Best Employee Vacation & PTO Tracking Software of 2026

In this Buyer’s Guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about employee vacation and PTO tracking software to help you decide on the right system for your business, including:

What Is Vacation Tracking Software?

Common Functionality of Vacation and PTO Tracking Software

Benefits of Using Software for Vacation & PTO Tracking

How Much Does Vacation Tracking Software Cost?

Market Trends to Understand

What Is Vacation Tracking Software?

Vacation tracking software is a tool that allows HR personnel to monitor employee absences for vacation, sick leave, and other time off. A majority of such tools also allow tracking the hours worked by employees, including overtime.

Common Functionality of Vacation & PTO Tracking Software

You can expect to find most, if not all, of the following functionality in vacation and PTO tracking software:

Benefits of Using Software for Vacation & PTO Tracking

In a 2015 Software Advice report, we found that 48 percent of HR software buyers are currently using manual methods such as Excel spreadsheets or pen and paper to handle their HR needs, including employee attendance and vacation tracking. You may even be part of this group.

A system dedicated to employee vacation and PTO tracking offers a number of benefits over manual methods, including:

• Employee self-service. Instead of a single manager or HR employee logging the hours for every worker in the organization, employees can log in to the system and do it themselves. Employees can also keep track of their own PTO accruals.

• Increased transparency. Many vacation tracking systems will automatically flag strange or incompatible entries (e.g., an employee requesting PTO they don’t have etc.) and notify relevant personnel.

• Increased security. Unique login IDs, dual authentication and other security features ensure that time and PTO entries are accurate and uncompromised.

• Payroll integration. Integrating tracking software with your payroll system allows employee hours to be ported over automatically to calculate wages, eliminating tedious double entry.

How Much Does Vacation Tracking Software Cost?

Vacation tracking software is usually priced one of two ways: with perpetual licensing or subscription licensing.

With perpetual licensing, you pay a one-time fee upfront to use the software indefinitely. The obvious benefit with this type of payment method is much lower recurring costs, but the upfront investment is usually significant. This type of licensing is more common with on-premise systems that companies must host on their own servers.

With subscription licensing, you pay for the software on an ongoing monthly or annual basis. Sometimes this subscription is a flat fee (e.g., $20 per month), but more often it is based on how many employees you have at your organization (e.g., $5 per employee per month). This type of licensing is more common with cloud-based software, also known as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), where the system is hosted by the vendor themselves for clients to access through a web browser.

Market Trends to Understand

Employee work-life balance has become an increasing concern in corporate spheres in an effort to boost recruiting efforts and enhance company culture. Here is how vacation tracking software is keeping up with some noteworthy trends:

• Flexible work arrangements (FWAs). Flextime and remote working have become popular perks in recent years to attract workers tired of the typical 9-to-5 office job. If your company offers FWAs, cloud-based vacation tracking software can allow workers to check in and out of shifts at home or anywhere else. You can also set customized rules for individual workers or departments to accurately track any flextime arrangement.

• Unlimited PTO. Another recent trend is for companies to offer employees unlimited vacation, allowing them to take off as much time as they want, if their work quality hasn’t dropped off and their manager approves it. If you’re experimenting with unlimited PTO, be sure to still track how much time off is being taken to compare to a standard policy and determine if it’s worth adopting it permanently.