Expert Review: Finding the Best Vacation Tracking Software for 2024

If you’re looking to upgrade your vacation-tracking solution to something better than Google Sheets (or your current solution) — look no further!

We’ve tested and selected the top 3 leave management solutions for businesses that want to automate leave management in 2024.

All of the software below is intuitive and easy to use, customizable, has stellar reviews, and provides good value for the money. Their features can cover all the standard PTO-tracking tasks with more or less added options.

However, the details will help you decide in favor of one over the other two; consider your unique needs and use cases, and pick what seems the best!

#1 Vacation Tracker

With a 4.9/5 Capterra rating and excellent customer support, Vacation Tracker is one of the fan favorites.

The sleek PTO tracking platform adapts to any business size, and different office types: for workers on the move, remote workforce, contractors, freelancers, and employees alike.

Vacation Tracker removes friction by empowering each team member: 

• Admins create and configure all the settings, add and remove users, and access reports;
• Approvers respond to leave requests, view user profiles, and set the notifications how they see fit;
• Users can see their time off reserves, request leave, review their profiles, leave policies, and history.

Wallchart and Calendar features help with work organization. Real-time updating lets managers see who’s available and who’s away at any point, and avoid understaffing. 

The Blackout period is one of the most useful features: admins can pick the days when staff can’t take time off and prevent shift scheduling issues during busy periods.

Pros

• Managing complex leave policies — Hourly, daily, rollovers, TOIL, accruals, locations, and departments: enough to make your head spin. Luckily, HRs can use Vacation Tracker as a second brain and let the platform do the work. Admins can create super-specific labels and track leaves for any category.
• Compliance with local labor laws — No matter where your team members work, you’ll stay compliant with the rules and regulations that apply. Once you pick the leave policies for a specific location, it automatically applies to all the staff there, and there’s no way you’ll accidentally make a mistake sanctionable by law.

• Seamless user experience — All the extra customization options and features don’t add unnecessary weight to the platform. Vacation Tracker is equally as easy to use for a company of 5 to 555 employees; it integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, or any email of your choice. 

Pricing

Vacation Tracker has two plans:

1. Core — $1 per user/month, with a $25 monthly minimum (for 25 users or less); it is strong enough to carry a large team with essential leave-tracking features.
2. Complete — $3 per user/month, with a $75 monthly minimum (for 25 users or less); it has more customization options, a 1-hour minimum leave interval, accruals, and TOIL.

Both plans come with a 7-day free trial you can use now!

#2 actiPLANS

Robust and convenient, the actiPLANS platform is another strong contender with an overall 4.6/10 Capterra rating.

Suitable for teams of any size, actiPLANS takes care of several use cases:

• Leave management — Similar to Vacation Tracker, actiPLANS has labels and a 3-tier user role hierarchy; PTO tracking is automated according to the pre-set Admin customization, so Regular users can request time off, and Managers can review the requests. A complex, yet well-organized dashboard provides a view into current leaves and work schedules.
• Shift scheduling — Create custom shift types, add timezones/staff/hours/employee details, and assign shifts without error:
• Event and activity scheduling — The dashboard allows managers to add work events directly into the dashboard and calendar. You can create different event types with custom location settings, and add guests within the platform. Schedule tasks, activities, and add deadlines.
• Status tracking — Coordinate teams, see employees’ availability and location, track and manage their time from a single POV.

A mobile app is well-developed and allows each user tier to submit and review leave requests, add comments, and see the staff availability.

Pros

• Location Tracking — actiPLANS allows you to create custom locations for employees who frequently change locations or work remotely. Their locations are visible from the dashboards and facilitate work organization for managers and team leaders. Reports show where workers spend the most time on average.
• actiTIME integration — For additional cost, you can integrate a work tracking tool and see how much time each team member spends on specific tasks. This lets you keep a record of billable time and create precise invoices.

Cons

• actiTIME integration not included — This integration comes separately, and may be expensive to some: $6 per user/mo for Online, and $120 per user for Self-Hosted.
• Higher pricing point — actiPLANS is the most expensive leave tracker on this list, and that’s without the integrations, so carefully consider if the investment pays off.

Pricing

actiPLANS pricing is based on the user number; this is the pricing breakdown with a 20% discount for yearly billing:

• Free for up to 3 users (with limited functionality);
• $1.5 per user/month for up to 40 users;
• $1.2 per user/month for 41-200 users;
• $2880 per year 200+ users.

There’s a 30-day free trial available.

#3 Leave Dates

Leave Dates is a popular choice for small and medium-sized businesses that need a simple leave-tracking solution with solid essential features.

Leave types include vacation, sick leave, remote work, and others: the settings can be customized so the tool adapts to the company’s leave policies.

Automated notifications alert the team members about new leave requests, while mobile accessibility helps reach the employees on the go. The app is self-serve and gives individual employees more control and visibility regarding their time off, holidays, and vacations.

Calendar view and real-time updates with automatic synchronization prevent overlapping vacations and conflicting schedules, and provide a clear view of who’s OOO and who’s available for work.

Pros

These are the main benefits of choosing Leave Dates to track time off:

• Ease of use — The overwhelming majority of Leave Dates users are pleased by how straightforward and intuitive the software is at every point, including the initial setup and dashboard. Everything is easy to track and check
• Convenient mobile app — Users can access the Leave Dates app on their phones and request, approve, deny, or review the requests, calendar, and dashboard. The mobile app makes it easier to immediately handle any request.
• Great reputation — With 4.8/5 on G2 and Capterra, it is one of the most popular leave-tracking tools that gained the trust of many users. The majority of the reviews are positive with just a few complaints.

Cons

Leave Dates main function is to track vacation days, and it does that job without a fault or a halt. However, it may be a one-trick pony. 

If your business has highly specialized leave policies, or you’d like to have access to more advanced reporting, Leave Dates might not be able to keep up. 

While loved for its ease of use and neat dashboard, users report that Leave Dates lacks:

• Deep customization options — For employees who work different days/shifts each week, scheduling time off gets complicated because the weekly schedule is fixed by default. 
• In-depth analytics and reporting — Reporting capabilities are slim and finding a way to download specific reports gets hard.
• Conditional leave approval workflows.

Pricing

Leave Dates is free for up to 5 users and requires no credit card info until you choose to upgrade to more users. The freemium plan has all the features of a regular plan, the only limitation is the number of user seats.

For teams of 6 or more people, Leave Dates costs $1 per employee, per month — with a 25% discount for annual payments.

Anja Milovanovic

A journalist turned content writer – Anja uses her investigative skills to produce high-quality SaaS, Marketing, and HR content.