Offering paid time gives you an advantage when you’re competing for the best talent. That’s why in 2025, 70% to 90% of workers in private companies received access to paid vacation.

But for SMBs, managing employees’ PTO presents many challenges. You find yourself dealing with clashing leave requests, different PTO rules for different employees and offices, and keeping track of who’s off and when.

Vacation scheduling software simplifies this by bringing all of these tasks into one place. In this article, I review eight of the top vacation scheduling apps and match each one to its best use case.

Platform	Best for	G2 rating	Free trial	Starting price
Buddy Punch	Covering shifts around approved vacation	4.8/5	14 days	$4.99/user/month (no minimum)
Vacation Tracker	Stopping late vacation requests	4.4/5	Not offered	$1.83/user/month ($45.83/month minimum)
Calamari	Booking vacation before PTO has been earned	4.6/5	14 days	$2.50/user/month ($25/month minimum)
Day Off	Deducting PTO for part-time, flexible-hour, and rotating schedules	4.7/5	14 days	$2/user/month ($20/month minimum)
TimeOff.Management	Managing different PTO allowances	Not reviewed	30 days	$1/user/month
Factorial	Scheduling vacations around company-wide shutdowns	4.4/5	14 days	$8/user/month (custom quote required)
actiPLANS	Letting employees check their own PTO	5/5	30 days	$1.50/user/month (up to 40 users)
AttendanceBot	Managing different leave rules across states	4.6/5	14 days	$10/user/month

1. Buddy Punch – Best for covering shifts around approved vacation

More than half of US managers say it’s a struggle to find staff during the summer to cover for employees away on vacation. For shift-based businesses like restaurants and factories, that can leave managers without enough people to maintain normal service or production levels.

Buddy Punch helps you fill the gaps when team members take time off. It gets to work right from the time you approve an employee’s vacation. You can see those days off in the schedule you use to plan shifts for the coming weeks and months, so it’s easy to spot when you’ll be short-handed.

At this point, the app gives you a couple of options:

• If you already know who can work the shift: Check when other employees are free and use the drag-and-drop scheduling tool to move them to the shift. Buddy Punch warns you if they’ve said they can’t work on specific days and times and stops you from booking workers for two different shifts at the same time.
• If you haven’t found anyone yet: Leave it as an open shift. It stays on the schedule until someone claims it, so you can see if it’s still unfilled until late and arrange cover before the shift starts.

This is where Buddy Punch’s Covers feature comes in. It gives you one more way to find someone during the week of a shift that’s still open.

Covers lets you offer the available hours to several coworkers through the app. If the shift needs a specific type of worker, like a CNC driller or bartender, Buddy Punch only sends it to workers with the required job code. Admins can set Covers to need manager approval or let them get automatically approved without it.

Once you’ve filled and approved any open shift, Buddy Punch updates the schedule on its website and app. You can email or send a push alert to the staff whose shifts have been updated.

Pros

• Send hard-to-fill slots simultaneously to workers who do the same job with the Covers feature.
• The tool stops you from assigning available hours to someone already working at the same time and warns you if they have booked PTO.

Cons

• Only managers can see open shifts, so staff can’t pick them up themselves.
• Managers can approve Covers, but only admins can choose whether Covers need approval.

Pricing

Buddy Punch’s Starter plan costs $19 per month plus $4.99 per user per month, billed annually. Scheduling costs another $1 per user per month on Starter. The Pro plan includes scheduling and costs $19 per month plus $6.99 per user per month. Buddy Punch offers a 14-day free trial.

2. Vacation Tracker – Best for stopping late vacation requests

Longer vacations are harder to cover when staff ask for time off at short notice. In sectors like HVAC, landscaping, and construction, that’s a problem because you may already have work booked in and need time to move people around to get things done. Vacation Tracker prevents staff from leaving it too late to ask for longer breaks during your busiest months.

You can control how much notice staff need to give you in three ways:

• Set more notice for longer breaks: Run several notice periods at once, like requiring one week’s notice for a day off but one month’s notice for a two-week vacation.
• Ask for more notice during busy months: Set stricter rules for the times of year you’re under the greatest pressure and have them repeat every year.
• Choose who each rule is for: Ensure that field teams, who are often harder to replace at short notice, have to give more notice than office staff.

