Paid time off (PTO) is something that every employee looks forward to. As a small business owner or HR professional, it’s important to track PTO to ensure that you and your employees are on the same page at all times.
A PTO tracking spreadsheet can be as simple or as complex as you want, but there are some things you absolutely need to include:
Here’s a basic example:
Even if you add nothing else to this PTO spreadsheet template, this should be enough to keep you organized.
Even if you provide your employees with unlimited paid time off, you should still track the most important details. Here’s why:
These four points alone should help you see that tracking paid time off is in your best interest.
This is when tracking PTO has the potential to become much more complicated. When your employees are all located in the same country, you can use the same system across the board. But when you add in global employees, everything changes. Here’s why:
Tracking vacation time in Excel is possible when you have a small team in the same country. But when you expand globally, it becomes much more difficult to maintain accuracy without spending an excessive amount of time.
If you want to add more details to your PTO spreadsheet, here are some additional inputs to consider:
You should also leave some blank columns and rows to customize the sheet as it grows. The more time you spend with your PTO spreadsheet the more you’ll realize what you should and shouldn’t include.
With a small team of employees all working in your home country, a PTO spreadsheet may be enough to keep you organized. However, if you have a large and/or growing team—especially if some workers are in other countries—a spreadsheet may cause more harm than good.
This is where using software to track paid time off is an option to consider. At Oyster, we make global time-off management simple. Here’s an excerpt from our website:
“You know that time off is essential for your global team’s wellbeing. But managing it manually? That sounds time-consuming, complex, and prone to error. Oyster’s time-off management tool automates away the chaos so you can focus on caring for your team.”
Benefits of using software, as opposed to a PTO spreadsheet, include:
If you’re tired of using an old-school spreadsheet to track paid time off, step into the 21st century by implementing an all-in-one software solution. Doing so will save your company money, reduce manual input, reduce the risk of error, and provide a better overall team experience.
Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, hire, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.
Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.