Free Employee Leave Tracker for Excel

Managing and tracking leave applications can be tedious, especially for companies operating via multiple departments or offices. The truth is, with dozens of employees working for you, it’s not easy to keep track of who’s going to be away from work, why, and for how long! That’s why a simple notebook or Word file simply won’t do!

Lucky for you, we offer a smart sheet to speed up HR processes for you without the need for expensive software. With just a bit of Excel magic, you can easily track employee absences, register and process new leave applications, and ensure a stable workforce for your company.

What We Offer

Pre-programmed working sheets to record employee data and register leave requests. You can also get a snapshot of each working month through a visual dashboard that automatically updates itself as you add more data. Plus, our premade, multiple spreadsheets are dynamically connected, so you don’t have to duplicate data entries.

Our template is:

Free
Interactive & user-friendly
100% Customizable
Pre-programmed with built-in mathematical formulae for your ease

Here’s Why You Need a Leave Tracker…

Before we present a step-by-step guide to using our template, let’s take a moment to understand why automated leave trackers are such a game-changer, especially for startups or companies with large numbers of employees.

Leave trackers help you:

Streamline leave registration and processing
Keep track of individual employees’ leave schedules
Ensure smooth operations and staffing levels
Ensure compliance with company policies
Track absence trends
Manage leaves without the need for a larger HR infrastructure or expensive software

What’s Inside?

Once you download the file on your PC, you’ll find five separate sheets inside to work with:

An Overall Dashboard
An Employee Data Sheet
A Leave Registration Sheet
A Monthly Sheet
A Configuration Sheet

Don’t forget to macro-enable the file to fully benefit from the advanced functionalities we have pre-programmed into it.

Here’s how you can do that:

Step 1: Download the file
Step 2: Right-click on the file icon
Step 3: Go to ‘Properties’
Step 4: Select the option ‘Unblock’ under ‘Security’

Make This Template Your Own

Start by opening the Confg. Sheet and clicking the ‘Reset All Data’ button. This clears all the sample data we added for initial testing, giving you a clean slate to enter your own data manually.

This sheet also allows you to tailor our Leave Tracker to your needs & requirements. You can use it to:

Adjust the leave limit for each leave type, based on company policy
Identify departments or divisions in your organization
Reset all employee & leave data to start from scratch
Define weekends as per your company’s policy

Step 1: Identifying Leave Types

Most U.S.-based companies recognize 4 different types of leaves: Paid (P), Casual (C), Sick (S), and Maternity (M). For any other type of leave (mandatory or voluntary), we include an ‘Other’ option, helping you tailor the template to the needs of your organization.

However, we don’t recommend this for two reasons. Firstly, most U.S companies use the leave classification we have, so there’s likely no need for you to work with other leave categories in the first place.

Secondly, adding new leave categories will require running down macros to have your changes reflected across the whole workbook. Because this adds a layer of complexity that could deter non-technical users, it might lead to programming mistakes, delays, or human errors.

What’s next?

Now, the other thing you need to do is ensure that each leave type comes with a limit. This limit is generally defined in the company policy or regulated by local, state, or federal laws.

Customizable leave limits

While the Config. sheet allows you to define general limits that will apply to all employees (which then appear as the default in the Employee Data Sheet). Here’s the thing. Not all employees in a company are subject to the same type of leave arrangements. Temps or freelancers may be allowed fewer or more leaves than regular staff. Some high-performing, competitive employees may have negotiated for more (paid or unpaid) days off at the time of hiring.

To accommodate these different HR needs and scenarios, we let you set individual limits for each employee in the ED Sheet. In such cases, it’s the limit you define here (not the general limit you set in the Config. sheet) that factors into our calculations.

Note that if you are not able to see the limit part, simply press the + button at the right top of the formula bar, and you should be good to go!

Know your rights

Learn more about leave rights, what leave categories are out there, which ones are legally covered, and how to formally process a leave of absence request in our comprehensive blog post on the subject!

Step 2: Recording Employee Data

The first step is to manually enter the complete dataset for each employee working for you.

Use our pre-made sheet to enter the following information for each employee:

Employee Name: Enter the full legal name of each employee to ensure proper documentation
Employee Role: This is the professional position the employee was hired for
Employee ID: A unique identification number assigned to employees by most companies at the time of joining
Department: Use the configuration sheet to identify and create departments unique to your company
Start Date: This is the day an employee formally joins your company
End Date: If an employee’s last working day is registered, we automatically change the Employment Status in the next column from ‘Employed’ to ‘Terminated’

Managing More Than 150 Employees?

According to the 2019 U.S. Census data, over 97% of American businesses hire fewer than 100 employees. Using the Employee Data sheet, you can manage up to 165 individual employees. But if you want to insert more rows for more employees, do the following:

Go to Formulas in the Task Bar
Click on Name Manager
Click on ‘emp_alldata’, and increase the range in the formula bar (last three digits)
Do the same for’ emp_data’ & ‘m_emp_sym_range’

Note that each employee’s complete dataset takes up three consecutive rows. That’s why programming the first 165 employees for you took us 1,000 rows! If you want to add a single new entry, you can just select the above set of rows, copy, and paste. Leave one row blank between every two consecutive entries.

