Answers about leave tracking, PTO, spreadsheets and the way Timepunch handles requests, balances, company rules and payroll hours.
Yes. Timepunch brings leave requests, manager decisions, balances and payroll hours into one system. Employees submit requests themselves, and managers review them with the team calendar in view. HR can check the records behind each balance instead of updating a separate spreadsheet.
Yes. Create different contracts for different working arrangements and assign employees to the appropriate one. A contract brings together working hours, leave allowances, approval rules and carryover. You can use the same contract for several employees or set different conditions for one person.
Yes. Employees choose dates in their calendar, submit requests and follow their status. Managers review requests alongside the team’s schedule. Employees can also check their own balances and read their contract terms, so HR does not have to answer every routine question.
Yes. Download a monthly Excel report with employee hours by work and absence type. The figures come from working schedules and confirmed calendar entries. Timepunch prepares the hours for payroll; it does not calculate salaries, taxes or payments.
Yes. After signing up and confirming your email, you can explore a sample company before entering your own company’s details. The trial lasts 14 days, requires no payment card and does not automatically become a paid subscription. You can also try the sample leave settings without signing up.
Leave management software helps a company handle time-off requests, approvals, leave balances and absence calendars. It connects the rules employees follow with the records HR and managers use. Timepunch also uses confirmed calendar entries to prepare monthly payroll hours.
PTO stands for paid time off. Vacation is one type of paid time off, but an employer’s PTO policy may also cover sickness or personal days. Some employers keep separate allowances; others combine them into one balance. The meaning depends on the company’s policy, so PTO and vacation are not always interchangeable.
Start with your actual rules and daily workflow. Check whether employees can request leave, managers can review team availability, and HR can explain how balances are calculated. Then check holiday calendars, carryover, permissions and payroll exports. Try your own typical scenarios before choosing a system.
No. You can use a dedicated leave management tool if your main needs are requests, approvals, balances and team availability. Timepunch focuses on working-time and leave rules, shared records and payroll hours. You can evaluate these functions without replacing every other HR tool your company uses.
A spreadsheet can be enough when the process is simple and one person keeps it up to date. Consider a dedicated system when requests arrive through different channels, employees have different rules, or HR repeatedly checks balances and prepares reports by hand. The useful change is a connected process, not just a different place to store dates.
A shared calendar helps people see who is away. It does not necessarily explain how much leave remains, which rules apply or whether a request has been accepted. Leave management software connects those details. In Timepunch, the calendar works alongside requests, contract rules, balances and reports.
No. A leave tracker manages time-off requests, allowances and absences. A time clock records when someone starts and finishes work. Timepunch’s payroll hours come from working schedules and confirmed calendar entries, rather than clock-in records. These figures should not be presented as a measure of employee productivity.
For a simple annual allowance, start with the available days, add any valid carryover or extra leave, and subtract the days already booked. Check how pending requests are treated. Timepunch includes them in the available balance: for example, 20 annual days plus 2 carried-over days, minus 5 accepted days and 3 pending days, leaves 14 days available.
It depends on the contract. Timepunch lets you count weekends and public holidays towards the vacation allowance or exclude them. The selected holiday calendar also identifies special working dates, including weekends marked as working days. The employee’s contract explains which rule applies.
Yes, if carryover is enabled in the contract. Unused vacation can remain available until it is used or expire at the end of the following leave year. You can also turn carryover off. The balance follows the selected rule, and employees can read that rule in their contract.
Yes. Annual allowances can renew on the first day of a selected month for everyone, or on each employee’s work anniversary. This lets the leave year follow your company’s policy rather than always using the calendar year.
Yes. You can choose an unlimited vacation allowance while keeping manager approval and advance-notice rules. Unlimited means there is no fixed annual vacation allowance; it does not mean employees can bypass the request process.
Timepunch supports full-day, half-day and hourly requests, depending on the request type and contract. Sick leave, paid leave and unpaid leave can use shorter durations when the rules allow them. Vacation and business trips are recorded in full days.
Check the team calendar before making a decision, then consider the work that needs to be covered. Timepunch lets managers review requests with the team’s schedule in view. Company availability views also show confirmed availability and the potential effect of pending requests. The manager still makes the decision.
Yes. Teams can use one or two approval steps. With two steps, a request goes to an additional reviewer after the first approval. It is not fully accepted until both steps are complete, and the employee can see the progress and decisions.
Yes. For accepted vacation, the employee submits a request to remove it. The vacation remains in the calendar while that request is waiting for a decision. Once the removal is accepted, the calendar and balance are updated.
A contract is a set of working-time and leave rules used by the product. It covers settings such as working hours, allowances, approvals and carryover. Employees can read their assigned terms in My contract. It configures how Timepunch works; it does not replace a legal employment agreement.
Timepunch lets you review the impact before confirming a correction. Affected records and balances can then be recalculated using the corrected rules. Some changes, such as removing a supported request type, can require records to be removed. The confirmation step explains these consequences.
The new contract takes effect from today. Earlier records stay associated with the previous conditions, while supported ongoing and future records are handled under the new contract. Timepunch calculates the applicable opening balance. If future records are not supported by the new rules, you must review and confirm how they will be removed.
Yes. You can maintain multiple holiday calendars and select the appropriate one for each contract. Employees use the calendar attached to their assigned contract. HR can also adjust calendars for public holidays, company events and special working days.
Access depends on the person’s role and visibility settings. Employees can view their own balances. Team or company visibility does not give colleagues access to those balances or private request comments. Reasons and comments are available to the employee concerned, their reviewing managers and HR administrators. Access to the company-wide payroll report can be granted separately from HR administration.
Deactivate their account to stop access without deleting their history. Their records remain available to authorised people in the company, and payroll reports can still include the periods when they were active. Deactivating access is separate from deleting personal data.
Choose a holiday calendar, create the contracts that describe your working conditions, and add employees and teams. Assign each employee a contract and a team with the appropriate managers before sending their invitation. You can explore the sample company first to see how these parts work together.
We can help you bring over employee and leave records from a spreadsheet or another tool. Contact us before reformatting your file. We’ll review the data, agree on the transfer and check the balances with you. This is an assisted transfer, not a self-service Excel or CSV upload.
No. Timepunch uses the annual allowance set for the employee’s leave period. It does not automatically reduce that allowance when someone joins partway through a shared leave year. Check your company’s policy and set the appropriate conditions rather than assuming a prorated amount will be calculated.
Change the sample leave settings and see the terms employees can read. No sign-up required.