Fairly distributing vacation days?

**Romseye** · 11-29-2010, 11:36 PM

My experience working with Dates in Excel has been dismal, but thought I would run this past this group to see if what someone asked me was possible, or would be worth the trouble, or if it should be done in some other form, like a database perhaps. Here is their question to me:

"Is it possible to use MS Excel to create a calendar that will calculate holidays fairly? For instance: If you have 5 employees, the 6 major holidays will be spread among those 5 employees. Is there a metric that will calculate a fair distribution of holiday coverage among the 5 employees?, i.e., if an employee takes Christmas this year he/she should not have to cover that holiday again for several years."

Appreciate all thoughts.

**masteff** · 12-03-2010, 06:02 PM

Too nebulous of a question. Define "fair". Define minimum coverage on each holiday.

**shg** · 12-03-2010, 07:04 PM

You could allow employees to vote on which holidays they wish to cover, in order of decreasing desire.

The assignments would be applied in round-robin order, with a rotating order by year. You still need to specify the minimum coverage for each holiday.