Instead of having to get in touch with you to request time off, staff can do it through Vacation Tracker, Slack, or Teams. The tool checks the dates they’ve asked for against the rules you’ve set. If they’ve asked too late, they get turned down. If they’ve given enough notice, the request comes to you to approve or deny. If you don’t answer, Vacation Tracker sends you reminders before the request expires.

I like how you can make an exception in Vacation Tracker for cases like a family wedding or another one-off event where someone couldn’t give you enough warning. You need to add the time off for them yourself, and Vacation Tracker approves it straight away.

Pros

• Make notice periods longer during busier times and for staff who are difficult to replace quickly.
• You can automatically repeat notice period rules for set times across years.

Cons

• Only admins can change or create notice periods rules, not managers.
• Notice rules don’t apply when Admins or Approvers add time off, so you can’t stop every late booking.

Pricing

Vacation Tracker’s Core plan costs $1.83 per user per month, billed annually, with a $45.83 monthly minimum, and includes the Leave Request Notice Period feature discussed in this review.

3. Calamari – Best for booking vacation before PTO has been earned

Most travelers plan their major trips several months ahead. However, many staff wanting to book early may not have earned enough PTO yet for the time they want to take off. Calamari gets around this by counting the PTO they have now and what they’ll earn before the vacation starts.

Say an employee wants two weeks off in four months’ time. They enter the dates in Calamari and see how much PTO they have now, how much they should have by the time they want to go, how much the trip will use up, and how much will be left when they get back.

You can choose how the system handles a request if someone hasn’t earned enough PTO yet. It can:

• Use only the PTO they already have: Staff can’t book more days than they’ve earned.
• Count PTO they’ll earn before the vacation: They can book now if they’ll have enough built up by the time they go on leave.
• Let their PTO go below zero: Employees can “borrow” PTO they haven’t earned yet, up to a limit you set. They “pay you back” as they earn their normal PTO over the following months.

I like the control Calamari gives you over how far ahead staff can book time off: You can open next year’s PTO bookings up to 12 months early. You can also choose whether the system uses any PTO left from this year first or directly uses next year’s PTO instead.

Pros

• You can let staff book vacation using PTO they’ll earn before they go on leave.
• Choose whether the system counts only the PTO that staff have now, includes PTO they’ll earn until their vacation starts, or lets them “borrow” extra days.

Cons

• You have to turn on next-year booking separately for each type of leave that you want staff to be able to book early.
• Staff can’t change the dates on a request they’ve already sent, so they have to cancel it and send a new one.

Pricing

Calamari’s Time & Attendance tariff costs $2.50 per active user per month, subject to a minimum spend of $25 per month, billed annually. The company offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

4. Day Off – Best for deducting PTO for part-time, flexible-hour, and rotating schedules

It’s harder to work out PTO for teams that include part-time, flexible-hour, and rotating-shift staff. Let’s say you have a part-time bookkeeper who works Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they ask you for a week off. You have to make sure you only take three days from their PTO balance, not five.

Day Off handles this well. When you set it up, you choose the normal workweek for your company. Staff who work different days or hours will need their own schedule. For the bookkeeper, that would be three days a week. If they ask for time off, Day Off uses their schedule to work out how many days to deduct.

I like how Day Off works out PTO for three of the most common types of schedules:

• Set hours: If someone normally works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. but needs to leave at 3 p.m. for a doctor’s appointment, Day Off only deducts two hours. You can also split a working day into separate blocks, such as 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., so breaks aren’t included as working time.
• Rotating shifts: You can create a different schedule for each week and set shift patterns to repeat. When an employee books vacation days, Day Off checks their schedule for that week and counts only the hours they were expected to work.
• Flexible hours: For someone meant to work six hours on a day they want to be away, Day Off takes six hours of PTO, not eight.

Staff can see their pending PTO days and hours on the app or web browser before they ask for time off. That way, they know how much PTO the request will use before they send it.

