Free roster calculators and tools for Australian crews

Policy limits

Shifts (leave days blank for days off)

General guidance only, based on the limits you enter, not legal advice. NHVR standard/BFM hours and some awards use additional counting rules; check the NHVR and Safe Work Australia for the rules that apply to you. In Humanz these checks run automatically on every booking.

Assumes hours are shared evenly across the rotation. Turning the numbers into an actual working pattern is what rostering software does, see how auto-rostering fills a roster.

RDO accrual: time banked through the cycle

Each working day runs 51 min past a standard 7 h 36 min day. Across the 9 working days of the cycle that banks 7 h 36 min, one standard day, and that is the day off.

1. Day 151 min
2. Day 21 h 41 min
3. Day 32 h 32 min
4. Day 43 h 23 min
5. Day 54 h 13 min
6. Day 65 h 4 min
7. Day 75 h 55 min
8. Day 86 h 45 min
9. Day 97 h 36 min

Your next twelve days off

Each day off falls on your chosen weekday in the last week of the cycle, then every fortnight after that.

Hours and dates only: this calculator divides the hours you enter and counts the calendar, and says nothing about pay. Your award or registered agreement decides whether RDOs accrue at all, how they accrue, and what happens when a day off lands on a public holiday. The dates above take no account of public holidays or leave. How accrual works under the construction award, and what the roster and timesheet should record, is in the guide to rostered days off.

How to calculate FIFO roster days per year

Add the days on to the days off to get the cycle length. Divide 365 by the cycle for swings per year. For days on site, multiply 365 by the days on and divide by the cycle; the rest of the year is days at home. The figures count calendar days only: travel days sit on whichever side your agreement puts them, the swing or the R&R.

Worked example. A 2/1 roster is 14 days on and 7 off, a 21-day cycle. 365 ÷ 21 is 17.4 swings a year, 365 × 14 ÷ 21 is 243.3, so about 243 days on site, and the other 122 days are at home.

Common FIFO roster patterns: days on site and days at home

Swing patterns and travel are exactly what FIFO rostering software manages for whole crews, flights and camp nights included.

Days at home: 8/6 wins by 34 days a year. Full weekends at home: 8/6 wins by 4 a year.

Weekend counts are averaged over every possible start day of the pattern; yearly figures use a 365-day year. Managing patterns for a whole crew, flights, camp and travel included, is covered in FIFO flights, accommodation and rostering.

No-show cost = day rate × no-shows × 12, which understates the true impact (crew standing time, backfill premiums, client goodwill). Businesses moving to real-time rostering with confirmation tracking typically cut both numbers sharply, see how no-shows get prevented.

Assumes a new starter runs at half output during ramp-up (ramp weeks × 5 days × day rate × 50%). Structured onboarding shortens the ramp, see how to onboard field workers and onboarding software for mining & construction.

Error-fix costs understate reality, they exclude back-pay remediation and dispute time. Roster-prefilled digital timesheets with a proper approval workflow collapse both numbers: submission is a tap, approval is a queue, and errors get caught at the source.

The fix isn't surveillance, it's defaults. Roster-prefilled timesheets start from planned times so variances are deliberate, visible edits rather than memory, and the same clean data feeds payroll without re-keying.

No hours total yet? Estimate one

What counts as recordable. Fatalities, lost time injuries (at least one full shift lost after the day of injury), restricted work injuries (back at work on alternate or restricted duties) and medical treatment injuries (a doctor beyond first aid, no shift lost). First aid injuries are not recordable. A client's questionnaire may define the classes slightly differently, so use its definitions on its form. Why per million hours. Australia's injury recording standard, AS 1885.1, sets the frequency rate per million hours worked and tenders follow it. US OSHA rates use 200,000 hours, so the same year reads five times smaller on that basis. LTIFR vs TRIFR. LTIFR counts lost time injuries and fatalities only. TRIFR adds restricted work and medical treatment injuries, so it is always the same or higher. Benchmarks. Safe Work Australia publishes claims-based rates rather than TRIFR, and its national serious claims rate of 6.8 per million hours in 2023-24 counts accepted claims with a week or more off work, so it is not comparable with an injury-based rate. Compare against your own history on the same basis, and use a three to five year window if the crew is small. The worked example and the tender advice are in the TRIFR and LTIFR guide. Hours are the denominator, and approved digital timesheets are where the real figure lives. This page only does the arithmetic on what you type in. The Humanz app does not classify injuries or produce this rate from its own records; the counts are your safety team's.

Hazards on this site (each one adds its topics)

Printable templates

Three one-page records. Print straight from the page, or save as a PDF from the print dialog. They are starting points: add the questions your site, client or principal contractor asks for.

Is a toolbox talk a legal requirement? Not by name. The model WHS laws require a business to consult workers on health and safety matters and to give information, training and instruction that is suitable, adequate and readily understandable, and regulators across the country name toolbox talks as one way to do both. No law sets a frequency or a length. The common pattern is a daily prestart and a weekly toolbox talk, five to ten minutes each, with a signed record. What to keep. Topic, date, presenter, who attended, what was raised, and the actions with a name and a date on each. Heat. There is no stop-work temperature in Australian WHS law; the duty is to manage the risk, starting with moving heavy work to cooler parts of the day. The full guide is toolbox talks and prestart meetings for field crews. In the Humanz app, your admin builds the talk record and the prestart as custom forms that crews complete on their phones, timestamped against the job; this page only builds the calendar and prints the templates.