HR leave management software
- Days still to take
- 8.6
- Full-year entitlement, days
- 16.8
- Pro-rata entitlement for the months employed, days
- 12.6
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs you enter, by the method stated below it. The statutory figures the page names are read from GOV.UK and sourced: 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year for almost all workers, statutory entitlement limited to 28 days, bank holidays allowed to count inside it, and notice of at least twice the leave requested plus one day. Everything else is yours.
HR leave management software is what a small employer goes looking for on the day the spreadsheet fails: a starter's entitlement typed from memory, a request approved by text and never entered, two people off the same week because nobody could see the chart. What the category actually has to do is narrow. Hold each employee's entitlement worked out from their days a week and the weeks the contract gives, take every approved request off it, show the balance and who is off when, and warn before the leave year closes. Everything else a large HR suite bundles, payroll, performance, onboarding, is a different purchase for a different size of company. This guide is about what the leave part has to carry, what it costs at the small end of the market, and where the free tools on this site take you before you pay for anything.
Try the free annual leave calculator Free to use. No account, no card, no sign-up.
Start from the entitlement, worked out rather than typed
The first thing leave software has to hold is each person's entitlement, and it should compute it from days a week and weeks of leave with the UK statutory 5.6 weeks as the floor. A part-timer typed as 28 days is the most common error in any leave record and the most expensive to unwind at the year end.
Every request is a line with a status
A request that was agreed in a corridor and never written down is the reason a balance is wrong. Software takes each request as its own line with its dates, its days and a status, requested, approved, taken or declined, and only approved and taken leave comes off the balance, so the chart and the balance can never disagree.
The chart shows who is off, the balance shows what is left
The two views the employer actually uses are the wall chart, a column per person and a row per week, and the balance per employee. Software that shows only one of them sends you back to the spreadsheet for the other. Reminders before the leave year closes and an export for the accountant are the rest of the job.
Pay for the record, never for the arithmetic
The entitlement, the pro rata figure and the accrual are arithmetic and should be free; the calculators on this site do them with no account. What is worth paying for is the record: employees, requests and balances kept in one place the whole team can see, which is what WallChartBook Pro is.
HR leave management software: common questions
What is the difference between HR software and leave management software?
An HR suite holds the whole employee file, payroll, absence, performance and documents, and is priced and sold to companies large enough to need all of it. Leave management software holds one thing, the annual leave record, and for a team of five to fifty that is usually the only part of the suite anyone would use.
Is there free HR leave management software?
The annual leave calculator, the holiday leave calculator and the policy template on this site are free with no account and do the arithmetic the software starts from. The record itself, every employee's requests and balances on one wall chart, is the paid plan, priced for the whole team rather than per user.
Does leave software need to connect to payroll?
Not for annual leave in a small company. Holiday pay for salaried staff is unchanged by taking leave, and for hourly and irregular-hours staff the software's job is to hold the accrued entitlement and the days taken, which is what you give the payroll bureau. The integrations sold on enterprise suites are solving a problem a small employer does not have.
What should the software do at the end of the leave year?
Show each employee's untaken balance while there is still time to book it, apply the carry-over rule the policy states, and reset the entitlement for the new year without losing the history. The policy template on this site states the carry-over rule; Pro applies it.
Will it do what you need for HR leave management software?
Tell us what your team needs and we will tell you straight whether WallChartBook Pro does it today, whether it is coming, or whether you are better off with something else. A person reads these and replies.