Time off for engineering teams
Leave management for software teams
Book and approve time off in Slack, Teams or Google Chat, see coverage before you approve, and keep everyone's calendar in sync — without leaving the tools your engineers already live in.
Engineering teams don't track leave the way a sales floor does. People work async across time zones, someone is always on-call, and a forgotten PTO booking is the difference between a smooth release week and a Friday with no one who can ship the fix. Absenca puts leave where your team already works — in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat — so requesting and approving time off is a two-tap interaction, not a context switch into yet another HR portal.
Underneath the chat convenience it's a full leave tracker: accruals, carry-over, TOIL for that weekend deploy, public holidays per office, and calendar sync to Google and Outlook. The result is that a manager approving a request can actually see who else is out and who's covering — before they say yes.
Approve in Slack or Teams
Requests arrive as interactive messages or actionable cards. Approve or decline in one tap, in the channel you're already in — no portal login, no email thread.
Coverage before you approve
A shared calendar and wallchart show who's already off that week, by team or squad, so you can spot a thin on-call rotation or a gap in a service before granting leave.
Calendar sync, both ways
Approved leave syncs to Google Calendar and Outlook, and shared org calendars and feeds keep sprint planning, standups and release schedules aware of who's out.
TOIL for the late deploys
Track time off in lieu when someone covers a weekend release or an out-of-hours incident, so comp time is logged and taken — not quietly forgotten.
Async approvals for distributed teams
When your team spans time zones, a leave request shouldn't wait for everyone to be online at once. An engineer requests time off from a Slack shortcut or inside Teams, the request lands with their manager as an interactive message, and a tap approves it — whenever the manager next sees it. The employee gets an instant confirmation and the calendar updates for everyone.
Each office can have its own work week, time zone, leave year and public holidays, so a request from your Berlin team and one from your Austin team are both counted correctly against the right calendar. A daily who's-off summary to a channel means nobody has to ask "is anyone out today?" in standup.
See on-call and coverage, not just dates
The risk with engineering leave isn't the days off — it's two people from the same service being out the same week, or the only person who knows the deploy pipeline taking Friday during a release. Absenca's wallchart shows every booked and pending day across the team in one grid, so managers approve knowing exactly who's covering.
Set a maximum number of people who can be away at once per team, and a request that would leave a squad too thin is flagged at submission time. Blackout periods let you protect a release window or a code-freeze sprint so nobody books over it by accident.
A complete leave tracker, not just a bot
The Slack and Teams integrations are the front door, but the engine behind them is a proper leave system. Accruals run automatically — monthly, per pay period or per hour — with pro-rating for part-timers and contractors who join mid-year. Carry-over caps, half-day and hourly leave, and custom leave types (study leave, conference days, volunteering) are all handled, and an audit log records who approved what.
Admins get the full web dashboard for policies, reports and the org-wide calendar, plus a read-and-write API and webhooks if you want to wire leave data into your own internal tools. It's the leave and absence layer for your stack — not a full HRIS, and it works alongside whatever you already use for the rest of HR.
Why teams choose Absenca
- Request and approve time off in Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Coverage view and on-call awareness before approving
- Two-way Google and Outlook calendar sync, plus feeds
- TOIL, blackout periods and per-office time zones
- Read-and-write API and webhooks for internal tooling
- Free for up to 15 people, then $0.75/user/month
Frequently asked questions
- Why use Absenca for a software team specifically?
- Engineering teams work async, across time zones, with on-call rotations and release windows. Absenca fits that: leave lives in Slack and Teams, the calendar shows coverage before you approve, blackout periods protect code-freeze sprints, and an API and webhooks let you connect leave data to your own tools.
- Does it handle on-call or pager schedules?
- Absenca isn't a paging or on-call scheduling tool, and we don't claim to replace one. What it does is make leave visible alongside coverage — a shared wallchart, max-people-away limits per team, and blackout periods — so you can approve time off without leaving a rotation dangerously thin. You'd keep your on-call tool for the rotation itself.
- Can engineers book time off without leaving Slack or Teams?
- Yes. They request leave from a Slack shortcut or inside Microsoft Teams, managers approve with one tap on an interactive message or actionable card, and balances, the calendar and reports all update automatically in the background.
- Is there an API for our internal tooling?
- Yes — Absenca has a read-and-write API and webhooks, so you can pull leave data into dashboards, internal tools or release-planning workflows, or push events when leave is booked or approved.
- How much does it cost for a small engineering team?
- It's free for up to 15 people with the full feature set — including the Slack and Teams integrations and calendar sync — then a flat $0.75 per user per month beyond that. No credit card to start.