An annual leave tracker for a small business

The four things that have to be true

Strip away the category and a small business needs four things, and only four.

Everyone can see the same year. Not a list of requests — a chart, with everybody on it, so a clash is visible before it is booked rather than after. This is the one the spreadsheet fails at, because the spreadsheet is on one laptop.

A balance that is right without being maintained. Entitlement, minus what has been approved, with weekends and public holidays never counted. If somebody has to subtract anything by hand, it will be wrong by March.

An approval that takes a click. The approver needs the cost, the remaining balance, and who else is off those days, in one place, and then one button. Anything longer gets done badly or late.

A way out. CSV in, CSV out, and a calendar file. If the tool closes or doubles its price, the leave year has to be able to leave with you.

What you are being sold instead

Leave tools in this market have a strong tendency to become HR suites, because that is where the per-seat price can go up. The feature list grows: sickness certification, return-to-work forms, absence scoring, TOIL policy engines, performance reviews, onboarding checklists, an org chart.

A fifteen-person business almost never wanted any of that. It wanted to know who is off in August. The suite is not free either — it arrives as a per-employee price, which means hiring somebody makes your leave tracker more expensive, which is a strange thing for a tool to do.

The honest question to ask of any option is: what is the smallest version of this that would end the actual problem? If the answer is "a chart everybody can see", buying a platform is an expensive way to get one.

Per employee, or per company

This is the only pricing question that matters at this size, and it is worth being blunt about.

A per-seat price is built for a company that will grow a lot, sold to a company that will not. At fifteen people, a few pounds or kroner a head a month is a real line in the accounts for a calendar. It also quietly penalises the thing you want — adding the part-time Saturday person to the chart costs money, so they stay off it, and the chart is wrong.

Per-company pricing has the opposite effect. Everybody goes on, including the people who only work Thursdays, because putting them there is free. The chart is complete, which is the whole point of it.

What the statutory minimum gives you to start from

Most small companies start their allowances from the statutory floor in the country they employ people in, and adjust upwards per contract. The floors in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and the United States differ more than people expect.

In the United Kingdom the Working Time Regulations 1998 give a minimum of 5.6 weeks — 28 days for a five-day week — and that minimum is capped at 28 days. Crucially, an employer may count the bank holidays inside it rather than on top, which is why "20 days plus bank holidays" and "28 days inclusive" are both common and mean nearly the same thing.

Across the EU, the Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC, article 7) sets four weeks as the floor, and member states build on it: Ireland gives four weeks under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 with ten public holidays separate from it; Germany's Bundesurlaubsgesetz sets 24 Werktage, which is 20 working days in a five-day week; Norway's Ferieloven gives 25 virkedager, which is 21 working days in a five-day week, though most Norwegian contracts give five full weeks. Australia and New Zealand both give four weeks. The United States has no federal minimum at all.

Those are what the statutes named above say, in the countries named above. They are not advice about your contracts. Start from the floor for your own country, then put in whatever each person was actually promised.

Trying it without committing to anything

Leavebook's front page is the tracker, not a tour of it. It opens on an example team so there is something on the chart; clear it, add your own people, or import the spreadsheet you already keep as a CSV of names and allowances.

It fills in the public holidays for your country from Nager.Date, including the four different sets of UK bank holidays, so nobody spends a day of their allowance on Boxing Day. It counts a day against somebody only when it is a day they work, so part-time weeks come out right on their own. And it shows the approver the cost, the remaining balance and who else is already off before they decide.

None of that needs an account, and nothing leaves the browser. What the paid version adds is the part a browser tab cannot do: the same chart at an address the team can open, invites by email link, approve-or-decline links in the approver's inbox, and live calendar feeds — for one price for the company, whoever joins.