Is a spreadsheet good enough for tracking leave?

For a handful of people in one country, often yes. It stops being enough when the day count starts being argued about, when approvals live in messages nobody can find later, or when somebody discovers two people booked the same week.

What is wrong with a leave spreadsheet?

Three things, usually. The day count is a formula that does not know about each person's public holidays. Approvals are not recorded, so a year later nobody can say whether a day was agreed. And nothing stops two people booking the same fortnight.

Can we move our spreadsheet into Hashoff?

Yes. Your people come from Slack automatically, and we load everybody's opening balance and days taken so far from your sheet, so the balances are right from the first morning rather than everyone starting at zero.

Hashoff vs a leave spreadsheet — which leave tracker?

What breaks, and what replaces it

	A shared spreadsheet	Hashoff
Counting the days	A formula somebody wrote once. It counts weekends unless it was told not to, and it knows nothing about the public holidays any particular person observes.	Working days only, minus that person's own public holidays, with half days at either end. The number on the request is the number that leaves the balance.
Approvals	A message, then a reminder, then a row typed in by whoever got round to it. Nobody can tell later whether a day was approved or simply taken.	The approver gets Approve and Deny in Slack, one click decides it, and the decision is recorded against the request with who made it and when.
Knowing who is off	Scroll, squint, and hope the colours mean what you think. Two people booking the same fortnight is discovered on the Monday.	A timeline: one month, one row per person, weekends and holidays shaded, pending requests marked as pending.
Staff in different countries	A second tab, usually out of date, and an argument every January about whose holidays are whose.	Public holidays imported per country from a registry covering 152 of them, assigned per person.
People joining and leaving	Somebody remembers to add a row. Somebody else deletes one, and a year of history goes with it.	The roster comes from Slack. A leaver is deactivated rather than deleted, so their history and your past reporting survive.
Trusting it	By March, everyone keeps their own count in their head and checks the sheet against it.	One number, visible to the person it belongs to, that the rules maintain rather than a person.

When a spreadsheet is still the right answer

Often it is. Here is where it stops being.

Five people in one country, everyone can see everyone, and nobody has ever disagreed about a balance: a spreadsheet is free and it works.

The moment to watch for is the first time somebody asks how many days they have left and the answer is “let me check”.

Common questions

Is a spreadsheet good enough for tracking leave?: For a handful of people in one country, often yes. It stops being enough when the day count starts being argued about, when approvals live in messages nobody can find later, or when somebody discovers two people booked the same week.
What is wrong with a leave spreadsheet?: Three things, usually. The day count is a formula that does not know about each person's public holidays. Approvals are not recorded, so a year later nobody can say whether a day was agreed. And nothing stops two people booking the same fortnight.
Can we move our spreadsheet into Hashoff?: Yes. Your people come from Slack automatically, and we load everybody's opening balance and days taken so far from your sheet, so the balances are right from the first morning rather than everyone starting at zero.

If you are moving off a sheet, how switching works covers what we load for you and why the old numbers rarely match exactly.

The spreadsheet works. Until it doesn't.

What breaks, and what replaces it

When a spreadsheet is still the right answer

Common questions

Keep the history, lose the maintenance