Best Practices For Tracking Nonprofit Vacation And Sick Time
Whether youre using a vacation and sick time tracking spreadsheet or a time tracking software, youll need to make sure that employees and managers are using this effectively, and in the way it is intended.
Time-tracking software can make employees feel like management is checking up on them, creating an atmosphere of distrust and tension within the organization. To keep employees happy while still staying on track with leave, staffing and volunteer management, follow these 5 best practices.
Do You Trust Your Pay Stub Vacation Accrual Number
You are probably thinking, why keep track of your time off numbers if your paycheck stub or pay statement already includes it. Ask yourself how confident you are in its accuracy. Your pay stub is often printed by an external payroll service provider and may not always be up to date. Mistakes happen too.
Your secure HR employee portal may also list your accrued and used time-off hours or days. However it lacks the ability to take private notes about how you plan to use your time off so you can plan ahead. Its not just about tracking your time off accurately. You also want to optimize how you request days off and leverage company holidays every month of the year.
In the same way you verify that your salary and deductions are correct every pay period, you should also make sure that your paid time off numbers are 100% accurate. Of course if you find a discrepancy on your pay slip, report it right away. Remember that the key word in paid time off or PTO is paid. You have earned this time off through working a set number of weeks at your job. Would you be OK if your salary or bonus pay was wrong? The same wary eye should be used to examine how many vacation days are due you.
Is The Vacation Day Tracker Really Free
This vacation spreadsheet is completely free to use, private when you make a copy, and contains zero advertising and cookies. All that I ask is for your feedback so that I can continue to add new features and smarter ways to track, visualize, and maximize vacations and work-life balance. You can support the VacationCounts site by subscribing to the newsletter and sharing the link to this page with your co-workers and connections.
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How To Copy The Vacation Days Tracker Google Sheet Template
The following , now updated for 2022. Read the instructions below for how to create a private copy of the file using this template whether you are on a desktop or laptop computer or using an iPhone or Android mobile phone to track your vacation days online. No matter which device you start with, your vacation tracker can be opened on any device via web browser or Google Sheets app. Remember this is NOT an Excel spreadsheet it runs for free on Google Sheets online which is part of the Google Docs and cloud office applications.
IMPORTANT: You need to login to your Google Account to be able to save a copy of this template for private use. Your secure copy of the vacation days tracker will be stored in your own personal Google Drive account. You do not need to request permission to edit this template as youll be making a private copy for yourself which you will own. No information is shared with VacationCounts since Google handles the secure sign-in, copy, and storage when you use any template file.
Choose Either The Weekly Monthly Or Hourly Accrual Worksheet
If your company uses daily vacation accrual, this spreadsheet may not work for you. It is set up for weekly, semi-weekly, monthly, or semi-monthly accrual periods.
If you are using a semi-monthly accrual period , use the Monthly Accrual worksheet and change the Pay Period to Semi-Monthly.
The new hourly accrual worksheet allows you to enter the pay period date and the number of work hours. The benefits accrued are then calculated by multiplying the accrual rates by the number of work hours.
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Define How Benefits Are Accrued
Besides the obvious Company Name and Employee Name fields, there are a few other values you’ll need to enter.
Weekly Accrual worksheet:
- Pay Period Starting: Enter the date of the start of the first pay period .
- Weeks Per Pay Period: For bi-weekly pay periods, enter a 2.
- Accrued Every N Periods& Accrual Starting Period: If the employee vacation accrual period is identical to the pay period, then these values should probably all be 1 . However, if your policy states that employee vacation is accrued every 4 weeks, but you have a bi-weekly pay period, you’ll need to modify these values.
Monthly Accrual worksheet: This one is pretty simple. Just enter the date of the start of your fiscal year and choose the pay period.
Hourly Accrual worksheet: In this version, you enter rates representing how many vacation hours are earned for each hour of work.
Excel Leave Tracker Template
This Excel Leave Tracker template can be used to record and monitor employee leaves for a year .
You can track 10 different leave codes for an employee vacation leaves, sick leaves, maternity/paternity leaves, casual leave tracking, leave in lieu of overtime, and half days, etc.
