PTO management is an essential HR task (even in micro teams). Yet how can you secure a truly effective process that allows for easy availability tracking and full visibility into staff absences?
Our simple Excel vacation tracker template is handy in this regard. Feel free to fine-tune it in line with your needs and start using it right away – at no cost at all!
Key Components of the Excel Vacation Tracker by actiPLANS
Our template is a calendar-like employee vacation schedule that includes merely 4 core elements:
1. Time off categories
At the top of the document, you may find a brief list of time off categories, their symbolic representations, and color codes. Long-term vacation, for instance, is denoted by the letter V and the color green, while the letter S and the red color stand for sick leave.
You can use these color codes, signs, and leave types in your team by default, or you may customize them and create your own.
2. List of employees
On the left side of the Excel document, there’s a place to list the names of all your staff members. This section currently includes merely eight rows. So, if you manage a larger team, feel free to add a few more.
3. Monthly calendar
The largest part of the template is occupied by the calendar. It’s divided into 12 months, and every month includes the exact number of dates for the year 2025. Here you will track employees’ time off by marking the necessary dates with relevant colors and signs.
4. Total leave time
The last template section is located on the right side of the calendar, and it performs the COUNTA function. It summarizes figures and other symbols inserted within a single row and shows the total number of days off an employee took or will take per month.
How to Use Our Free Excel Vacation Tracker
The template can be utilized both to track ongoing leave periods and plan vacations for the future ahead. But whatever the reasons you have to apply it, be sure to make it your own first:
Step 1:
Create a color code system and necessary time off categories. Document them at the top of the template.
Step 2:
Include all your teammates in the employee list. Add as many new rows to it as required. But please note that the newly added rows won’t contain the COUNTA formula, and you need to insert it into the corresponding cells in the “Total leave time” column manually.
Luckily, this task is super easy to accomplish: just copy an already configured cell and paste it into the newly created one. After this, your employees’ monthly time off totals will be calculated automatically.
Step 3:
Next, proceed to mark colleagues’ leave time on the calendar with the correct letters and colors from your color code system.
Step 4:
Don’t forget to regularly review your team’s vacation calendar, check the time off totals, and monitor how frequently each employee takes days off. This will let you understand whether someone must be encouraged to go on vacation soon or, on the contrary, asked to postpone their time off plans for a bit longer.
Is Our Excel Absence Tracker Right for You?
Our vacation tracker template is perfect for you in the following cases:
#1: When you have a small team and a truly simple PTO tracker is absolutely enough for you.
#2: You want to automate a portion of PTO calculations yet don’t mind to subtract the used time off from employees’ earned PTO balances and payroll records manually.
#3: You want the vacation tracker to be fully customizable and easy to share with your entire team.
Pros and Cons of Our Free Time Off Tracker Template
Make Vacation Tracking Even More Efficient with actiPLANS
Our Excel vacation tracker is an incredibly simple and effective time off management tool indeed. However, to save a lot of working time, eliminate errors from the process, and make vacation planning more enjoyable overall, you need something much more robust… something like actiPLANS.
actiPLANS features convenient self-service tools for employees, enabling them to schedule and plan vacations without a hassle.
This intelligent and user-friendly time off tracker has a convenient calendar interface. Besides, it automates leave accrual and clearly shows how many days off each employee had, has, or will have on their balance at any moment throughout employment.
You can set custom PTO accrual rules for your entire team or individual employees to ensure everyone gets the exact amount of leave time they deserve and stay compliant with labor laws.
With actiPLANS, you may also run comprehensive reports to analyze your team’s vacation data in-depth or simply have a quick look at the calendar to see who’s currently absent and for how long.
Dive deep into data to enhance vacation tracking and resource planning in your team with insightful actiPLANS reports.
Explore all the fantastic features this brilliant leave planner has in store – subscribe for a 30-day trial today and give it a go!
