For Human Resources (HR) teams, managing employee leaves is not as simple as it looks. It involves spending hours every week tracking which employees are on leave, calculating remaining balances, and managing overlapping absences. However, most companies are still operating through scattered spreadsheets and email chains. This leads to approval delays, missed requests, and a sense of panic when two employees request leave in the same week.

Such challenges can be addressed by implementing a leave management system. However, due to budget constraints, it becomes difficult for businesses, particularly smaller ones, to afford the recurring subscription cost. That’s where free leave management software can help you.

Such a system can change how your team manages time off. It saves countless hours of HR teams by reducing errors and improving workplace transparency. Here is a list of the 7 best free leave management software that reduces administrative stress without financial investment.

7 Free Leave Management Software – A Quick Glance

Software

Our Ratings

Features

Trackabi

4.6

  • Automated time tracking
  • Gamification
  • Employee monitoring

greytHR

3.8

  • Leave policy
  • Payroll processing
  • Leave analytics

LeaveBoard

N/A

  • Leave reporting
  • Employee self-service
  • Employee directory

actiPLANS

N/A

  • Employee self-service
  • In-depth leave reports
  • Employee location management

Day Off

N/A

  • Employee management
  • Request management
  • Approval workflows

OfficeTimer

N/A

  • Time tracking
  • Attendance management
  • Project management 

Kredily

N/A

  • Customizable leave rules
  • Kredsync
  • Leave calendar view

Trackabi

Trackabi is a feature-rich platform that combines employee monitoring, time tracking, and leave management. Designed specifically for leave management, the platform offers a leave planner with request and approval functionality. It streamlines HR operations by helping them plan the team’s leaves, manage their yearly allowances, and create different leave types.

With its leave request and approval functionality, it becomes easier for team members to schedule their vacations in advance. Furthermore, the personal day-off calendar provides visibility to both the employer and employees.

The platform is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses and offers integrations with various third-party tools, such as GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket, Harvest, and Toggl. 

Standout Features

  • Automated Time Tracking: This feature tracks time and monitors working hours through the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the intuitive mobile app, ensuring accurate and location-based time entries.
  • Gamification: The platform helps teams earn achievements and fun badges by playing the time tracking game. This approach improves timesheet data quality, boosts performance, and enhances team engagement.
  • Employee Monitoring: The system provides detailed time reports, including vacation days, logged hours, wages earned, and user activity. It also notifies HR teams when employees work fewer hours than required.

Pros And Cons 

Pros

Cons

Clean, intuitive interface makes it easy to track time

Responsive mobile app for seamless time tracking and management

Simplifies timesheet submission and approval with smart automated reminders

Lacks functionalities on the desktop version

Holiday display and leave application system needs to be improved

greytHR

greytHR is a full-suite Human Resources Management System (HRMS) that offers advanced workforce and payroll management in 25+ countries. The platform stands for its online leave management system that helps track leaves and create flexible leave policies. Also, the Employee Self-Service (ESS) portal reduces the number of queries related to leaves. This reduces manual administrative tasks and ensures accurate tracking of leave balances.

Moreover, the platform integrates various verification solutions, accounting tools, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, such as Zoho Recruit, Skill2Talent, ICICI Bank, and SAP SuccessFactors.

Standout Features

  • Payroll Processing: This functionality ensures timely salary disbursement and statutory compliance. With ‘greytHR Paynow,’ organizations can transfer salaries directly from the application to employees’ bank accounts, reducing payroll errors and minimizing manual intervention.
  • Leave Policy: The system offers flexible leave policies with over 50 customizable parameters. It supports unlimited leave transactions and allows for leave types tailored to different employee groups.
  • Leave Analytics: The platform provides a leave dashboard that transforms data into actionable insights. It helps businesses promote healthy leave habits, prevent burnout, and monitor overall employee wellness.

Pros And Cons

Pros

Cons

Simple onboarding process for both the employees and admins

Keeps track of attendance and automatically calculates tax

Self-service portal helps employees to check their leave balances and pay slips

Does not allow printing the approved leave forms as PDF

Initial setup is time-consuming for new users

LeaveBoard

LeaveBoard is a cloud-based leave and HR management system that aligns with administrative procedures and automates operations. The platform’s leave tracking functionality prevents payroll errors, monitors vacation days for each employee, and identifies attendance issues.

Designed for small and mid-sized businesses, LeaveBoard allows organizations to implement flexible time-off policies with automated accruals, country-specific public holidays, and carryovers. Moreover, its leave tracker allows HR managers to track different leave patterns and manage team attendance on the go.

Standout Features

  • Leave Reporting: LeaveBoard generates monthly and yearly leave reports in just a few clicks. Employees can view remaining and consumed time-offs, while the finance department can access detailed payroll reports for strategic decision-making.
  • Employee Self-Service: The ESS portal empowers employees to track and request time off, including sick leave and PTO. It provides visibility into leave balances and sends automatic updates when requests are approved.
  • Employee Directory: The platform’s secure database centralizes HR records and allows administrators to view employee profiles, teams, and leave history. The dynamic Org-Chart provides an Excel-like view of the company structure, offering a clear visual representation of teams and reporting lines.

Pros And Cons

Pros

Cons

Easily integrates with Slack and offers single sign-on

Space-saving application because there’s no need to download the software on the computer

Simple and clean app that approves leaves in one click

Does not allow downloading analytical reports in PDF format

Lacks mobile app accessibility for faster access

actiPLANS

ActiPLANS is a flexible, all-in-one platform to schedule project activities, corporate events, time-offs, work shifts, and employee locations. It offers a streamlined leave management system that allows employees to create leave requests on the go. Furthermore, organizations can set up policies for sick days management and PTO or tailor them according to each employee.

