Time off tracking: a spreadsheet or software?

Time off tracking means knowing, for every person, how many days they have, who is away when, and who approved it. A spreadsheet is enough for a small team with simple rules. Software starts to pay off when you have part time staff, carry over days, several locations or a manager who asks every week who is off. The cost is lower than most people expect: Timetastic starts at $1.50 per user a month.

Prices checked on each vendor's own page on 31 October 2026: Timetastic, BambooHR and Factorial.

What a spreadsheet does well

A sheet is free, familiar and quick to set up. A simple layout works:

• One row per person, with a yearly allowance, days taken and days left.
• A second tab with one line per request: person, start, end, days, approved by.
• A calendar tab, one column per day, so you can see clashes.

Use a leave request form so every request is written down the same way, and keep the sheet in a shared place with edit rights only for the person who manages it. See the sheet for working with tables.

Where a spreadsheet breaks

1. Balances go wrong. A person who joins in June, works four days a week or carries days over needs a formula for each case, and one wrong cell is invisible.
2. No approval trail. An email asking "is this okay?" is not a record.
3. No clash warning. Nothing tells you three people are off in the same week.
4. Public holidays. They change by country and region, and you must update them each year.
5. Privacy. A sheet shared with everyone also shows everyone's sick days. Reasons for absence can be sensitive health information.
6. One owner. When that person is away, nobody knows how it works.

What software costs

Timetastic's page shows dollars while its structured data shows pounds, so the price you pay depends on where you are. For ten people on Timetastic Business, the cost is about $15 a month at the dollar price. BambooHR's flat rate makes sense only if you also want its other HR features.

When to switch

Move from a sheet to software when two or more of these are true:

• You have more than about fifteen people.
• You have staff in more than one country or region.
• You answer "how many days do I have left?" more than once a week.
• A mistake in a balance has already caused an argument.
• You need to show records to an auditor or an inspector.

If none is true, stay on the sheet, and revisit every January when allowances reset.

Setting the rules before you track anything

Software cannot fix unclear rules. Write these down first:

1. How many days each person gets and how part time work changes that.
2. Which year you count: calendar, or from the start date.
3. What carries over, how many days, and until when.
4. How much notice a request needs, and who approves it.
5. Which public holidays count, and what happens in a busy week.
6. Sick leave and other absence types, kept separate from holiday.

Counting days correctly

Most disputes come from counting, not from the tool. Settle these points in your policy:

1. Half days. Allow them or not, and count each as 0.5.
2. Weekends and public holidays. Do they count against the allowance when they fall inside a leave period? Most employers say no.
3. Part time staff. Give the allowance in days or hours, pro rated to the contract. Hours are fairer for irregular patterns.
4. Joiners and leavers. Accrue by month worked, and settle unused days when someone leaves as the law and the contract require.
5. Sick leave. Track it separately from holiday, and limit who can see the reason.
6. Unpaid and special leave. Name the types (parental, study, bereavement) so approvals are consistent.

A short worked example: Maria has a 25 day allowance, works four days a week, which is 80 percent of full time, so her allowance is 20 days. She joins on 1 July, so she earns half for the first year: 10 days. Each of these is easy once, but across twelve people with different start dates a sheet needs a formula per row, and that is where errors creep in.

Making a sheet safer

If you stay on a spreadsheet, a few habits reduce the risk. Lock the formula cells and let only one or two people edit. Keep a separate sheet for the totals, so the numbers a manager sees are separate from the raw requests. Export a copy at the end of each month and name it with the date, so you can show the state of balances at any point. Do not put the reason for sick leave in a sheet that everyone can open, and store the file where only managers and HR can read it.

Questions to ask a tool

When you try software, test with real cases from your team, not the demo. Ask:

• Can it handle part time staff and different allowances?
• Does it show who is away on a shared calendar, and can it sync with the calendar you use?
• Can managers approve on a phone?
• How are public holidays set for each country?
• Can you export every request as a file?
• What happens to the data if you cancel?

Timetastic gives a 30 day trial with no card, which is long enough to run one full cycle of requests. Use it to compare, and decide with your team, because the people who request leave will use it more than you do.

Carry over, part time staff and leavers

Three cases cause most disputes, so decide them in writing before the first request arrives.

Carry over. Say how many unused days move into the next year, and by which date they must be used or are lost. Some countries have rules on this, so check the rules where your staff work. In a sheet, keep carried days in their own column so the balance shows where each day came from.

Part time staff. Count time off in hours, or in days of that person's own working week, not in plain calendar days. Someone who works three days a week and takes a full week away has used three of their days, not five. A sheet that counts everyone in the same days will be wrong for these people from the start.

People who join or leave mid year. Work out their share of the year's allowance from the start or end date, and write the calculation next to the number. When someone leaves with days unused or overused, the final pay may be affected, so the figure must be one you can explain. Here a tool that does the arithmetic and keeps the history saves the most argument, but a careful sheet with a note per person works too.

Whatever you use, keep the approved requests, not only the balances. If a manager says "I never approved that", you want the date and the name.

The short version

A spreadsheet is a fine start for a small team with plain rules. Switch when balances, approvals or privacy start to hurt. A dedicated tool like Timetastic costs a few dollars per user a month, and the full HR suites cost more because they do more. Write the rules first, whatever you choose, and check what your country requires you to keep.