from March. Carry that yourself and change the days by hand.
- One person per day. No backup call, no day and night split, no second service.
- It does not check any rule. Not duty hours, not a residency program’s requirements, not a contract or a bylaw. If you schedule residents, treat the result as a draft and check it against your program’s rules yourself.
- No requests, swaps or approvals. It is a calculator for one person at a desk.
- US holidays only in the list. Add any other date with “Add a holiday”.
Questions
Is it free?
Yes. No account and no email address.
Where do the names go?
Nowhere. The page does the arithmetic on your own device. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored, which also means it cannot bring your list back next month. Download the file if you want to keep it.
Why are the totals not equal when weekdays, weekends and holidays each are?
A weekend block is two to four days. With five people and four weekends, one person has no weekend that month, and no fair split of weekdays makes up three days. The page evens out each kind of day and shows the totals so you can see the gap. Most groups settle it across the year, not inside one month.
Can I use it for a resident call schedule?
As a first draft, yes: it will spread the nights and weekends evenly across up to 12 people. It does not know your program’s duty-hour rules, rotations or days in clinic, so check the result before you post it.
Can it open my existing Excel schedule?
No. It only builds a new month. If you would rather keep the month in a spreadsheet and have the counting done for you, the free on-call schedule template does that.
When you want it to remember
Callwell is the app this page borrows its method from. It keeps the counts across the year and catches people up, takes time-off requests from each person’s own phone, sends swaps to the admin, and shows everyone the same schedule. It is free for up to 3 people in the call pool, and on that plan you place the days yourself. Auto-Build is Pro: $299/year or $29.99/month for the whole group, not per person. The annual plan includes a 3-month trial. The monthly plan does not. Viewers are free. iPhone and iPad. It stores no patient information.
Callwell is in App Store review. Until it is released, the web version is invite-only.
See how Callwell works Get the free Excel templateComparing tools: Callwell and Amion, Callwell and QGenda.