Excel vs residency scheduling software: Chiefly vs Excel

Chiefly is both residency scheduling software and a service, built only for graduate medical education programs. A program sends last year’s schedule and its requirements, and our team loads the program’s rules and ACGME requirements. Chiefly then generates the block schedule, with the daily, clinic and call schedules integrated, and re-runs them when anything changes, from parental leave to an off-cycle resident.

Every program gets a dedicated scheduling advisor. Boston Children’s 188-resident program built a fully ACGME-compliant block schedule within a week (case study), and UVA Pediatrics built its academic year in a week and a half (case study).

Because everyone already has it, and because it is flexible: a spreadsheet gives chiefs full control to build, plan and tinker with the schedule however their program needs, which no publishing tool does. Chiefly started the same way: our cofounder’s wife spent months as a chief resident building her program’s schedule in Excel (our story).

About half of a chief’s year, by chiefs’ own accounts. With Chiefly, UVA Pediatrics saved 513 chief hours and built its academic year in a week and a half (case study).

It costs the hospital money too. Cutting that scheduling time in half frees about 460 hours per chief, roughly $18,000 a year in chief salary, and about $51,000 more if half of the freed hours are billed as attending time: close to $69,000 per chief per year. A hospital with 15 chiefs across its five largest programs is looking at about $1 million a year, and up to $4 million at a $555 billing rate.

Assumes a $71,870 chief salary, attending time at $100 to $400 an hour, and three chiefs in each of internal medicine, pediatrics, family medicine, surgery and psychiatry.

• The rules leave with the chiefs. Programs rely on chiefs without scheduling training, working from rules of thumb handed from one class to the next (JGME, 2015). One emergency medicine program saw resident satisfaction dip with the first schedule built by a new chief class (Healthcare, 2024).
• The domino effect. One parental leave, late start or off-cycle resident knocks over the rest of the year: staffing, coverage and requirements all have to be re-worked by hand, block by block.
• Requirements are checked by eye. Staffing minimums, X+Y patterns, back-to-back limits and graduation requirements are easy to break and hard to spot in a grid of cells.
• Versions multiply. Drafts get emailed around, and it is hard to tell which file is current or what changed.

Chiefly is purpose-built for GME, unlike a spreadsheet, which is a blank grid your chiefs fill in.

• Setup done for you. With Chiefly, you send last year’s spreadsheet, our team enters your rules, and we work with each program on its own timeline. In Excel, the setup is the chiefs’ to build, every year.
• Schedules generated for you. Chiefly generates the block schedule from your program’s requirements, and the daily, clinic and call schedules with it. In Excel, every assignment is typed by hand.
• Automated mid-year changes. Chiefly re-runs the schedule around parental leave, late starts and off-cycle residents, and saves every version so you can see what changed. In Excel, each change is re-worked by hand across the rest of the year.
• Rules that carry over. Chiefly keeps your rules from one chief class to the next and tracks graduation requirements across years. In Excel, the rules are relearned by each new chief class.

You can build formulas for it, but it is hard to get right. Under the ACGME Common Program Requirements effective July 1, 2026, residents work at most 80 hours a week and get one day in seven free, both averaged over four weeks; in-house call comes no more often than every third night; and residents get at least 14 hours off after 24 hours of in-house call (ACGME).

Four-week averages like these are hard to model in spreadsheet formulas, and harder to hand to the next chief class.

Chiefly builds the block, daily, clinic and call schedules to your program’s requirements, so problems surface before a schedule goes out.

Not an official one. Searches for a residency schedule template mostly turn up generic shift templates from Microsoft and Smartsheet, not anything built around rotations, X+Y blocks or ACGME rules. Most programs inherit last year’s spreadsheet instead, and that spreadsheet is exactly what Chiefly starts from: send it with your requirements, and our team loads the rules.

Three steps, and our team does the heavy lifting:

1. Upload existing files. Your block schedule, curriculum and staffing requirements, in whatever format you already have. There is nothing to create.
2. We build the rules, not you. Our team loads your staffing, ACGME and program rules into Chiefly, and comes back with a few questions along the way to confirm we have them right.
3. Training and support. We train your chiefs and admin staff to re-run the schedule or change the rules on the fly, then stay involved with quarterly check-ins and support whenever you need it.

You don’t lose Excel: Chiefly exports the schedule to an Excel file whenever you need one. Boston Children’s 188-resident program had a fully ACGME-compliant block schedule within a week (case study).

A small program with a fixed, repeating pattern may manage in a spreadsheet for a while. Once the program grows, the rules multiply, leave and off-cycle residents become routine, or each new chief class has to relearn the spreadsheet, Chiefly earns its place.

Chiefly is the better fit for programs that:

• Want Excel’s flexibility without the hand-building. Your chiefs still tinker, override and test what-ifs in a sandbox, with every version saved, and can export to Excel whenever they need a file. Chiefly does the building.
• Want the rules enforced, not remembered. In Excel, ACGME requirements and your program’s rules live in formulas or in a chief’s head. In Chiefly they’re loaded once, and every build and re-run is checked against them.
• Feel the domino effect every time someone takes leave. In a spreadsheet, one leave, late start or off-cycle resident means re-working the rest of the year by hand. In Chiefly it’s a re-run your chiefs do themselves, in minutes.
• Keep four spreadsheets in sync by hand. Block, daily, clinic and call schedules in separate sheets, with nothing linking them. In Chiefly they’re one integrated schedule, so a block change carries through to the rest.
• Start over with every new chief class. Each year’s spreadsheet is a fresh file, and the rules leave with the chiefs who built it. Chiefly keeps the rules and tracks each resident’s multi-year requirements: a system of record, not a snapshot of one year.

Weighing other tools too? See Chiefly compared with QGenda and Amion.

The same capabilities as the comparison on our homepage, compared as of October 2026.