Dealing with leave management and employee time off requests is a common headache for supervisors and managers in an organization. Manually keeping track of annual leave entitlements, holiday booking schedules, and paid sick absences is incredibly time consuming and prone to errors and inconsistencies. It can also be confusing for managers who aren’t well-versed in the complexities of calculating entitlements or drawing up schedules.
That’s why a paid time-off tracking software can be an invaluable addition to a company’s employee attendance management process. This paid time-off software adds ease and automation to time-off processes by allowing users to input the holiday and paid leave entitlements relating to their employees. The system then automatically calculates the remaining entitlements. Most systems even enable users to create personalized workflows to help the time-off processes of a business run more smoothly.
What is PTO tracking software?
PTO Tracking software is an automated leave management system which helps employee leave requests to reach the right person in the workflow for approvals. The time-off management dashboard will clearly show who’s in the office and who’s on leave using visual reports. It also lets businesses define custom leave policies and communicate them to the employees.
6 reasons why your business needs PTO tracking software
Resorting to outdated time-off tracking tools at this digital age will only leave your organization at a clear competitive disadvantage.
Listed below are some of the obvious reasons why every organization needs PTO tracking software:
1. Flexibility:
Most PTO tracking solutions offer omni-channel accessibility, enabling users to access it anywhere, anytime, on any device.
2. Centralized process:
When all leave requests are stored in a unified platform, it enables a smoother process flow.
3. Transparency:
Since employee PTO leave balance, accruals are available centrally, organizations don’t have to worry about costs, errors, and delays associated with manual processing.
4. Time-saving:
PTO tracking tools cut down the time and effort spent by approving authorities on ensuring eligibility and updating leave balance.
5. Cost-saving:
Comprehensive functionalities offered by PTO tracking platforms retrieve significantly higher savings by reducing the money spent on manual intervention and paperwork.
6. Productivity:
As all stakeholders spend less time tracking and reviewing PTO requests, they can focus more on their work and improve their productivity considerably.
Checklist to creating the best PTO guidelines for your organization
There are several things Human Resources(HR) managers need to keep in mind as they create brand new PTO guidelines for their organization.
Here’s a handy checklist HR managers can use:
- Clearly state eligibility status
- The maximum time employees are entitled to take as vacation
- Decide on a set PTO accrual schedule
- Plan whether employees can use their vacation time before it is earned
- Choose increments in what increments PTOs can be used
- Determine leave roll-over status and limits
- Select the way in which employees can apply for time off
- Regulate how to deal with partial day offs
- Make plans on how to handle PTOs during peak periods
- Address payout and leave encashment options
Popular paid time-off (PTO) tracking software
Let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular time-off management and PTO tracking software available to help you make the best choice for your business.
1. CakeHR
This PTO tracking software offers users an easy-to-navigate yet comprehensive system with a variety of different functionalities, such as scheduling and timesheets, employee self-service, and leave management. It has fully customizable fields to adapt to business’ needs. One of the downsides is that dealing with historical data is more of a manual process than working with current information.
2. Kissflow HR Cloud
Kissflow HR Cloud gets top marks for providing a sophisticated yet easy-to-use platform for tracking and managing the time-off needs of employees. At the heart of its package is a focus on offering customizable workflows that are entirely flexible and easy to build around the specific needs of the business. This allows users to benefit from processes that are completely in tune with their needs.
Kissflow HR Cloud offers a range of attendance management processes with one clear pricing plan for all, in keeping with its straightforward approach to time-off tracking and PTO tracking. However, some companies may prefer a broader range of pricing levels and options to suits their needs.
3. BambooHR
BambooHR is a useful HR system with an attendance management component that helps automatically track time off for staff. The system is specifically built to support small and medium-sized businesses who are moving away from manual and time-consuming spreadsheets towards smart paid time-off tracking on a cloud-based system.
Since the software is built for smaller businesses, it is straightforward and easy to use. However, larger businesses may find it too simplistic, without the more sophisticated functionalities that they need to manage the attendance requirements of a more complex workforce.
4. Zoho People
Zoho People offers a robust time-off tracking application that can be customized to suit the needs of businesses of all sizes and many nationalities. It supports over ten key languages. Users can benefit from a full range of customizable forms (either templates or built from scratch), as well as a range of subscription levels to suit all business sizes and budgets. However, some users find that since the system offers so many functionalities with a number of options available in each area, it can be more difficult to navigate than more streamlined alternatives.
5. Jibble
Jibble is a great choice for small or medium-sized businesses looking for support with time-off management and paid time-off tracking from a functional system. Its users rate its efficiency and great reporting tools, allowing you to analyze the attendance data for teams or the business as a whole. On the downside, as Jibble is a specialist time management system, it may not be ideal for organizations who want to integrate other HR processes with the same provider.
6. Ultipro
UltiPro provides its users with a robust platform for managing paid time-off requests from staff at an affordable price. Users love the quality of the customer service and the fact that the applications are easy to use and aren’t tricky to install or configure, unlike some of the more complete systems. However, there are generally fewer opportunities to customize options within the software, making it less flexible than the competition. Of course, this may only suit smaller companies.
7. Calamari
This PTO tracking system has a good (shall we say tasty?) reputation for simplicity and ease of navigation, making it ideal for smaller businesses. It’s also easy to set up and customize to your business’ attendance rules, with forms and workflows that can be easily adapted. On the negative side, the mobile app doesn’t offer the full functionality of the website, meaning that users can only carry out limited tasks while on the go.
Conclusion
From briefly reviewing some of the most popular paid time-off (PTO) tracking softwares on the market, it’s clear to see that much depends on your specific type of organization and personal preferences in working with such systems. Whether you prefer a sophisticated leave management software that’s full of the latest functionalities with lots of customizable options, or a more structured system with fewer choices but good value for money and ease of installation, there is sure to be a system out there to suit your needs.
Starting with Kissflow HR Cloud gives you a good baseline to evaluate the other products as Kissflow HR Cloud lets you build your own PTO tracking software. Sign-up for a free demo today and see how easily your PTO tracking can be!
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- Personnel management guide
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