It also provides a monthly and yearly total of different types of leaves that can be helpful in project planning and leave management.
It uses a bit of conditional formatting, a few DATE functions, array formulas, and a simple VBA code.
Leave Tracker Template? Click here!
How this Excel Leave Tracker Template Works?
- Use the triangle icons next to the month name to move to the next/previous month . There is a short VBA code that runs in the background whenever you change the month. It shows you the selected month only and hides all the other months.
- This Excel template can be used to track leaves for over a year. You can select a start month and can track leaves for a year. For example, if you follow the April-March cycle, select April 2021 as the starting month.
- Note: The value in cell A1 is to change the time period of the leave tracker ONLY. DO NOT use Cell A1 to move to the next month while recording leaves. Use the triangle icons next to the month names to go to the next/previous month and mark leaves.
The download file is completely unlocked so you can customize it to your needs.
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New: Vacationcounts The Web App
After releasing the Vacation Days Tracker template file for Google Sheets for years , the wait is finally over. Now you can use a dedicated web app to track, allocate, and measure your paid time off and holiday calendar. The vacation tracking spreadsheet is no longer needed once you upgrade to the app which is also free. Give it a try and send feedback to make it even better.
The Time Off feature is new for 2019 and replaces the spreadsheet template.
In addition you can use the VacationCounts app to make a list of all your past vacations and visualize your travel accomplishments. Give it a try its free and works equally well on desktop and mobile with no install required.
View Teams Monthly Leave Dashboard
The dashboard is interactive as it allows the user to choose the month for which we want to view the leave data for. We will enter the month by selecting Year and Month.
There are two pages in this Dashboard sheet. First is the leave calendar view.
As you can see from the above screenshot, the leave types are shown in different color. The legend is shown at the top indicating what each color means. In addition to the 5 leave types, we also have display for the following: Holidays , Weekends , Not Employed and Not Applicable .
Order of priority for colors: Not Applicable > Not Employed > Holidays > Weekends > leave types
Holidays and Weekends are self-explanatory. Not Employed will represent the days before the employee began employment and days after the employee termination date .
Not Applicable represents the days that are not actual dates. For example, if you choose November month, 31st day will be Not applicable. For February in a non-leap year, 29, 30, 31 will be Not Applicable days.
You can use this calendar view to assess if you will have enough coverage in your team for specific weeks .
Monthly Summary
This sheet also shows the monthly summarized count of days taken off under each leave type, total leave taken and Worked Days.
Total Leave is the sum of leave taken under each of the 5 leave types.
If an employees leave overlaps with a holiday or a weekend, it does not count as a leave day.
Worked Days is calculated as
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User Guide For Vacation Days Tracker Template
Visit our Vacation Days Tracker Spreadsheet Template product page to view detailed instructions on how to access and start using your time-off benefits tracking spreadsheet. The template is absolutely free to use and youll be prompted to make a private copy when you open it as long as you are logged in to your Google Account. Make as many copies as you wish to track calendar year vacation days. Share your love of vacations by sharing the template with family, friends, and co-workers.
Step 3: Your own personal copy of your Vacation Days Tracker will appear in your secure Google Drive in a folder of your choosing. We recommend that you rename it and star it and bookmark it so that you can quickly access it at any time from your computer as well as on your smart phone. Download the Google Drive and related apps from the Android or iPhone store to play with it on mobile.
Keeping track of your paid time off and holidays each year is as easy as 1-2-3. Add your comments below or to our feedback from on the Vacation Days Tracker product page with suggestions for ways to make it even better.
Vacation Days Tracker Spreadsheet Template
Do you need a better way to track your vacation days for the calendar year*? VacationCounts has created this Google Sheets document template that not only tracks your vacation benefits, it also tracks your company holidays, floating holidays, and bonus days off. It includes a Dashboard which graphs your vacation usage to date along with statistics to show you how well you are maximizing your work-life-vacation balance. Never lose a paid day off because you forgot to track it and use it!*Updated annually: latest file version with 2022 holiday monthly calendar.
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Streamline Time Card Approvals With Automated Actions In Smartsheet
Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team and adapt as those needs change.
The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.
When teams have clarity into the work getting done, theres no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.