The platform supports bespoke Paid Time-Off (PTO) rules to automatically calculate leave balances, preventing errors. Employees can manage their time-off through mobile or web apps, with transparent personal PTO history. It connects seamlessly with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and actiTIME, eliminating the need for switching between multiple apps.

Standout Features

  • Employee Self-Service: This feature makes it easy for employees to manage their own time off. The visual timeline provides a complete view of submitted leave requests, tracks accruals, and displays PTO history for better transparency.
  • In-Depth Leave Reports: The platform offers a visual representation of leave data to review current schedules. Users can fine-tune reports with advanced data filtering and customized viewing options.
  • Employee Location Management: This feature allows administrators to define custom work locations such as remote zones, offices, and job sites, and assign them to employees via a visual timeline. It also supports separate color coding for locations, providing quick visual cues and notifications.

Pros And Cons

Pros

Cons

Tracks employee sick and personal leaves, and easy to request time off

Allow employees to see pending and approved paid time-offs

No need to manually reset and monitor PTO after the employee’s initial setup

Create inconvenience by asking for an email verification code during the sign-in process

Does not allow editing the request and resending to the approver

Day Off

Day Off is a powerful leave management software for managing vacations, absences, and PTOs. It allows organizations to set up approval workflows and leave policies. The platform offers various tools, which include leave laws, an OOO message generator for professional emails, official holidays, and PTO accrual calendars.

Using employee management features, employees can track leave balances and request new leaves. This gives a comprehensive overview to managers as they can see employees’ availability and leave balances. The platform supports customizable workflows and seamless communication within the team. Furthermore, it connects and syncs with various tools, such as Google Calendar, Slack software, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and more.

Standout Features

  • Employee Management: The system streamlines workforce and leave administration by keeping accurate records of leave requests and balances. It also updates employee profiles efficiently by importing data through Excel.
  • Request Management: The platform enables admins to approve, reject, and view leave requests. Any changes made by administrators are automatically reflected in employees’ leave balances, and all data can be easily exported to Excel for error-free management.
  • Approval Workflows: This efficient module allows HR managers to assign up to two approvers per employee. When a leave request is submitted, both approvers receive instant notifications, enabling quick one-click approvals or rejections.

Pros And Cons 

Pros

Cons

Offer different types of leave flexibility for an organization

An intuitive visual dashboard that gives a detailed view of employee leaves

Easy to request and view available paid time off through the mobile app

Lacks Microsoft Outlook integration

Accruals are not correct for mid-year hires and require manual calculation

OfficeTimer

OfficeTimer is a detailed platform for leave management that organizes the employee's time-off tracking. Designed for startups and small to medium-sized businesses, it stands among HR professionals looking to streamline their operations.

From planning to payroll integration, the OfficeTimer platform handles the entire leave lifecycle, ensuring a smooth experience for both HR managers and employees. The software allows planning and creating unlimited leave policies, leave types, and holiday calendars. Furthermore, it allows HRs to export the employee’s leave data to third-party payroll tools.

Standout Features

  • Time Tracking: This time tracker app simplifies leave management with easy check-in and check-out through both web and mobile apps. It also allows accurate calculation of the actual and estimated time and costs associated with each employee.
  • Attendance Management: The secure employee attendance tracker efficiently manages in-office and remote workforces. It ensures secure clock-ins with geo-fencing and IP address locks, while providing real-time location tracking through mobile applications.
  • Project Management: This feature offers complete project planning, tracking, costing, and billing for unlimited projects and users. It supports detailed project planning for hourly and fixed-bid projects, enabling HR teams to calculate project profitability through real-time monitoring of actual versus budgeted time.

Pros And Cons

Pros

Cons

A simple platform that allows controlled access to employees

Offers flexibility to manage a team of 50 people in several locations

Easy to calculate employee productivity in a remote working environment

Lacks customizable reporting

Occasional errors occur when the internet connection drops

Kredily

Kredily is another one of the free leave management software that easily manages your leave requests without wasting time on time-consuming procedures. This intuitive leave management system helps employees request leave online, and managers can accept or reject those leave requests depending on availability.

The platform supports different leave types, which include sick leave, personal, casual, maternity, paternity, or vacation. Moreover, Kredily ensures organizations comply with legal leave regulations and policies. Beyond this, the platform integrates the attendance tracking system with payroll software to ensure accurate compensation for employees.  

Standout Features

  • Customizable Leave Rules: This feature enables HR teams to design and manage leave policies that match the organization’s specific requirements. It supports defining accrual rules and enforcing policies to build a fair and efficient leave management system.
  • Kredsync: Kredsync is a synchronization feature that automatically records attendance by connecting with ESSL biometric devices. It ensures accurate and real-time transfer of attendance data to the HR platform.
  • Leave Calendar View: The system provides a visual calendar displaying all employee leave requests, helping prevent scheduling conflicts. Managers can conveniently approve or reject leave requests based on workload and employee availability.

Pros And Cons

Pros

Cons

Allow categorization of employee details, leaves, overtime, and attendance

Built-in system that allows direct expense approval and payouts 

Easy to keep a track record of employee details

Automatically logs you out of the web portal after a period of inactivity

Initial setup is not easy to use for first-time users

Choosing The Best Free Leave Management Software

As modern workplaces are adopting flexibility, leave tracking has become a requirement rather than an option. Even the smallest teams with the most fundamental needs will reap the benefits of automated leave approval systems and leave tracking.

These free leave management systems mentioned above are suitable for companies of varying sizes and industries. Each has its own unique functionalities, from leave tracking, approvals, and calendar syncing, allowing you to make the best choice that aligns with your requirements.