About the parish rota builder
Someone in every parish keeps the rota, usually in a spreadsheet, and it gets harder with every name added. This site is for that person: readers, servers, sidespeople, flowers and the rest, a quarter at a time.
What the builder does
The rota builder takes the services, ministries, people and the parish's own rules and produces a quarter's rota that never breaks a hard rule. When a place cannot be filled, it leaves the place open and names the rule that ruled out each trained person, rather than doubling somebody up. Names are kept only in the browser where you typed them.
Where the guide figures come from
Each worked example in the guides runs this solver over an invented sample parish of 56 people and 39 services in a quarter, with 442 places to fill; nobody in it is real. The solver weights are quoted as the engine holds them, so an unfilled place costs 1,000,000 there as it does in the guide. The one exception is the comparison of other scheduling tools, where each product's own pricing or feature page is linked with the day it was read. A test in src/app/guide/guide.test.tsx draws each guide page and compares the figures in it with the solver's output for the sample parish; it runs under npm test.
Who is behind it
One independent developer writes and publishes PewRota. No church, diocese, denomination or scheduling company is involved. The same developer makes Hymnwise, Icesheet, Endbook and Curatorbook. Nobody signs the guides; they appear as PewRota's, and their structured data records PewRota, the organization, as author. No clerical office or parish role is claimed. A guide's date tells you when its text last changed.
What this site cannot do
It cannot tell you whether your rota is right. The rules are the ones you type, so an absence nobody recorded is invisible to it, and its fairness is fairness as your settings define it. Read the rota before it goes on the noticeboard. It encodes no liturgical rule about who may carry what or who is eligible for a ministry; that belongs to the parish and its denomination.
It is not a safeguarding system. It keeps no record of training, clearance or suitability, never asks for a date of birth, and whether somebody may serve is the parish's judgement. Read the rules that make a rota fair and why young servers' names stay on your computer, or the guide hub for the rest. Questions go to [email protected]. Where names are held is in the privacy policy, and what is promised is in the terms.