The four manual routes compared
| Route | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Type each shift in | A week or two of shifts | Slow, and a wrong date is easy to miss |
| Import a spreadsheet | A full rota of a month or more | Date formats, and nights that cross midnight |
| Repeating events | A fixed cycle, such as two days, two nights, four off | Leave, swaps and overtime break the pattern |
| A calendar feed from your rota app | Rotas that already live in an app | Not every app or employer offers one |
Route 1: type each shift in
Fine for a week-ahead rota.
- Use the same title every time, such as "Work: late". You will be able to search for them, and delete them, later.
- Enter a night as one event. Start on the evening you go in and end the next morning. Do not split it at midnight.
- Read it back against the rota when you have finished, date by date. The usual mistake is a shift on the right weekday in the wrong week.
Keep shifts in a calendar of their own, separate from your personal one. It lets you hide them, share them or clear them out without touching anything else.
Route 2: import a spreadsheet
For a long rota, typing rows into a spreadsheet is faster than creating events one at a time. Google Calendar can import a .csv file on a computer. Its import instructions give the headers, which must be in English:
| Subject | Start Date | Start Time | End Date | End Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Work: long day | 11/14/2026 | 7:30 AM | 11/14/2026 | 8:30 PM |
| Work: night | 11/15/2026 | 8:00 PM | 11/16/2026 | 8:30 AM |
Only Subject and Start Date are required, but a shift without times is not much use. Then, in Google Calendar on a computer:
- Open Settings, then Settings again from the menu.
- Choose Import and export.
- Select the file from your computer.
- Choose which calendar to add the events to.
- Click Import.
Google's own example writes dates month first (05/30/2020 for 30 May) and times with AM and PM, which is why the rows above look American. After importing, look at a date where the day is 12 or lower and make sure 3 November has not become 11 March. An import is also a one-off copy. If the rota changes, you edit the events by hand, or clear the calendar and import the corrected file.
If your rota is already a spreadsheet with one row per person and one column per day, you still have to turn your row into one line per shift and replace each code with real times. That step is where most of the work is.
Route 3: repeating events for a fixed pattern
If your pattern is fixed, set it up once. For two days, two nights and four off, that is four repeating events (day one, day two, night one, night two), each repeating every eight days.
In Google Calendar you choose how often an event repeats from the menu next to "Does not repeat", and a repeating series is limited to 730 occurrences. Whatever calendar you use, check it can repeat every so many days. A shift cycle is rarely seven days long, so "weekly" will not do.
The pitfall is everything that is not the pattern. A day's leave, a swap or an overtime shift has to be changed on that one occurrence, and it is easy to forget the swap you agreed in a corridor.
Route 4: a calendar feed from your rota app
Some rota apps can publish your shifts as a calendar feed that your calendar subscribes to and keeps up to date. RotaCloud's help centre, for example, has instructions for feeding its rota into Google Calendar. Look in your rota app's settings or help pages for "calendar feed" or "calendar sync". If it is there, it beats the other routes, because changes come through on their own.
Where Vennado saves the work
If the reason you want your rota in a calendar is to find a day when you and other people are free, Vennado skips the calendar step. If all you want is your shifts in your own calendar, a shift calendar app will suit you better than Vennado.
You give it the rota as it arrived: a screenshot from a rota app, a PDF, a spreadsheet, a Word document, or text pasted from a message. A photo of a paper rota can be tried, but it is often misread. It is sent to Vennado's server and read by an AI model run by Cloudflare to pull out the shifts. If the rota has several names on it, Vennado asks which is yours. It then lists each shift with a date, a start time and an end time, and tells you which codes it did not recognise, with its best guess at each.
The rota file, screenshot and text are not stored by Vennado and not logged. What is kept, once you confirm, is the list of times you are busy.
Why you must check the result. Rota reading can misread. A photo taken at an angle, a code that means different hours on different wards, a merged cell or a handwritten swap can each put a shift on the wrong day or leave it out. A missed shift shows up as a free day, and somebody books for it. Read down the list before you confirm.
When you check, look hardest at whether the row is yours, each night starts on the right evening, guessed codes have your real times and the shifts have landed in the right weeks. How Vennado works goes through the same checks.
What Vennado does not do is put the shifts into your own calendar, or update itself when the rota changes. When you swap, edit the shift or add the new rota.
Which route for which job
The job-by-job pages cover the detail: doctors picking a row out of a department sheet, nurses and midwives adding each roster period, emergency services with repeating patterns, and hospitality and retail with a screenshot from the group chat. If you already keep shifts in a calendar, you can connect it instead with a calendar link.
Questions people ask
How do I add my shift rota to Google Calendar?
Either type each shift in as an event, or build a spreadsheet with the headers Subject, Start Date, Start Time, End Date and End Time, save it as a .csv file and import it on a computer under Settings, then Import and export. Google's import instructions list every header. Import into a separate calendar so a mistake is easy to undo.
How should I enter a night shift that crosses midnight?
As one event that starts on the evening you go in and ends the next morning, with the end date set to the following day. Two events split at midnight make the calendar look as if you are free for a moment at 00:00, and they double the chance of a typing error. In a spreadsheet import, the End Date column does this job.
Can I set up a repeating shift pattern instead of entering every shift?
Yes, if the pattern really is fixed. Create one repeating event for each shift in the cycle and set each to repeat every cycle length, such as every eight days. Check your calendar app can repeat every so many days, not only weekly. Leave, swaps and overtime will still need editing by hand as they happen.
Does Vennado put my shifts into my own calendar?
No. Vennado reads your rota to work out when you are busy, so it can find the times your group is free. It does not create entries in your Google, Apple or Outlook calendar and it never writes to your calendar. Once a plan is locked in, you can add that one event to your own calendar.
How accurate is rota reading?
We do not put a number on it, because it depends on the rota. A clean spreadsheet with times written out is easier to read than a photo of a wall chart full of local codes. Rota reading can misread, so Vennado lists every shift for you to check and tells you which codes it had to guess. Nothing counts until you confirm.