Leave Tracking in Jira vs. Using Vacation Tracker

Do you use JIRA to manage team tasks or deliverables? Did you know that you can do your Leave Tracking in JIRA as well? Not for free, of course.

Managing a team means looking for efficiencies wherever possible. This means picking the best possible tools for your team. It’s not always an easy task. What works for one team, may not work for another. Unfortunately, there is no one best or ultimate solution. Therefore, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of every software or program available.

Today, we will look at the time-tracking functionality of JIRA and compare it to the functionalities of Vacation Tracker.

At Vacation Tracker, we believe that a leave management tool should be simple and effective. Nothing more, nothing less.

We also believe in finding the right tool to fit your needs.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the similarities and differences between these two automations, starting with Leave Tracker for Jira Cloud.

Leave Tracking in Jira

Leave Tracker for Jira Cloud is a software plugin that adds an employee leave-tracking feature to Jira.

Vacations and sick days tracking in Jira can help your team keep track of their remaining paid days off. With Leave Tracker for Jira, you can track how your team members use their vacation and sick day yearly limits.

Moreover, the Leave Tracker for Jira Cloud offers a dashboard, where you can track team members’ vacation and sick days all in one place. The look and feel of the dashboard are modern and slick.

Furthermore, it offers each team member his or her own mini-dashboard where they can check on their vacation and sick day limits.

As a manager, you can customize your company vacation and sick day yearly limits. However, those are the only two leave types that can be programmed on the plugin for leave tracking in Jira.

After the initial setup is done, employees can use the default Jira Log Work feature to log time spent on a vacation or sick leave. This time off would be logged similarly to the time logged for regular work in Jira. For teams already familiar with Jira, this automation is a helpful tool.

Overall, the Leave Tracker in Jira allows managers to track how their team members use their vacation and sick days. In short, it is a good tracking tool that also offers some aesthetic-looking dashboards for managers and employees.

Leave Tracking in Vacation Tracker vs. Jira

Vacation Tracker is a leave-tracking app that offers a full range of leave-managing and tracking options for managers and employees.

Vacation Tracker also tracks vacations and sick days. It too can help your team members see their remaining days off, in real time. Though, unlike Leave Tracker for Jira, there are more than just two leave types.

With Vacation Tracker, up to 25 custom leave types can be programmed for your team. Leave types ranging from Sick Days, Conference Days, Working Remotely, PTO, Maternity or Paternity Leave, Jury Duty and more can be configured by an Administrator.

Vacation Tracker even allows employees to book half-days off. The half-day option can be configured for any leave type by the Team Administrator.

However, just like in Leave Tracker for Jira, team members can easily see their yearly limits for their different leave types. They can see this information directly in Slack by selecting “My Status” or by going onto their Vacation Tracker employee profile.

Once again, as in Leave Tracker for Jira, there is an employee dashboard that is available to all in Vacation Tracker. This dashboard illustrates, with a color code, how many people are absent on a given day.

Furthermore, in Vacation Tracker, each user can check on their past leaves and see how many days of their different leave types they have remaining.

Non-used Vacation Days in Jira vs. Vacation Tracker

When Leave Tracking in Jira, non-used vacation days from a current employee’s work year are moved to the next one. In short, they are accumulated over the employee’s lifetime. As for their non-used sick days, these aren’t moved to the next year but are burnt down when the employee’s work year ends.

This is not the case with Vacation Tracker. Vacation Tracker is more flexible and customizable to your company’s needs. No rolled-over vacation days? No problem. Each leave type can be customized to your company’s policy.

Still, if your company does allow rollover of any leave type, this can further be customized. For instance, Administrators can set a custom date when transferred days will expire.

Reliable Reports for Administrators

As previously mentioned, both in Leave Tracker for Jira and in Vacation Tracker, Administrators have the ability to customize the number of days off. The main difference is that the Jira application offers two leave type options, whereas Vacation Tracker lets you program up to 24 custom leave types.

At the end of the day, month or year, Administrators can download various reports as a .CSV file from Vacation Tracker. Jira lets also administrators analyze the way teams use their vacation and sick day yearly limits. However, it seems limited to these two categories, for the time being.

Request Vacation in Seconds with Vacation Tracker

Unlike Leave Tracker in Jira, Vacation Tracker lets your team request and manage leave requests directly in Slack. Your team members can also receive timely reminders about any upcoming absences in their teams.

Vacation Tracker can in fact communicate directly with your team through notifications. Actually, these notifications can be set up to appear on the Slack channel of the Administrator’s choosing. These settings can be modified at any time.

Additionally, requesting time off is just as simple. All your team members need to do to request their time off is to type /vacation on any Slack channel or DM. Then, they can follow the on-screen instructions. Your team Administrator will receive a notification within seconds and will be able to approve or deny the request either in Slack or through the web-based Vacation Tracker dashboard.

Leave Tracker in Jira vs. Vacation Tracker Pricing Plans

With all of those interactive features, you might think Vacation Tracker is priced out of your reach. Yet, it is not!

Vacation Tracker was built with Start-Ups in mind.

Enjoy Vacation Tracker for free, no matter your team size. As you need more features, add users for only $2/month on Core or $4/month on Complete.

In comparison, the Leave Tracker for Jira pricing plan starts at 10$/month for up to ten users. However, it then goes up to 1.50$ per user, per month, for anywhere between 11 to 100 active users. For more than 100 users, the price begins to drop. It’s important to note that it only drops below a dollar per user per month after a threshold of 750 users.

Easily Set Up & Manage Your Team With Vacation Tracker

With our leave management tool, it’s really easy to set up your organization, as we’ll take all the information we need from Slack. Whenever an administrator makes a change to your team in Slack, Vacation Tracker will be updated as well.

In short, having a good leave management approach is essential for any business out there. However, you don’t need to feel locked into any specific software. You are free to shop around.

Even if your team is used to working on Jira for task management or time tracking, you can still benefit from Vacation Tracker. As a leave management software, Vacation Tracker is more complete and customizable than Alty’s Leave Tracker for Jira.

The benefits of both of these leave management systems for small businesses cannot be overlooked. Both Leave Tracker for Jira and Vacation Tracker offers integrated solutions for keeping track of employee absences. However, with customizable leave types and more affordable pricing plans for start-ups and small businesses, Vacation Tracker may very well be the optimal choice.

See whether Vacation Tracker is right for you by starting for free or trying all features with our 7- day free trial.

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Kristina Ousmanova

Kristina recently left behind fast-paced life of Human Resource Business Consulting to freelance as a Content Writer. A regular Vacation Tracker contributor, she can be found working remotely from her home in Montreal, usually while eating a variety of snacks.