Built for distributed teams
Leave management for remote teams across timezones
When your team is spread across countries and time zones, "who's off this week?" gets hard fast. Absenca puts every absence on one shared calendar, handles approvals asynchronously in Slack or Teams, and gives each office its own work week and holidays.
Managing leave across a remote, distributed team means one shared, always-current view of who's off, approvals that happen asynchronously in Slack or Teams, and per-office holidays, work weeks and leave years — not one head-office calendar forced on everyone. Remote and distributed teams break the assumptions most leave tools are built on: there's no office wall to glance at, no single national holiday calendar, no 9-to-5 everyone shares, and no chance of catching a manager at their desk to approve a request. Absenca is built for exactly that, with the policy and timezone differences handled per office instead of forced into one mould.
Requests and approvals happen where your team already works — Slack or Microsoft Teams — so nobody waits a full day across timezones for a yes. And because each office has its own leave year, work days and public holidays, a colleague in Berlin, one in São Paulo and one in Manila each see their own correct allowance, not a head-office approximation.
One shared calendar, every timezone
See who's off and who's online across the whole team on a single calendar, with each person's leave shown against their own office's work week — not one head-office schedule.
Async approvals in Slack, Teams & Google Chat
Requests reach the right manager as an interactive Slack, Teams or Google Chat message and approve in one tap — so a request raised overnight isn't stuck waiting for the office to open.
Per-office holidays & work days
Each location gets its own public-holiday calendar (190+ countries), work-day pattern and leave year, so a national holiday in one country doesn't wrongly apply to another.
Daily who's-out summary
An optional Slack, Teams or Google Chat post tells the team who's away today, so distributed colleagues plan handovers and meetings without asking around.
Why distributed teams need timezone-aware leave
A single national holiday calendar quietly goes wrong the moment your team crosses a border: someone in the US loses a day for a UK bank holiday, or a public holiday in India isn't counted at all. In Absenca, every office location is its own unit — its own country and holidays, its own Monday-to-Friday (or Sunday-to-Thursday) work week, its own leave-year start month and timezone.
That means a request is always measured against the rules where that person actually works. A four-day trip booked by a teammate in Dubai counts the right working days for Dubai, while their colleague in Toronto sees their own calendar untouched.
Approvals that don't wait for the timezone to wake up
The slowest part of remote leave is usually the approval itself — a request sits in an inbox until a manager eight hours behind logs on. Because Absenca delivers requests as actionable Slack and Teams messages, a manager approves from their phone whenever they next pick it up, and the employee gets an instant confirmation no matter the hour.
Every approval updates the shared calendar, the person's balance and the reports in the background, so the async convenience never costs you accuracy. Managers who prefer a fuller picture still get the web dashboard for coverage planning across locations.
See coverage before you say yes
For a distributed team, coverage isn't about a room being empty — it's about whether the right people are reachable during the hours that matter. The shared calendar and wallchart show overlapping absences at a glance, and you can cap how many people in a team or department are off at once so a key timezone never goes dark.
Connect Google Calendar or Outlook and approved leave flows into everyone's personal calendars too, so a teammate's time off shows up next to your meetings without anyone copying dates by hand.
Why teams choose Absenca
- One shared calendar of who's off, across every timezone
- Async approvals inside Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Per-office holidays, work days and leave year for 190+ countries
- Daily who's-out summary so handovers plan themselves
- Google and Outlook calendar sync for personal calendars
- Free for up to 15 people, then $0.75/user/month
Frequently asked questions
- How does Absenca handle different timezones and countries?
- Each office location is set up independently with its own country, public holidays, work-day pattern, timezone and leave-year start. Every leave request is counted against the rules where that person works, so a holiday or work week in one country never wrongly affects another.
- Can remote employees request and approve leave without a video call or email?
- Yes. Employees request time off from the web, Slack or Microsoft Teams, and managers approve asynchronously with one tap on an interactive message — no waiting for an overlap in working hours or chasing an email thread.
- How does the team see who's off when nobody shares an office?
- A shared calendar and wallchart show every booked and pending absence across the team, and an optional daily Slack or Teams summary posts who's away today. Approved leave can also sync to Google and Outlook calendars.
- Does it stop too many people in one timezone being off at once?
- Yes — you can set a maximum number of people allowed off at the same time per department, and a request that would leave a team or timezone short is flagged at request time.
- Is it free for a small remote team?
- Yes. Absenca is free for up to 15 people with the full feature set — shared calendar, Slack and Teams approvals, per-office holidays and reports — then a flat $0.75 per user per month beyond that.