How many times have you rescheduled a doctor’s appointment because you couldn’t take just 2 hours off from work, instead of taking a whole day? Better yet, how many times have you postponed your grocery shopping trip to after-work hours (and ordered takeout instead) because you couldn’t take the hours off you needed to?

Whatever your answer may be, you’re going to love the new feature we have for you! 

Why we created Hourly Increments

Let’s face the facts: not all leaves are created equal. 

That being said, your employees might have a multitude of reasons why they may need to take a couple of hours off from work every now and then. 

Whether it’s an open house at their kid’s school, a long-awaited doctor’s appointment or even picking up a loved one from the airport, there’s one thing common in all of these. And that is, neither of them require a half-day or a full day of leave from work. 

In these circumstances, it’s valuable to offer your employees flexibility in being able to get time off from work when they need to. This way, they can fulfill their personal obligations without letting it affect their work day. On the other hand, your staff will value the freedom they get and will undoubtedly perform better — everybody wins!

With our new feature, no longer will you have to keep a lid on your workspace desires. That’s right: you can now take time off in whatever increments you’d like. Whether you want one hour off or eight, we’ve got you covered.

Please note that this feature is part of the Complete plan.

How it works

The Hourly Increments feature gives users the flexibility to choose when and for how long they want to take their leave. Confused? We’ll give you a rundown of how this works with a couple of examples.

Let’s say Alex Wilber works at a company called Unicorn Delivery. 

Alex wants to take a couple of hours off on Thursday. The reason? He wants to collect his passport for an upcoming vacation to London. He has an appointment at the Canadian embassy at 3 pm. However, this will be after his usual lunch break at 12 pm.

Factoring in the time to commute back and forth from his office to the embassy, waiting in line, and finally picking up his passport, he determines that 2 hours would be ample time to get everything done and return back to work. The problem, however, is that Unicorn Delivery only gives half-days or full days off to its employees. What should Alex do now?

By switching on Hourly Increments on Vacation Tracker, all employees at Unicorn Delivery can enjoy the flexibility of requesting time off on an hourly basis. To do this, all Alex has to do is:

Log onto vacationtracker.io to access the Administrator Dashboard.

From the Dashboard, go to the Locations tab under General on the left side.

Click on View Leave Policies for his location, which in this case would be Canada.

Select the Edit option for his desired Leave Type. Here, we’re choosing Paid Time Off.

Check the Allow Hourly Increments box, click on Update and that’s it!

Requesting Hourly-based Leaves

After following the aforementioned instructions, Alex will successfully be able to request hourly leave from work. Here’s what that looks like:

To request a 2-hour leave from work on Thursday, he can start by going to the Request Leave tab on the Dashboard.

Select Paid Time Off (Hourly) option from the drop-down menu.

Input the date and hours of leave requested.

Type in a reason if necessary and click on Request Leave!

Alex can also see a quick summary of the leave request he has submitted to his Approvers.

Once the leave gets approved, the Dashboard will show the hours that Alex will be away under the Scheduled Leaves tab. This way, everyone in the office is kept in the loop at all times. 

This information can also be sent to users as part of daily or weekly notifications via email or on workspaces such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Furthermore, this change will also be reflected on Alex’s User Profile on Vacation Tracker. As you can see, the 2 hours Alex used will be deducted from his leave quota to show the amount of PTO he has left. 

To learn more about tracking leave in hours on Vacation Tracker, click here!

Snigdha Gupta

An avid writer and aspiring marketer, Snigdha is a student at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business.