Employee Time-Off & PTO Tracker

What you get

A single Excel workbook that replaces scattered spreadsheets and email threads with one structured system for tracking employee time off. It covers PTO balances, request logging, public holidays, and team availability across the calendar year—built for teams that run HR manually.

Who it's for

HR generalists, office managers, and ops leads at companies with 5 to 50 employees who need a reliable time-off process but have not yet adopted a dedicated HRIS. This is the right tool at the point when a shared document is no longer enough and a full software subscription is still hard to justify.

What's inside

• PTO Balances sheet — per-employee rows showing accrual rate, carry-over balance, days used to date, and days remaining, updated as you log requests
• Time-Off Requests log — a structured table capturing employee name, request type (vacation, sick, personal, bereavement), start and end dates, total days, and approval status
• Holiday Calendar — pre-loaded with standard US and UK public holidays for 2026, with clearly labeled rows you can extend or localize
• Monthly Summary sheet — a month-by-month grid showing which employees are out and when, so coverage gaps are visible at a glance
• Approval status tracking — pending, approved, and denied states on every request row, giving managers a clear audit trail
• Carry-over logic — dedicated fields for prior-year balance so year-end rollovers are recorded and visible without manual recalculation
• Multiple leave types — the request log supports distinct categories, making it straightforward to separate vacation usage from sick leave in your summaries

How to use it

Download the file and open it in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Start by entering each employee's name, hire date, and accrual rate in the PTO Balances sheet. As requests come in, add them to the Time-Off Requests log—the Monthly Summary and balance fields update to reflect what has been approved. The Holiday Calendar requires no setup for US or UK teams; adjust the listed dates if your office follows a different schedule.