Rotating Shift Calendar
4-on-4-off, panama, dupont and custom shift rotations.
These calculators are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice.
How the Rotating Shift Calendar works
The Rotating Shift Calendar turns a rotation rule into a plain list of which days you are ON and which you are OFF. Pick a start date, choose one of the continuous patterns — 4-on-4-off, 2-on-2-off, 5-on-2-off, or 6-on-3-off — and set how many days ahead to project. The calculator walks forward one day at a time, marks each day worked or free, and totals how many shifts fall inside the window.
The key thing to understand is that these rotations ignore the ordinary work week. A 4-on-4-off pattern runs seven days a week: the crew works four straight days — Saturdays and Sundays included — then rests four, so the same calendar weekday drifts through the cycle instead of repeating. That is exactly why a rotating roster is so hard to read off a normal wall calendar, and why projecting it from a fixed anchor date removes the guesswork.
Because the pattern is anchored to your start date, the same rule produces a completely different ON/OFF map depending on where in the cycle you begin. Enter the first day of your current block so the projection lines up with the roster you are already working, then read the shifts forward from there.
Worked example
Start a 4-on-4-off rotation on Monday and the first block is Monday through Thursday ON, then Friday through the following Monday OFF, then Tuesday through Friday ON. Over a 30-day projection that produces roughly 15 worked days, but notice the worked days land on different weekdays each block — the second ON block starts on a Tuesday, the third on a Saturday — which is the whole reason a rotation resists a "same days every week" mental model.
Frequently asked questions
Do weekends and public holidays change the rotation?
No. Continuous shift rotations like 4-on-4-off run every day of the week, so the calculator does not skip Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays — it advances the ON/OFF cycle through them. If your workplace pays a holiday premium or swaps a crew on public holidays, that is a pay and staffing rule layered on top of the rotation, not a change to which day the pattern lands on.
Which patterns can I project?
Four continuous rotations: 4-on-4-off, 2-on-2-off, 5-on-2-off, and 6-on-3-off. Each is defined by the number of consecutive days worked followed by the number of consecutive days off, repeated indefinitely from your start date.
What date should I use as the start?
Use the first day of your current ON block. Because the pattern is measured from the day you enter, starting mid-cycle shifts every ON and OFF day that follows — anchoring on the first worked day of a block keeps the projection aligned with the roster you are actually on.