Multiple Employee Time Card Template
This time card template for Word shows hours and shifts for multiple employees in an organized table format. You can track breaks, lunch hours, and total hours worked for each day of the week, listed Monday through Sunday. This is a simple way to track hours for several employees simultaneously.
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Tracking Time Using Spreadsheets Has A Low Level Of Accuracy
Using spreadsheets has a high risk of human error. Its primarily because of manual data entry, which is a tedious and time-consuming process.
Suppose a company decides to let their employees manually input their working hours in an Excel time tracking sheet. In that case, the upper management team must believe the employees do it according to the actual state.
Some might say that involves a high trust level. But its nothing new thats how many businesses worked over the years.
However, the mistakes caused by inaccurate, manual input of time tracking data can cost the company a small fortune, in a big perspective. Thats why businesses that treat their money seriously should consider giving up using, e.g., Microsoft Excel time tracking spreadsheet and track time with an automatic solution.
How To Use The Vacation Days Tracker
The full instructions are contained in the spreadsheet, but to get you started here are the step-by-step time-off tracking instructions:
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Flexible Vacation And Sick Leave Policies
With good people management software, you can also set multiple policies for different employee types of stages of employment.
For example, contract staff may not be entitled to any paid vacation, new staff have limited vacation days and volunteers are allowed to take unlimited time off.
Keeping track of multiple types of leave manually can be extremely difficult and result in errors. With automated software, all youll have to do is enter the date of joining, type of employee, and their vacation and sick leave time is automatically set saving you time and energy!
You can also view everyone available on a specific date or time to easily plan and keep employees informed of important meetings and events.
Why Keep Track Of Employee Attendance
Keeping employee attendance records at work helps both remote and office-based companies identify and address a number of matters:
Tracking attendance is also useful when you want to compare employee attendance with the time employees spend on sick leave, personal leave, or vacations.
In order to track your employees’ attendance, it’s best that you use a staff attendance register. Depending on the type of the employee attendance records you’re using, you and your employees will be able to mark, track, and view:
- Employee time in and time out for the day
- Attendance per day, week, month, or year
- Break time per day
- The days employees spend on personal leave
- The days employees spend on sick leave
- The days employees spend on vacation
- Whether some of your employees are not showing up to work, but offering no timely explanation as to why
To help you track this data, here are 12 employee attendance templates you, your HR team, or your employees can easily fill out in Excel or Google Sheets, and which you or your HR team can later analyze and draw valuable conclusions from.
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Enter Employee Leave Data
Now, for the last data entry section, we move to the Leave sheet.
We enter leave taken by each employee here. There are four fields in this table.
If an employee takes a 5 day vacation, you can enter that in one row by providing Leave Start and Leave End dates.
If an employee takes a single day leave, please enter same date in Start Date and End Date fields.
Leave Type field has data validation built-in which shows the 5 options we set in the Settings sheet.
Similarly the Employee Name also has data validation to allow only employee names available in the Employees sheet. But the drop down option will not activate until a new row is created in the table. If you like typing in the name directly, you can go ahead. If you prefer the drop down options, please read further below in the Extensions section where I discuss a work-around .
We are done with data entry. Its time to see the template magic in creating the vacation calendar and report.
Free Timesheet And Time Card Templates
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A timesheet is typically used to log work hours and calculate pay, including overtime, vacation hours, sick leave, and holiday pay. It can also be used to keep track of how hours are spent on a job by itemizing services provided or project tasks completed. Timesheets can also be used to track work hours without payment details, such as volunteer or community service hours. Traditionally, time cards were actual cards that employees used to clock in and out of work shifts. Today, people often use the terms timesheet and time card interchangeably, and the sheets they refer to may be managed completely online or with software.
For small businesses, timesheet templates are an ideal option for tracking employee hours and calculating payroll. Below youll find a variety of free time card templates for weekly, biweekly, and monthly pay periods. These reusable templates are professionally designed and fully customizable.
We’ve also included a time card template in Smartsheet, a spreadsheet-inspired work management tool that makes time card management easier and more collaborative than Excel, Word, and PDFs. The pre-built time card template includes an automated approval process that eliminates manual steps and ensures no request is missed.
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