Pros

• Give each employee their own schedule, including part-time, set-hour, flexible-hour, and rotating work.
• The tool deducts PTO only for the days and hours someone is meant to work.

Cons

• You need to add the company’s hourly leave type, hourly PTO policy, and hours-based work schedule before rolling out the app to workers.
• The system uses the default working week for staff who don’t have their own schedule set up.

Pricing

Day Off Pro costs $2 per seat per month and is subject to a $20 monthly minimum. The app also offers a free plan for up to 10 users with restricted features.

5. TimeOff.Management – Best for managing different PTO allowances 

A recent study found that private industry workers get an average of 11 vacation days after one year with an employer, increasing to 18 days after 10 years. In a 40-person SMB, this can mean a wide mix of different PTO allowances that get harder to manage over time.

TimeOff.Management deals with this by letting you set a normal PTO allowance and then change it for different departments or individual staff.

For example, one department might get 15 days a year while another gets more. You can also make exceptions for one person. Say an employee gets 20 days instead of their department’s 15 because you offered them extra vacation days to join your company. You can give them the extra days without changing anyone else’s allowance.

The software also lets you change how staff get their PTO. Staff on 15 days might get them all at the start of the year or build them up at 1.25 days each month. You can make the same choice for the employee on 20 days. I like how the app keeps these two things separate: how much PTO someone gets and how they get it.

The system also lets you automatically give staff more PTO the longer they stay with your company. For example, set the app to add extra days to an employee’s yearly PTO allowance on their work anniversary.

Sometimes, overtime can change someone’s PTO balance. A laborer working an extra three days on a job might get extra time off in return. You can add those days to their balance without changing their normal yearly allowance and leave a note explaining why.

Pros

• Set a normal PTO allowance for your company, then give departments and individual staff their own balance if you need to.
• Automatically grant long-serving staff a more generous PTO allowance when they reach a milestone you determine.

Cons

• If staff earn PTO over time, you have to set up their accrual schedule at the start of each year.
• There’s no mobile app, so managers and employees have to access the system through a browser.

Pricing

TimeOff.Management costs $1 per user per month, billed monthly (no annual option is available). The company offers a 30-day full-feature trial without requiring a credit card.

6. Factorial – Best for scheduling vacations around company-wide shutdowns

One in 10 employers shut down a plant or warehouse once a year for an average of five paid days, usually over the summer or winter holidays. Factorial helps you manage these shutdowns by adding the closure dates to employees’ time-off records in one go.

Here’s how. First, create a new type of absence called Company Closure. This classifies the shutdown as a different type of absence, meaning it doesn’t get mixed up with the vacation staff have booked and you have approved.

Next, choose whether these days should use up employees’ remaining vacation days. If yes, Factorial takes those days from their PTO balances. If not, their balances stay the same, but the shutdown still appears on their time-off record.

Now add the shutdown dates to the Company Closure entry. Staff don’t need to send in any time-off requests for these dates, and you can add these dates for several employees or a whole team at once. You can also stop staff from choosing the Company Closure leave type when they request time off themselves. They can still see the option, but only managers and admins can use it.

I like how Factorial handles partial shutdowns. That might be a warehouse closing for maintenance but business as usual for your back office team. Filter by team, department, or office so you only include the staff who’ll be on time off.

Pros

• Add the same shutdown dates to everyone who’ll be on time off in one go, so you don’t have to update each person’s record separately.
• Filter by team or department if only part of the business needs to shut down.

Cons

• If you change the shutdown dates, you have to delete each person’s shutdown entry one by one.
• You have to create the Company Closure leave type yourself because Factorial doesn’t include it by default.

Pricing

Factorial’s plans start at $8 per user per month. The vacation scheduling features are part of a much wider HR platform, so you’ll need to contact the company for a customized quote based on the number of users and range of features you want.

7. actiPLANS – Best for letting employees check their own PTO

The most common HR question, according to Conferbot analysis, is “How much PTO do I have left?”. actiPLANS provides a way for staff to find the answer themselves fast, saving admin and HR teams from having to answer the same question again and again.

