6 top tips to help you get the most out of the free staff leave planner
Sorting the employees in alphabetical order
It is possible to sort the employees in alphabetical order by double-clicking in cell A4, on the column heading. This is particularly useful if you have entered the employees in the wrong order, or need to add a new starter.
Removing employees who left
There are a few options for removing employees, but it is likely that you will want to keep them in the spreadsheet for a while for reporting purposes. You could consider renaming them to xx_theirName and sorting them (as above) to move them to the bottom of the list. After you have done this, you can delete their name and allowance, and finally clear all their leave using the clear button.
Work out how many employees are working on a particular date or group of dates
If you select multiple cells, then you can see the availability for that selection in the ‘Holiday type’ popup box. In the example below, there are 3 employees selected for 2 days and the total availability is 4.5 days from a total of 6 days.
Use notes to record anything you need to remember about the leave or the employee
Sometimes you may need to record some commentary about the leave, or about any special circumstances of the employee. You can right-click in the appropriate cell and select ‘New note’ or ‘New comment’.
If you do this please be careful that when you use the ‘clear’ button to remove leave, the comment will need to be removed manually.
Tick the appropriate working days to allow you to quickly enter a week or more of leave correctly
If you don’t work Saturdays and Sundays, then untick these days from the Holiday Type menu. This will then allow you to enter a week or more of leave, and not have leave created on those non-working days. If they are ticked then the tool will think you are working them and create leave for them.
Download a new file in good time for the next holiday year.
When you download the leave tracker, the first step of setup is to configure the start of the leave year. Therefore the tool can work for any year.
You don’t need to wait for a new tool to be created, simply log on, download and configure.
Training Video
Password protection
The tool contains macros to automate the annual leave request process. In order to protect the tool from being changed in ways which could stop the macros from working, it is protected with a password. The password is NOT required to use the tool. If you have any doubts about how to use the tool then please watch the training video linked above.
Do you have a tip which you would like to share or an idea for how the tool could be improved? Please let us know.