How to Track Employee PTO and Vacation

Paid time off (PTO) is one of the most valued benefits — and one of the easiest to track badly. A simple system keeps balances accurate and avoids teams being short-staffed.

Step 1: Define the policy

Allowance per year (e.g., 15–25 days).
Carryover rules: how many unused days move to next year.
Which leave types reduce the balance (vacation, personal, sick) and which don’t (unpaid, bereavement, jury duty).
How far ahead requests must be made.

Step 2: Keep a balance per employee

Remaining = allowance + carryover − days taken

Show pending requests separately so managers know what’s coming.

Step 3: Log every request

For each request: employee, type, request date, first day, last day, number of working days and status (pending, approved, rejected).

Step 4: Count working days correctly

Use NETWORKDAYS to exclude weekends and public holidays:

=NETWORKDAYS(FirstDay, LastDay, Holidays)

A Monday–Friday vacation with a holiday on Thursday counts as 4 days, not 5.

Step 5: Watch coverage

Before approving, check who else from the team is out. A simple “out this week” count prevents surprises.

Year end

Calculate carryover, reset allowances and remind employees with large balances to plan time off — rested teams perform better.

Template

The PTO & Vacation Tracker keeps balances per employee (allowance, carryover, taken, pending, remaining), logs requests with automatic working days excluding your holidays, and shows who’s out this week.