Employees can check how much PTO they have left on the actiPLANS mobile app or website. If they choose the website, they can find out how that balance was worked out by opening Balance History, which shows:

• The PTO they’ve earned so far
• Any vacation time already taken that’s used up their PTO
• Changes made by a manager, like adding extra PTO for overtime or taking some away after they worked fewer hours than expected

Sometimes, employees want to look back further to see how much PTO they had at the start of the year or how many days they’ve taken since then, because they’re planning a longer vacation later in the year or want to check how quickly they’re using up their time off.

Staff can run their own Leave Time & Balances report. Once they choose the dates and type of leave, they can see their balance at the start and end of that period. If a team member spots a mistake in their record, they can tell HR or their manager, who can make any corrections needed and leave a note explaining what they changed.

I like how actiPLANS connects checking how much vacation time you have left with planning your time off, as employees can also request leave from the app.

Pros

• Staff can inspect their current PTO balance at any time, including how it’s been calculated.
• If a team member books a vacation on the app, they can see the effect on their PTO balance straight away.

Cons

• Staff can only see their PTO balance if you’ve turned PTO tracking on for them.
• Past leave is kept in a separate report, so staff can’t see their full leave history in one place.

Pricing

actiPLANS costs $1.50 per user per month for teams of 1–40 users and $1.20 per user per month for 41–200 users, billed annually. A limited free tier is available for teams of up to three users.

8. AttendanceBot – Best for managing different leave rules across states

Company leave policy for employees you have in one state often won’t work for staff based in just the next state. AttendanceBot helps you manage this by letting you set different leave rules for different offices.

First, assign each office its own leave policies based on location. For example, one office might give staff more paid leave than another, or use different rules for how that leave builds up. AttendanceBot lets you keep those policies separate.

Next, create separate types of leave when one location needs something another one doesn’t. In this case, you could give your New York staff a Sick and Safe Leave option without making it available to staff in the Pennsylvania office.

I like how you can give each office its own state holiday calendar. For example, Massachusetts has Patriots’ Day, while Rhode Island has Victory Day. If your business closes for those holidays, AttendanceBot can show each office their applicable holidays without adding them to everyone’s calendar.

Once the rules for each office are set up, add employees to their locations so AttendanceBot gives them the correct leave rules and holidays. Staff can request time off the same way wherever they’re based — through Slack or Microsoft Teams — and the app checks it against the policy for their location.

Pros

• You can give each office its own leave rules, leave types, and holiday calendar.
• Staff only see the holidays for their own office, so they don’t see extra days off employees in other locations get.

Cons

• AttendanceBot doesn’t have state leave rules preloaded, meaning you have to set them up yourself.
• There’s no mobile app, meaning access is only available via a web dashboard, Slack, or Teams.

Pricing

AttendanceBot paid plans start at $4 per user per month, billed annually. But you need the Premium plan, which costs $10 per user per month, to use the location-based rules in this review. A 14-day free trial is available.

Feature comparison

Platform	PTO balance tracking	Mobile app	Calendar sync	Shift scheduling
Buddy Punch	✅	✅	✅	✅
Vacation Tracker	✅	✅	✅	❌
Calamari	✅	✅	✅	❌
Day Off	✅	✅	✅	❌
TimeOff.Management	✅	❌	✅	❌
Factorial	✅	✅	✅	✅
actiPLANS	✅	✅	✅	✅
AttendanceBot	✅	❌	✅	✅

How I chose the tools on this list

As an experienced businessperson who has run a 60+ employee business, the features I looked for in each app matched the problems managers face when staff take time off. Specifically, I checked whether:

• It was easy for staff to ask for time off and managers to approve or turn down requests fast.
• Employees and managers could see how much PTO is left and how any holidays booked would affect it.
• The software could handle different work schedules, PTO amounts, locations, and company rules.
• Managers could see who’s away, spot potential clashes, and arrange work or shift cover around vacations.

Finally, ease of use was key, because adoption is low even for feature-packed software when staff find it confusing or difficult to use.