Built for teams without an HR department
Leave management for small business, minus the spreadsheet
When you don't have an HR team and time off lives in a spreadsheet, leave gets tracked badly. Absenca gives a small business one shared calendar, fast approvals and balances that stay right — free for up to 10 people.
Free for up to 10 people · 11 to 50 people: $37.50 a month on Pro
For a small business with no HR team, the best leave management is a focused, easy-to-run tool rather than a heavy HR suite — a shared calendar, fast approvals and balances that stay right. In a small business there's usually no HR department, so the owner or office manager tracks time off in a spreadsheet between everything else. It works until someone double-books a week, a balance is wrong at year end, or a request gets buried in email. Absenca replaces that spreadsheet with a tool the whole team can use in an afternoon, no implementation project and no training day.
It's deliberately not a heavyweight HR suite you'd need a specialist to run. It does leave and absence properly — requests, approvals, balances, accruals and public holidays — and is free for up to 10 people, which is most small teams. Grow past that and Pro is $37.50 a month for up to 50 people.
What you get
Set up in an afternoon
Add your team, set the allowance, import your country's public holidays, and you're live. No onboarding call or HR background needed.
One shared calendar
Everyone sees who's off at a glance, so you stop two people booking the same week — the question a spreadsheet can never answer quickly.
Balances that stay right
Every approved day updates the balance automatically, with accrual, carry-over and part-timers handled — no more year-end reconciliation.
Approve from your phone
Requests reach the right person and approve in one tap from the web app on any phone, or from Slack on Pro — no chasing, no lost threads.
Why a spreadsheet stops working
A shared spreadsheet is fine for three people. By ten or fifteen it quietly breaks: someone edits the wrong cell, a sick day never gets logged, two people book the same Friday, and nobody's sure how many days they have left. The owner ends up as the single point of truth — and the bottleneck.
Take NovaTech at 12 people: Greta Vogel, the office manager, keeps the holiday sheet. A new starter joins in July and needs a pro-rated allowance, two developers book the same week of a release, and at year end nobody agrees how many days rolled over. Each of those is a formula or an email in a sheet, and an automatic step in a leave tool.
A dedicated leave tool fixes the root cause. Requests, approvals and balances live in one place that updates itself, so the numbers are correct without anyone maintaining them. If you run a team of a handful of people, read the best way to track PTO for a small team first.
What a small business needs, and what it doesn't yet
What you need: balances that update when a request is approved; accrual and pro-rating for mid-year joiners and part-timers; carry-over caps and expiry that the system remembers; approvals that reach the right person and record who decided; a shared calendar that shows who's off before someone books over a colleague; and public holidays for each place you operate.
What you probably don't need yet: applicant tracking and recruitment pipelines, performance reviews and OKR modules, payroll integrations, or talent-management dashboards. None of these are bad, but paying per person for a suite whose leave module is an afterthought is a common way small businesses overspend. If leave is the problem, buy a leave tool.
What it costs at 5, 10, 15 and 25 people
Absenca bills Pro for all 50 seats whatever your headcount, so a growing team doesn't pay more for each hire. Per-user tools and HR suites charge for every person you add; our leave management software pricing comparison gives each tool's sourced price at these sizes.
| Team size | What Absenca costs |
|---|---|
| 5 people | free on Starter |
| 10 people | free on Starter |
| 15 people | $37.50 a month on Pro |
| 25 people | $37.50 a month on Pro |
Small-business buyer checklist
Run any tool you're considering against these eight questions: is it free or near-free at your current headcount; do balances update automatically on approval; are accruals and pro-rating handled for part-timers and mid-year starters; are carry-over caps and expiry enforced rather than remembered; does every approval leave a record of who decided; is there a shared calendar of who's off; are public holidays set per location; and can you import your existing roster from a spreadsheet in minutes?
The best small-business tool is the one your team adopts without training. When the free plan stops being enough, here is what happens when you outgrow the free plan.
Everything a small team needs, nothing it doesn't
Absenca covers vacation, sick, personal, parental, unpaid and custom leave types, with half-days and hourly time off, automatic accruals and carry-over, blackout periods, and public holidays for 190+ countries applied automatically. Teams that only need the basics can start with the free vacation tracker.
What it isn't is a full HRIS with payroll and recruiting bolted on — and for a small business without HR, that's the point. It's quick to learn, quick to run, and works alongside anything else you use. See the full leave management software, or compare options in our roundup of the best leave management software.
Why teams choose Absenca
- Free for up to 10 people — most small teams never pay
- No HR team or setup project required
- Shared calendar ends double-booked weeks
- Automatic balances, accruals and carry-over
- Public holidays for 190+ countries, applied per office
- Pro is $37.50 a month for up to 50 people if you outgrow it
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best leave management for a small business?
- For a small business without dedicated HR, the best fit is a focused, easy-to-run leave tool rather than a heavy HR suite. Absenca handles requests, approvals, balances, accruals and public holidays in one shared calendar, sets up in an afternoon, and is free for up to 10 people.
- Do I need an HR department to use it?
- No. Absenca is built for teams where the owner or office manager handles time off alongside other duties. There's no implementation project — add your team, set allowances and public holidays, and you're running.
- How much does it cost for a small business?
- It's free for up to 10 people, with no credit card to start. Beyond 10, Pro is $37.50 a month for up to 50 people.
- Can it replace our PTO spreadsheet?
- Yes — that's exactly what it's for. Your spreadsheet's allowances, sick days and bookings move into one calendar that updates balances automatically, so the numbers stay accurate without anyone maintaining a sheet.
- What if we grow past 10 people?
- You move to Pro, at $37.50 a month for up to 50 people, and keep all your existing data, balances and settings — nothing is reset, and there's no migration to a different tool.