Remember, since adding new employees would be taking effect over the monthly sheet as well, dragging the format there is necessary as well.

Registering More Leaves?

The truth is, some months or seasons naturally bring slower workloads. Think flu-ridden winters or the holiday season when people take extended time off to travel or spend time with family. During this time, you might have to register & process a larger number of leave requests than usual.

Our Leave Registration sheet allows you to register up to 150 leave requests. If you want to increase this range, simply do this:

Go to Name Manager under Formulas
Scroll down to ‘leave_data’ and change the last numerical digits in the formula to the number of entries you need
Do the same in’ m_emp_range’ & ‘m_emp_sym_range’

Leave codes

To properly track leaves, you need to keep track of three things:

How many leaves of each kind (say, Casual or Sick) are employees allowed to take?
How many leaves of each kind has the employee taken so far?
How many leaves of each kind remain unused?

Based on the limit you define for each leave type in the Configuration Sheet, we instantly calculate the leave balance for each employee. Totals are also provided in Column O to make it easier for you to track each employee’s leave record.

Please be aware that all leave limits are defined on a yearly basis.

Step 3: Registering New Leave Requests

To process a new leave request, open the Leave Registration sheet to create a record for each request. For each entry, you must specify the following:

Who is requesting the leave?
What type of leave is it?
When will leave start?
How long (in days) is the leave for?

Bear in mind that employees would only show up in the dropdown menu from the month and year they are added from the employee data sheet. Let’s say Alice joined the company in March 2025 (whatever date). She will not show up in the dropdown if you are tracking leave records for February of 2025. This may seem obvious, but when you are calculating leave balances of departing employees, the information can be crucial for accurately determining how much leave they’ve accrued and how much they are entitled to based on their tenure with the company.

Based on this data, we automatically calculate the Next Working Day for each employee, making it easier for you to manage daily work schedules.

As you can see, there are no weekends in the drop-down of date selection.

Adjustable weekend policies

Like we said, weekends are not factored into our calculations of leave durations, balances, and next working days. Our default settings see Saturday and Sunday as non-working days, but if your company has a different policy, you can simply change this via the Config sheet provided.

Step 4: Processing Leave Approvals/Rejections

A vital part of every HR manager’s work is managing and processing leave requests of all kinds. Our template recognizes three standard-use categories to help keep track of each employee’s request:

Pending
Approved
Rejected

Whether a leave is approved or rejected is based on whether the employee requesting has enough leave balance available. This is based on the number of requested leave days and leave limits you set at the start (using the Config sheet).

Also note that each time you enter details of a new leave request (Leave Registration Sheet), you must click on the ‘Save’ button to embed the new data in the Monthly Sheet. If the employee is short of usable leave balance, a dialogue box automatically pops up telling you why your leave was rejected for a particular request. If the employee does have enough balance, the leave request is approved, a ‘Leave Processing Complete’ sign pops up, and the new leave data automatically shows up in the Monthly Sheet, which we now turn to.

Step 5: Tracking Monthly Leave Schedules

The Monthly Sheet provides a complete & clear calendar view of each month for all employees in one place! The range in the monthly sheet is protected to keep the back-end formula & functions intact.

Keep in mind that only leave requests that have been approved will appear here (see above).

Monitor Leaves by Departments: To maximize organizational efficiency, each employee must be identified by the department they work in. This allows team supervisors or HoDs to keep track of employee absences, ensure work-hour accountability, and manage and distribute workload accordingly.

Track Leave Balances by Month/Year: We use month and year filters (top-right) to help you track leave counts & balances of your employees over time. Use these features to navigate your way through leave updates or patterns over a certain duration of time.

Step 6: Visualize All Leave Data In One Place

Welcome to your live and interactive HR dashboard!

We make it easy for you to track everything about employee leaves. For greater visibility, we use a combination of graphs, charts, data widgets, color codes, and manual filters to make essential leave records accessible to you at a glance.

The dashboard includes:

A doughnut chart showing the number (and corresponding percentage) of leaves categorized by status: Pending, Approved & Rejected.
A vertical bar chart identifying employees who have taken the most leaves
Quick data widgets showing the total number of leaves approved, pending, and rejected, as well as the total number of leaves processed by category (i.e., S/O/M/C/P)
Line chart showing trends in leave requests over any two consecutive months
A horizontal bar chart showing a month or year-wise breakdown of each leave type

Take note that all charts come with manual filters. This allows you to visualize data for different months, years, leave types, and leave statuses in just a few clicks. You can also shrink or expand the details available within the charts. Pretty awesome, huh?

Where Is All My Data Going?

On the back end, all data you put in about individual employees and leave requests is constantly updated in our hidden Data Sheet. To unhide, right-click on any sheet in the Sheet Bar, and select the option ‘Unhide’.

By looking at the hidden Data Sheet, you can tally up the leave records for each employee, ensuring they are up-to-date and correctly recorded. It also gives you a chance to review and correct any discrepancies in the data, helping you prevent errors that may have been accidentally introduced.