How to roster staff from Google Calendar with colour codes

If your jobs live in Google Calendar, you have probably rostered staff the slow way: open an event, add the right person as a guest, save, open the next one. It works for ten jobs. At forty jobs a week it is an evening, and one missed event is a client nobody turns up for.

This guide covers rostering a whole week in one pass by colour, adding a second person to the jobs that need one, and giving every staff member a view of their own day.

The idea: the colour is the roster

Every Google Calendar event can carry one of eleven standard colours. Give each staff member a colour, colour each job for the person doing it, and the roster is already written down — it just has not been applied to the events yet. Applying it is one button.

A colour belongs to one person, so up to eleven people can be rostered by colour. That covers most crews, and anyone beyond that can still be added to jobs as an assistant, covered below.

Step 1: Add your staff and their colours

In the Calendar Force web app, open the calendar and expand Staff Calendars in the side panel. Add each staff member with their name, the Google account email they use, and their colour. The email matters: it is the address each job is assigned to, and so the calendar the job will appear in.

Step 2: Colour the week

Colour each job for the person doing it, either in Google Calendar or in the Calendar Force calendar. Most people end up doing it as they book, so by the time the week starts the roster is already done and only needs applying.

Step 3: Assign the week in one pass

In the same side panel, use Assign Staff / Invitations. Pick a start and end date and run it. Every event in that range whose colour belongs to a staff member gets that person added as its guest.

It reports what it did: how many events were assigned, how many were already correct, and how many were skipped because their colour does not belong to anyone. Events already assigned to the right person are left alone, so running the same week again is cheap. If Google stops accepting changes partway through a very large range, wait a minute and run it again — it picks up where it stopped rather than starting over.

No invitation email is sent. Your staff get the job because they are a guest on it, which puts it in their own Google Calendar. If a job does not appear for someone, check the Add invitations to my calendar setting in their Google Calendar.

The one thing to know before you run it

Assigning staff replaces the event's guest list. That is deliberate — if you recolour a job from one person to another, the first person should come off it — but it means anyone else you had added as a guest is removed, including a client you invited. Keep client details in the event description instead, which is also where Calendar Force looks for the phone number when it texts them a reminder.

It also means order matters when a job needs two people: assign staff first, then add assistants. Running Assign Staff again afterwards would take the assistants back off.

It works on the main calendar of the Google account connected to Calendar Force.

Step 4: Add assistants where a job needs two

Some jobs need a second pair of hands. Assign Assistants handles that without disturbing the colour roster: choose a date range, and for each day pair an assistant with the staff member they are working with. The assistant is added to every job that person has that day — alongside them, not instead of them.

So “Riley works with Jordan on Tuesday” is one line, not a guest added by hand to each of Jordan's six Tuesday jobs.

Everyone sees their own day

In the office, each person under Staff Calendars has a colour circle beside their name. Fill a circle to show only that person's calendar — the quickest way to check someone's day is right before it starts.

In the field, staff do not need the web app. The jobs are in their own Google Calendar, and the photo portal on their phone lists their jobs for the week so they can attach photos of finished work to the right one. See invoicing a job from a photo.

From the roster to the invoice

The roster does not stop at the calendar. When you import jobs into your service log with Pull Services, each job's staff are written into the log's Attendance column by name, so the log records who did the work without anyone typing it. How invoicing from those same events works.

What it costs

Nothing extra. Assigning staff and assistants does not use SMS credits or invoice tokens.

What this does not do

Calendar Force puts the right names on the right jobs; it is not workforce management. It does not track timesheets or pay, manage leave or availability, or warn you about double-booking — if two jobs overlap in one person's colour, they are assigned both. The judgement about who should be where stays with you.

Summary

1. Add each staff member with their Google email and a colour under Staff Calendars.
2. Colour each job for the person doing it.
3. Run Assign Staff / Invitations over the week. It replaces guest lists, so keep client details in the description.
4. Then add second workers with Assign Assistants.
5. Fill a staff member's circle to check their day.

Calendar Force is a Google Workspace Marketplace add-on plus a web app, built for service businesses that already run their work out of Google Calendar. The same rostered events can text your clients a reminder and become invoices. See pricing or start free.