Staff holiday planner
Tracking holiday is easy while everyone works the same hours. In a café or a shop they rarely do. Here is what a holiday planner has to show once your team is a mix of full-time, part-time and on-call — and where the spreadsheet usually gives way.
The four numbers you need per person
A holiday record you can actually rely on shows four things for each person, and no more: Contracted hours per week. Everything else is derived from this. Holiday days a full-timer gets where you are. This is a number you set; no tool can know it for you. This person’s share of that. Worked out from the two above. Days taken so far, and therefore what is left. Everything else — department, carry-over, half days — can come later. These four are the ones that make somebody ring you in July.
Why the spreadsheet drifts
It rarely breaks in the formula. It breaks in these three: A new starter inherits the previous person’s row, including their hours. The sheet now says full-time for somebody on two days a week. Holiday lives in one place and the rota in another. The sheet says Sara is off in July; the rota has her working in the middle of it. Somebody’s hours change mid-year. A person who went from half-time to four days in March has two bases in one year, and the sheet has room for one. The first two are storage problems: the same fact in two places eventually becomes two different facts. The third is real arithmetic you have to decide about whatever tool you use.
Keep leave next to the rota, not in its own sheet
The simplest way to stop holiday and rota disagreeing is to not keep them in two places. When leave sits in the same tool as the rota, the rota can skip people who are off, and it can tell you when you book leave on a day somebody is already rostered. That is what Rota does: you record holiday and absence against the person, the week fills around it, and a shift that collides with booked leave is flagged straight away — not when somebody fails to turn up.
What you should be able to answer in ten seconds
Test your own record with these four. If any of them takes longer than ten seconds, that is where the tool is failing you: How many days has Mats got left? Who is off during the summer shutdown? Has anybody taken more than their share? Does this request clash with a shift? The first three are lookups. The fourth is the one that costs money when the answer arrives too late.
What Rota does about it
Rota is free, and holiday and absence sit in the same screen as the week. You set what full-time is where you are and how many holiday days a full-timer gets. Rota works out each person’s share and shows the sum — “28 of 37,5 hours = 75 %” — so you can see where the number came from instead of taking it on trust. Holiday and sickness go in per day. The week fills around them, and a shift that lands on recorded leave is flagged. No account, no per-head price.
Frequently asked questions
How much holiday does a part-timer get?
Their share of what a full-timer gets where you work, in proportion to contracted hours. Somebody on 28 of 37,5 hours has 75 % of the full allowance. How many days the full allowance is varies by country and by agreement — check what applies where you are and set that number; the arithmetic follows from it.
What about on-call staff with no fixed hours?
There is no percentage to work from, and a tool that pretends otherwise is worse than one that says so. Rota shows “on call” instead of a number, so you can handle those people separately.
Do staff need an account to see their leave?
No. The rota is shared as a link that carries the week, and leave shows in the same view. They need neither an account nor an app.
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