Leave Management Software

Leave management software tracks your employees’ time off, whether it's paid or unpaid. It’s important to record and track the time off your employees request and take so you can schedule the right hours and pay the right wages.

You can manage time off on spreadsheets and manually add it to the schedule once approved. Or you can use an app like Homebase that does it for you.

With Homebase, your employees can see how much time off they’ve accrued or taken and send a time-off request all in one place. Once they send the request, you can approve or decline it and apply the time off directly to your schedules and payroll.

An employee leave management system like Homebase helps you avoid employee frustration and save time spent manually tracking requests.

Not to toot our own horn, but Homebase is the best leave management system for small businesses. With Homebase, you can set a custom time-off policy, set limits on how often and for how many days employees can request time off in a row, set blackout periods, and let your employees self-manage their time off.

Homebase eliminates the back-and-forth of texts and emails and puts all time-off requests in one place for you. Employees can easily see their time-off balance and send requests in the app. Managers can then approve or decline requests and automatically see the updated availability when making schedules.

When you use Homebase for leave of absence management, the approved time off automatically gets added to your timesheets and payroll, saving you from having to remember to make the wage adjustments manually.

Leave management system costs vary by capability. Homebase offers a free plan with basic features for businesses with one location and up to 10 employees. By upgrading to one of our paid plans, you can consolidate many of your team admin tasks in one place and have more control over scheduling, time tracking, payroll, communication, compliance, labor costs, and leave management.

Check out our pricing page to see which plan works best for your needs.

There are some leave management systems that are free to use, like Google Sheets. However, these methods can be highly inefficient, requiring you to spend more time managing requests manually and risking costly payroll mistakes, missed shifts, and even angry customers due to understaffing.

Automating the time-off process with absence management software like Homebase can help you reduce costs and manual administrative tasks associated with time off.

Homebase helps you manage leave requests and approvals, schedule the right hours, prepare PTO reports, and process payroll with time off, all in one app.

The must-have leave management system features can vary based on your business and team needs.

If you have one or two employees, manually tracking their time off with free software like Google Sheets might be a viable option, as it can be easier to accurately log and account for time off in schedules and payroll for a small team.

For greater efficiency and accuracy, absence-tracking software that automates time-off tracking and calculations is your best bet.

Good leave-of-absence management software should allow you to set a custom time-off policy tailored to your unique business needs. It should let you set rules for both paid and unpaid leave, vacation vs. sick leave, and policies for full-time vs. part-time employees, and then accurately apply all approved time off to schedules and payroll.

It should also allow you to set blackout periods to ensure you have the coverage you need during peak seasons, and to limit how many days in a row an employee can request off, so that everyone has the opportunity to take time off fairly.

Good absence-tracking software should make it easier for your employees to request and self-manage time off by providing visibility into their accrued and taken time off.

Homebase is a great option for small businesses that want to do all this and more. With Homebase, you can manage time off, time tracking, scheduling, team communication, HR & compliance, and payroll all in one place.