A staff holiday booking system is a must-have for HR teams in 2026. As more businesses are digitising their workflows, documents, and records, it’s easier than ever for an employer to check an employee’s holiday entitlement. Utilising holiday tracker software benefits both the employer and the employee by streamlining the requests and approvals workflow. Additionally, these platforms allow them both to view how much PTO has been taken and the number of days remaining, all from an easy-to-use app.
Is your company prepared with the necessary HR tools to effectively track employee holiday time? Are you still shuffling through different spreadsheets and excels to calculate your team’s remaining holiday balance? Download a free time-off tracker to centralise your team’s days off.
Why a Staff Holiday Booking System is Essential for Any HR Team in 2026
Managing time-off requests is often a nightmare for managers and HR professionals—juggling multiple spreadsheets and tracking who’s on holiday and who isn’t can easily become overwhelming. Managing holiday requests, such as annual leave and sick leave, without a staff holiday booking system is one of the most dreaded tasks in the HR department. These requests tend to pop up out of the blue—usually when you’re deep in a crucial project that you can’t afford to look away from—and they can quickly vacuum up your time.
Most companies use bulky, antiquated tools that are simply too outdated and inadequate to be effective in tracking and managing staff holidays. These requests are usually handled in a manual process involving several steps that include:
- Making sure the employee is actually eligible to take the time off. Since employees usually can’t check their available time-off balances for themselves, an admin needs to do it for them.
- Checking with the employee’s supervisor to find out if any projects and/or assignments the employee is currently working on will be adversely affected by their absence.
- Referring to the company’s holiday planner to see if there are any overlapping holiday requests from other employees. Ensuring there is no one else taking time off guarantees the team won’t be struggling with too many people absent at once
Once all of the above is in order, you can finally sign off on the request. As you can see, this process clearly takes too long, requires too much effort, and is too much of a distraction for any other work on your plate.
Cons of Manual Employee Holiday Tracking
Not only is manually tracking employee holidays both time-consuming and prone to errors, this process can easily disrupt operations and affect productivity. It can also leave your company vulnerable to fines, legal action, and extra fees due to compliance issues around holiday time regulations in your jurisdiction. Leaving you with additional work to course correct non-compliance consequences, on top of your already time-consuming holiday process.
Committing requests to memory and requesting time off via hallway conversations or confusing email threads simply won’t do the job. Even now, tracking your team’s holidays through Excel forms has become somewhat impossible; upgrading to Google Sheets is necessary. Paid time off (PTO) whether it’s sick leave or holidays, should be given the same attention as any other vital financial metric.
The best way to avoid issues around absence management is to use holiday management software. A holiday tracker app is a stand-alone HR management tool that provides an alternative system for managing employees’ absences. Going digital means you can say goodbye to long paper forms, endless email threads, and outdated Excel sheets. It also boosts your productivity levels by automating your holiday leave by using a top staff holiday booking system. That way holiday allowance, upcoming holidays and past holidays are centralised for both managers and employees to view at any moment.
Staff Holiday Booking System vs. Holiday Tracker Spreadsheet?
An effective staff holiday booking system improves your processes and aids decision-making, which ultimately allows HR teams and managers to better balance project demands and holiday requests without compromising their workload.
📌 Still not sure of why you should implement a staff holiday booking system?
Here are five key benefits of using a leave tracker vs. an employee holiday tracker template to manage and track your UK annual leave calendar:
1. Transparent Process
A holiday planner makes checking PTO balances much easier for both employees and managers. Both can log into the app and instantly see how much holiday time an employee has already used. In addition, you can also view how much time off is still available or what holiday entitlement they have in the near future.
2. Greater Flexibility
PTO can also be requested digitally rather than having to fill out time-consuming paper forms. As it’s accessible over the web, employees can access the time-off tracker template at any time, from anywhere. This is perfect for businesses with remote workers, multiple offices and/or to help already overworked admins.
3. Reduced the Chance of Workplace Conflicts
Time off is one of the most common causes of employee conflicts in the workplace. For example, when someone is out of the office, someone else has to be their backup. So when employees feel like management is not being fair as far as approving PTO goes, this quickly escalates. A time-off tracker can help you avoid such conflicts by clearly showing who has taken how much holiday/sick leave to date.
4. Empowers Employees While Freeing up Managers
By enabling self-service, holiday management software takes some of the load off of the manager and puts it in the hands of each employee. Employees can do their own due diligence before making PTO requests by checking their balance and the team calendar to make sure there are no conflicts.
5. Shows the Company’s Commitment to Work-life Balance
A company that encourages its employees to have a better work-life balance also tends to attract top talent and decrease the staff turnover rate over time. Making it easier for employees to request annual leave and/or get it approved demonstrates to them that work-life balance is not just a buzzword to your company.
Choose the Right Holiday Management Software
It’s not enough to know that PTO tracking is necessary and the benefits it presents; one must also know what to look for when selecting the best one for leave management in your company.
A suitable and reliable holiday management software should:
- Be easy to use, allowing employees to make a request via the staff holiday booking system, see the status of a pending request and/or check their accrued PTO balance, using a smartphone or tablet;
- Allow the company to immediately identify any issues to do with workers’ paid time off;
- Give managers visibility to compare pending time off requests against project schedules;
- Alert managers when an unexpected request is made or when an employee cancels approved time;
- Allow the company to customize it to match with the different PTO types its HR policy covers;
- Automate all calculations of accrued PTO making it easier to generate reports for compliance, and;
- Integrate with other business applications you use such as Greenhouse or Workable.
Employee Holiday Tracker: Final Thoughts
Furthermore, reduce the risk of any trouble with employment standards regulations by making sure you put a holiday policy in place. This policy should clearly specify the guidelines for taking time off as well as highlight legal holidays and office closures. Employers should also have an annual leave tracker to make sure that their employees use their allotted holiday time. If an employee accrues a large amount of holiday time, the employer should request them to schedule some time off. Keeping on top of their holiday entitlement.
With this in mind, HR technology is the key to managing your PTO effectively. A holiday tracker spreadsheet may work just fine for a small startup that has only a handful of employees to deal with, but as soon as a business has more than 10 employees, that spreadsheet simply no longer cuts it. When you add it all up, you can’t ignore the benefits that holiday tracking software has to offer.
Holiday management software reduces the distractions and interruptions both employees and managers have to deal with when it comes to annual leave, sick leave, and more. What’s more, holiday tracking software enables your company to perform more effectively than ever before. Thus, HR holiday software is the perfect leave planner for any leave type of company.
Staff Holiday Booking System FAQs
What is a staff holiday booking system?
A staff holiday booking system automates the process of requesting, approving, and managing employee time off. It centralises all holidays and leaves so you can analyse company data, ensure transparency and reduce administrative workload. Staff holiday booking system is also referred to as holiday management software, PTO software, holiday tracker and more.
Why should employers use a staff holiday booking system?
By using a staff holiday booking system, HR teams can streamline time-off requests, ensure compliance with labour laws, and improve transparency for both employees and managers. It saves time and enhances productivity while eliminating tedious, manual work.
Can staff holiday booking system integrate with other HR tools?
Yes, most platforms integrate seamlessly with HR platforms. For a more seamless solution, try Factorial’s free 7 day trial. It offers a robust holiday booking system while offering additional features that automate your core business processes, like annual appraisal reviews, rota scheduling and payroll.
