Rota Builder
← All toolsChores, on-call weeks, who reads next — one list of people, however many slots you need, dealt out at random but evenly, so nobody quietly ends up with twice as many turns as everyone else.
How to use the Rota Builder
- Paste in the people who are in the rota, one per line.
- Set how many slots to fill, or name them — Mon, Tue, Wed, or Week 1 to Week 12.
- Leave “never the same person twice in a row” on unless back-to-back turns are fine.
- Click “Build the rota”. The tally underneath shows how many turns each person got.
FAQ
- What does “evenly” actually mean here?
- That the busiest person is at most one turn ahead of the quietest, always. The rota is dealt in whole rounds — everybody once per round, in a fresh random order each time — rather than picking a name at random for each slot, which is what leaves someone with five turns and someone else with one. Only the last, part-finished round can give anyone that extra turn, and who gets it is random.
- How does it stop the same person going twice in a row?
- Within a round it cannot happen, because everyone appears exactly once. The only place it can is where one round ends and the next begins, so if the new round would open with whoever just finished, they are swapped with someone else in that round. That keeps the round intact, so the even distribution survives.
- Can I name the slots?
- Yes — put them in the slot names box, one per line, and they become the rota. Mon to Fri, Week 1 to Week 12, or the actual dates. Leave it empty and you get numbered slots instead.
- Can one person have more turns than another on purpose?
- No — the point here is an even, unbiased share. If someone should carry a heavier load, run the rota for the people on equal footing and add the rest by hand.
