We study theoretically the formation of shear bands in time-dependent flows of polymeric and wormlike micellar surfactant fluids, focussing on the protocols of step shear stress, step shear strain (or in practice a rapid strain ramp), and shear startup, which are commonly studied experimentally. For each protocol we perform a linear stability analysis to provide a fluid-universal criterion for the onset of shear banding, following our recent letter [Moorcroft and Fielding, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 086001 (2013)]. In each case this criterion depends only on the shape of the experimentally measured rheological response function for that protocol, independent of the constitutive properties of the material in question (Therefore our criteria in fact concern all complex fluids and not just the polymeric ones of interest here.). An important prediction is that pronounced banding can arise transiently in each of these protocols, even in fluids for which the underlying constitutive curve of stress as a function of strain-rate is monotonic and a steadily flowing state is accordingly unbanded. For each protocol we provide numerical results in the rolie-poly and Giesekus models that support our predictions. We comment on the ability of the rolie-poly model to capture the observed experimental phenomenology and on the failure of the Giesekus model. (C) 2014 The Society of Rheology.