Time off in lieu, finally tracked
TOIL tracking that ties overtime to time off
Accrue time off in lieu when people work extra, approve the hours, and let them spend a banked TOIL balance — without a side spreadsheet most leave trackers force on you.
Time off in lieu is where most simple leave trackers quietly give up. They handle a fixed annual allowance fine, but TOIL is different — hours are earned ad hoc when someone works late or covers a weekend, they need signing off, and then they get spent back as time off later. Without somewhere proper to record it, TOIL ends up in a manager's inbox or a spreadsheet that nobody trusts by month three.
Absenca treats TOIL as a first-class leave type with its own running balance in hours. Earned time gets logged and approved, the balance goes up; time off in lieu gets booked and approved, it comes down — all in the same place your team already requests vacation and sick leave.
Accrue TOIL in hours
Log the extra hours someone worked and credit them as a TOIL balance — tracked in hours, not whole days, because that's how overtime actually lands.
Approve earned and spent
Both sides go through approval: a manager signs off the hours earned, and signs off the time off when it's taken — so the balance is always agreed, never assumed.
Spend down the balance
Employees book time off against their banked TOIL — a few hours, a half-day or a full day — and the balance reduces by exactly what they take.
Sits beside your other leave
TOIL lives next to vacation, sick and custom types on the same calendar and balance view, so there's one place to look, not two systems.
How the TOIL cycle works
The cycle has two halves and Absenca handles both. When someone works extra, the hours are logged and routed to their manager to approve — once signed off, their TOIL balance goes up. Later, when they want to take that time back, they book it like any other leave; on approval, the balance comes down by exactly the hours taken.
Because TOIL is tracked in hours rather than fixed days, a 90-minute late finish and a full weekend shift are both recorded accurately, and a half-day off in lieu deducts the right amount. The running balance always reflects approved-earned minus approved-spent.
Why a spreadsheet stops working
TOIL is the absence type most likely to drift in a spreadsheet: it changes constantly, depends on individual approvals, and mixes hours with days. A cell gets overwritten, an approval is forgotten, and suddenly two people disagree about how much is owed.
Keeping TOIL in Absenca means every earned hour and every hour taken has an approval and a timestamp behind it. Employees see their own balance and history, managers approve from the web, email, Slack or Microsoft Teams, and admins can pull it into reports alongside the rest of the leave data.
Why teams choose Absenca
- TOIL tracked as a running balance in hours
- Approval on both earning and spending the time
- Book TOIL by the hour, half-day or full day
- Lives alongside vacation, sick and custom leave types
- Approve from web, email, Slack or Microsoft Teams
- Free for up to 15 people, then $0.75/user/month
Frequently asked questions
- What is TOIL (time off in lieu)?
- TOIL, or time off in lieu, is paid time off an employee earns in return for working extra hours instead of being paid overtime. They build up a balance of hours and later take that time off, usually with manager approval on both sides.
- Can Absenca track TOIL balances?
- Yes. TOIL is a first-class leave type with a running balance in hours — approved earned hours increase it, approved time off in lieu decreases it — shown alongside an employee's other leave.
- Can employees book TOIL by the hour?
- Yes. Because TOIL is tracked in hours, people can take it as a few hours, a half-day or a full day, and the balance reduces by exactly what they take.
- Do managers approve TOIL?
- Yes — both halves go through approval. A manager signs off the extra hours worked, and signs off the time off when it's booked, from the web, email, Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- Is TOIL tracking included for free?
- Yes — TOIL tracking is part of the full feature set, free for up to 15 people, then a flat $0.75 per user per month.