The peak vacation season is already here. And while employees are enjoying their well-earned time off, team managers are left to ponder on how to keep track of staff absences and distribute workloads effectively.
When many employees are out of the office, it’s essential to record all absences as accurately as possible to understand who is at the desk. For this purpose, companies may choose among various software solutions, which can help them plan staff’s leave time with ease. Besides, you can always use more simple vacation planning methods, including digital spreadsheets or online calendars.
Read on as we describe your alternatives, and don’t hesitate to download our free vacation calendar template that is particularly easy to apply in small teams.
Determine Your Requirements
To figure out which vacation planning method will work for you best, you have to understand your needs first:
- Do you simply want to keep track of staff absences?
- Are you interested in a more advanced tool that can accrue employees’ time off balances and approve their leave requests automatically?
- Do you want your employees to have free access to the calendar, or do you plan to schedule their leave time yourself?
- How much data should your vacation calendar be able to include and categorize?
- Your answers to the above questions will largely determine which solution you need to seek.
Vacation Tracking Solutions
Let’s see what humanity have invented so far to solve employee leave tracking problem. We will start from the traditional solutions and then move onto the newer ones:
1. Paper-based planners
Believe it or not, some people still plan their employees’ vacation time manually, with a pen and a piece of paper. It is mainly true for such very small businesses as family-owned restaurants than for large enterprises, of course. And this method does have its pros: it’s absolutely free, easy to apply, and requires no additional training.
However, the risks of such a sheet getting wet and torn or simply “disappearing” from the wall are too high. Besides, this method offers zero security, no remote accessibility, automatic balance calculations, tracking or reporting systems whatsoever.
2. Excel spreadsheets
Excel is used to manage a great variety of work-related tasks, and vacation planning is one of them.
Spreadsheets can be configured in multiple ways to display your team’s vacation schedule, approve leave requests, and monitor absences with ease. And though it may be inconvenient to manage time off with Excel in large teams, this method works amazingly well for the smaller ones.
Besides, Excel is free of charge. So, as long as you know how to configure the spreadsheet in an effective way and don’t require any complex and specialized leave tracking functionality, this simple tool will address all your leave management needs ideally.
Plus, we’ve already created a workable vacation calendar template for you – download it to save time and start to plan employee leaves right away.
3. Google / Outlook calendar
Some employers like to create group vacation calendars in Google or Outlook and track staff absences there. These online calendars are easy to use. They provide shared access to the necessary data and have reliable cloud storage.
However, they were not meant for vacation tracking and approval. Therefore, such calendars lack some essential features, such as leave balance calculation and leave request submission.
As the saying goes: you can use your fork to whisk the whites, but look – here is a mixer!
4. Vacation tracking software
Special vacation tracking software is of more help in leave management than any spreadsheet or calendar tool. Its primary purpose is to smooth out the workflow and allow team managers to understand who’s absent, when, and for how long. It lets them review the historical data on taken leaves and balance changes. Besides, such tools provide remote access. They are safe and simple to use, and, most importantly, they save you a ton of time on managing leave requests.
Sounds awesome, right?
When choosing a vacation tracking tool, make sure it has all the required features for an effective and straightforward absence management process. While giving a comprehensive picture of employees’ time off and leave requests, such software should definitely have an uncluttered interface.
This is exactly what makes actiPLANS an excellent option to consider.
actiPLANS provides an easy way to review employees’ absences in a clear calendar view. It shows all the details you need to see:
- Pending leave requests,
- Changes in time off balances,
- Users’ comments, etc.
Employee self-service functionality, automatic time off accrual, and streamlined leave approvals make actiPLANS a real time-saver for HR, project, and team managers. If you want to try out everything it has to offer and cut costs inherent with absence management, be sure to sign up for a free trial today.
