Booking leave looks like subtraction and is not
Two rules decide what a request actually costs, and nearly every free tracker gets at least one of them wrong. Both only bite on the people who are not on a standard Monday to Friday, which is how they survive: the error is invisible to whoever built the thing and expensive for whoever is on it.
Leave comes off the person's own working days
Somebody who works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday books "the week off" and uses three days. The Thursday and Friday were never working days for them, so they are not leave, they are just days off.
A tracker that counts calendar days charges seven. One that counts weekdays charges five. Both overcharge every part-timer in the business on every single booking, and the direction of the error is the one nobody queries until the holiday runs out in October and somebody sits down with a calendar.
A bank holiday inside a booking must not be charged twice
The common arrangement is 28 days including bank holidays, with the place shut on them. Under that arrangement each bank holiday has already come out of the 28. If somebody then books the week containing Easter Monday and the tracker charges five days, that Monday has been deducted twice: once as a closure and once as booked leave.
So this asks two separate questions rather than one:
- Do bank holidays come out of the entitlement, or sit on top of it?
- Does the business actually close on them?
Only when both are true is the day skipped. A business that gives bank holidays on top has not prepaid anything, and a business that stays open is treating the day as a normal working day, so in both cases the day is charged as normal. "28 days including bank holidays" and "20 days plus bank holidays" are the same amount of time off and behave completely differently inside a tracker.
The bank holidays here are computed, not listed. Easter comes from the standard algorithm and the substitute days are derived from what weekday each fixed date lands on, so any year works and nothing expires. Pick the nation and the arithmetic follows it, because Scotland and Northern Ireland genuinely differ.
And leave across the new year belongs to two years
A booking from 28 December to 8 January on a January leave year is not twelve days out of one year. The December part comes out of the old year's balance and the January part out of the new one. Trackers that assign the whole booking to whichever year it starts in hand people extra days without anybody noticing.
Overbooking, and whether you can get it back
The tracker lets a balance go negative, because allowing leave in advance of accrual is a normal thing to do. What matters is the end of it: overtaken holiday is only recoverable from the final payslip if the contract allows the deduction. Section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 requires a statutory basis, a written contract term the worker was given a copy of beforehand, or their written agreement given in advance.
Without one of those, the deduction is unlawful however clearly the tracker shows the deficit. It is a one-line clause to add to a written statement and it is the difference between an overpayment you can recover and one you cannot.
Where the data lives, said plainly
In this browser. There is no account, nothing uploads, and nobody else can see it, which is the whole basis of this site. The honest consequence is that this is not a backup: it survives a refresh and a reboot, and it does not survive clearing your site data, and it does not follow you to another machine or to a colleague's.
So there are three exports and they are not an afterthought. The calendar file drops every booking into Outlook or Google Calendar as all-day events. The CSV opens in a spreadsheet, with the charged days already worked out. The PDF is the balances and the bookings in one page you can put in a folder. Any of the three is a copy that outlives the browser, and taking one occasionally is the sensible habit.
Common questions
How many days does a part-timer use when they book a week off?
The number of days they actually work in that week. Somebody on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday who books the week off uses three days, not five, because the Thursday and Friday were never working days for them. Trackers that count calendar days, or that count all weekdays, overcharge every part-timer in the business on every single booking, and the error compounds silently across the year until somebody runs out of holiday in October.
Does a bank holiday inside my leave get deducted?
It depends on two things that are usually left implicit: whether bank holidays are part of your entitlement, and whether the business shuts on them. Under the common "28 days including bank holidays" arrangement with the place closed, the bank holiday has already come out of the 28, so booking the week containing Easter Monday costs four days, not five. Charging five would deduct that day twice. If bank holidays sit on top of your entitlement, or if the business stays open, the day is charged normally.
What happens to leave booked over Christmas and the new year?
It splits. A booking from 28 December to 8 January on a January leave year is not twelve days out of one year: the December part comes out of the old year and the January part out of the new one. Trackers that assign the whole booking to whichever year it starts in quietly hand people extra days. This one splits it and shows each half against the right balance.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No. There is no account and nothing leaves your device. The team and the bookings are stored in this browser only, which means they survive a refresh and do not survive clearing your site data, and they are not visible on another machine or to a colleague. That is a real limit rather than a technicality, which is why the calendar file, CSV and PDF exports are there: they are how you keep a copy that outlives the browser.
Can I overbook someone's holiday?
The tracker will let you and will tell you. Going into the red is a legitimate thing to allow in advance of accrual, and it matters at the end: overtaken holiday is only recoverable from a final payslip if the contract allows the deduction. Section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 needs a written term the worker was given a copy of beforehand, or their written agreement given in advance. Without one of those you cannot take it out of the final pay however clearly the tracker shows the deficit.
Are the bank holidays going to go out of date?
No, because they are calculated rather than listed. Easter is computed from the standard algorithm and the substitute days are worked out from the day of the week each fixed date falls on, so any year works, including years nobody has published a table for yet. You pick the nation, because Scotland and Northern Ireland differ from England and Wales, and the arithmetic follows it.
Does it handle half days?
Yes, on the first and last day of a booking, which is where they nearly always fall. A half day on a day the person does not work costs nothing rather than counting as minus a half, which sounds obvious and is a real bug in a lot of trackers because they apply the half to the range rather than to a chargeable day.
Can I use it to check cover?
Set the number of people you can afford to have off at once and the calendar marks any day that goes over it. It is a blunt check by design: it counts anybody off, on any leave type, on a day they would otherwise have worked. Skills and shifts are the rota's problem rather than the leave tracker's.