Synchro or Excel for your FMG schedule.
Short answer: Excel can hold an FMG schedule, but it cannot build one. In 2026 that costs about 30 hours of management time per month and $10,800 CAD a year in planning time, before even counting errors. Excel is still familiar, free and flexible, and it has been a loyal companion for years. Here's the side-by-side comparison and the real math.
Before you read
This comparison is written by the Synchro team. Our bias is obvious, so we stick to verifiable facts and numbers you can recompute yourself, current as of 2026-08-14.
Spot an inaccuracy? Write to hello@synchromd.com and we will correct it quickly.
Excel and Synchro at a glance
| Synchro | Excel | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Scheduling medical teams | Spreadsheet math, generic use |
| Assigning slots, on-call shifts and offices | Automatic, driven by constraints | Manual, cell by cell |
| On-call fairness | Equalized by your criteria, visible to the team | Manual tally, after the fact |
| Physician constraints | Written in plain language by each physician | Scattered notes outside the file |
| Change tracking | Built-in history and log | No reliable log |
| Price | $10 CAD per user per month (annual) | Included in Microsoft 365, hidden cost in time |
| Getting started | About 45 minutes for 30 users | Immediate, but a fragile, personal file |
What Excel does well
- Free (if you already have Microsoft 365).
- Familiar: everyone knows it.
- Flexible: you can customize everything.
- Offline: no internet required.
What Excel does poorly in an FMG
1. No automatic optimization
Excel forces you to calculate every assignment by hand. With 30 physicians, 10 offices, 50 slots per week, 12 constraints per physician, mental arithmetic is out of reach. Coordinators settle for "close enough" and hope for the best.
2. Fragile to errors
A deleted formula, a moved row, a misconfigured filter, and the whole schedule is wrong. Errors are caught when a physician shows up and realizes they're booked in two places at once.
3. Knowledge silo
Your master Excel file contains complex formulas, macros, custom logic. When the coordinator goes on vacation (or resigns), no one knows how it works. It's a single point of failure for the entire FMG.
4. No calculated equity
"Everyone has 5 on-call shifts" isn't enough. Five shifts including three Friday evenings are not five Wednesday noons. Excel can count after the fact, but it distributes nothing according to your team's fairness criteria, and fairness debates never end. Synchro equalizes the criteria your team chooses on every schedule.
5. No audit trail
When a physician says "you promised me Wednesday off," you have no record of the initial decision. Excel logs nothing.
The ROI calculation against Excel
Take a typical 30-user FMG (physicians + staff + coordinator).
Cost of Excel (hidden costs)
- Coordinator time on scheduling: about 7.5 h/week × 4 weeks = 30 h/month.
- Coordinator hourly cost (loaded salary): ~$30/h.
- Monthly cost of coordinator time on scheduling: $900/month.
- + Cost of errors (double bookings, team conflicts, frustrated physicians): hard to quantify but real.
Cost of Synchro
- Subscription: $10 × 30 users = $300/month.
- Coordinator time on scheduling: about 1 h/month. That's $30 of hourly cost.
- Total: $330/month.
Net gain
Difference: 29 hours and ~$570 recovered per month, or $6,840/year. That's the figure observed in our pilot FMG: about thirty hours a month given back to management. Without counting the coordinator's quality of life.
The moment to leave Excel
FMGs usually switch from Excel to Synchro at these moments:
- The coordinator threatens to resign (and you realize you don't know how her Excel file works).
- The FMG grows (new physician, new site) and Excel cracks under complexity.
- A team conflict erupts over on-call equity and you can't prove anything.
Further reading
Frequently asked questions about Synchro vs Excel
Can we import our current Excel file into Synchro?
Yes. The demo includes migrating your existing Excel data: physicians, slots, on-call shifts and constraints. Configuring a team of 30 users takes about 45 minutes, onboarded by our team.
How much does Synchro cost compared to Excel?
Excel looks free, but an average FMG spends about 30 hours of management time on it per month, about $10,800 CAD a year in planning time. Synchro costs $10 CAD per user per month billed annually and brings planning down to about one hour a month. Details are on the Pricing page.
Do physicians have to learn a complex tool?
No. Each physician checks their schedule, writes their constraints in plain language and proposes shift transfers from a simple web interface. Nothing to install.
Can we try Synchro before leaving Excel?
Yes. The first month is free, with no commitment. You can run Synchro alongside your Excel file on a real schedule period before deciding.
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