When you work in a small business, time is your most precious resource. HR admin work such as managing your team’s annual leave can take so much of your time and energy that you fail to focus on the most important thing: growing your business.
That’s why many startups now choose to use a leave management software rather than spreadsheets to automate and streamline their time-off processes.
We spent the last few months testing and researching dozens of time-off tools — comparing their features, pros and cons, pricing and customer reviews. Here’s the result: our shortlist of the 8 best leave management software for small businesses.
CharlieHR offers a seamless, professional
time-off management system that you can set up and customise in seconds.
Included in the price, you also get a complete HR software to automate admin and supercharge all of your processes (including onboarding, performance management, engagement tracking, data storage and perks).
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Delegate approval: let line managers approve or deny requests with a single click.
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An
annual leave calendar: updated automatically, public holidays included.
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Holiday overlaps: bookings on the same day are flagged during the approval process.
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Leave types: pick those relevant to your leave policy (sick, holiday, parental, etc) or create custom ones.
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Leave allowance calculations: all records are managed by the software.
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Slack integration: set automatic notifications in Slack for an overview of who’s off every day.
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Annual leave reports and absence tracking: ensure everyone in your team is taking enough holiday.
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Clean, simple and intuitive UI: CharlieHR’s great user experience makes it the best solution for progressive startups and small businesses.
£4 per employee per month regardless of the size of the company, including all features and with no hidden fee. Billed monthly, cancel anytime.
BambooHR is an HR platform for small to medium-sized companies, offering a range of key features on top of leave management (onboarding, performance management, payroll, etc). They also have a mobile app (iOS and Android) to manage HR tasks on the go.
Most of its features are specifically designed for US companies, making it the best choice for businesses that have a significant presence in the States.
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BambooHR sends instant time-off request notifications via email and mobile.
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US date formats and public holidays are already built in, so you don’t have to add them manually.
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The built-in company calendar helps you spot conflicts and holiday overlaps.
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Leave balance is updated automatically in your BambooHR dashboard.
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Annual leave reports help you spot anomalies in time off booking.
On quote, with different packages available.
Namely is an HR platform for mid-sized companies with 100 - 1000 employees. It offers everything a company needs to run its HR across the employee life cycle. From payroll, to benefits administration and HR analytics.
Its leave management system is a bit old-fashioned, but it compensates with the breadth of its other features.
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Simple, online timesheets allow you to track shifts and attendance for hourly workers.
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You can centralise all holiday requests and approval workflows in one place.
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Access attendance management reports to keep track of effective hours worked.
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The systems supports US tax laws and date formats too.
On quote.
Zoho is ideal for companies whose team members work irregular hours, shifts or part-time. Its leave management system allows you to process attendance tracking and hours worked, so you can easily manage payroll too. It also works as an absence management software.
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Easily create and update your timesheets online using the templates.
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Log your team’s working hours via the system and the system will work out the rest.
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Run reports to track time spent on particular projects, so you can allocate resources where they’re most needed.
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Create a personalised approval process for line managers to approve working hours and time off, based on your preferences.
£1.5 per employee per month, billed annually.
Kelio is an employee absence management tool designed for companies that need to track their team’s work attendance (such as warehouses, for example).
The system ensures that the legal attendance requirements are always met to guarantee the security and compliance of your workplace.
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Compatible with most work patterns: permanent, fixed-term, part-time, temporary workers, etc.
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Monitor real-time clock-in-and-out attendance and hours worked on the dashboard.
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Kelio integrates with any clocking hardware, so you don’t have to manually copy information and data.
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Works out and tracks break time and absences.
On quote.
Timetastic offers essential time-tracking functionalities to manage employees’ annual leave at small businesses.
Its features only cover annual leave management, so you will need additional tools to look after other aspects of HR.
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Use Timetastic’s company calendar to get an overview of time off across the team.
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Easy annual leave request system to streamline your processes and calculate holiday accrual.
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Automated email updates to keep you in the loop.
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Choose what leave types to have according to your time off policy.
£1/user/month. They also offer a 50% discount for charities and Certified B corporations.
Rotageek is a workforce management platform mainly used in retail, healthcare and hospitality to plan and track shifts.
Its cloud-based functionalities allow you to manage staff work patterns and time off easily and in real time.
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One dashboard to create and manage all your rotas.
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Optimised for tablet and mobile, so your team can use it on the go.
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Self-service annual leave management and absence tracking.
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Shift swaps managed through the system.
On quote.
Leave Dates is a simple and effective planner to manage staff holiday and sick days. It is a good option for small teams looking for a free tool (Leave Dates is free for companies under 5 employees).
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User-friendly chart to check your staff’s availability.
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Automatic annual leave allowance calculations.
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Create the leave types you need or pick from the existing options.
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Available on laptop, phone and tablet.
Free for companies with up to 5 employees.
£0.80/user/month for larger teams.
A leave management system is a digital HR solution that helps companies manage their team’s time off (holidays, sick leave, parental leave, etc).
There are many different names to indicate this type of tool, including leave management software, annual leave software, annual leave tracker and employee time off tracker software. They’re all the same thing!
Most companies now choose to get HR software (also called HRIS) which combines time-off management with other essential features like onboarding, performance reviews and employee data storage. This is a very convenient option as it allows you to have all your HR workflows in one place and at a lower cost than if you used different tools for each of your Human Resources tasks.
Most leave management software providers will help you with this set of features:
On top of these essential features, some HRMS software like CharlieHR also offer:
It’s surprising how many small businesses still use Excel spreadsheets and manual HR processes to manage time off. But the benefits of switching to a leave management system are clear:
We hope this guide was useful to choose the right time tracking software for your business.
And if you’re a small business looking to save time on admin and build an engaged team, you may want to start a free trial of CharlieHR today.
Learn more about all of it but having a look at our guide on what is annual leave and how to implement it at your business.
Leave manual HR tasks behind with our easy-to-use platform — set it up once, never touch it again.