Time off for engineering teams
Leave management for software teams
Book and approve time off in Slack, see coverage before you approve, and keep everyone's calendar in sync — without leaving the tools your engineers already live in.
Free for up to 10 people · 11 to 50 people: $37.50 a month on Pro
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 — 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.
What you get
Approve in Slack
Requests arrive as a Slack direct message with Approve and Reject buttons. Decide in one tap — 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 and feeds
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 with /absenca leave in Slack, the request lands with their manager as a message with Approve and Reject buttons, and a tap decides it — whenever the manager next sees it. The engineer gets a direct message with the answer 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 refused 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 integration is the front door, but the engine behind it is a proper leave system. Accruals run automatically — bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or semi-annually — with pro-rating for people 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 the audit log (on Pro) records who approved what.
Admins get the full web dashboard for policies, reports and the org-wide calendar, plus CSV exports when you want leave data in 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
- Coverage view and on-call awareness before approving
- Google and Outlook calendar sync, plus .ics feeds
- TOIL, blackout periods and per-office time zones
- CSV exports of leave data for your own tools
- Free for up to 10 people; Pro is $37.50 a month for up to 50 people
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, the calendar shows coverage before you approve, blackout periods protect code-freeze sprints, and CSV exports put leave data into 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?
- Yes. They request leave with /absenca leave in Slack, managers approve with one tap on the message, and balances, the calendar and reports all update automatically in the background.
- Is there an API for our internal tooling?
- Absenca has no public API. You can export leave data as CSV for dashboards and internal tools, and approved leave syncs to Google and Outlook calendars.
- How much does it cost for a small engineering team?
- It's free for up to 10 people, with calendar sync on every plan, the free Starter plan included, and no credit card to start. The Slack integration is on Pro and the Custom Pack, not on the free Starter plan. Absenca is free for up to 10 people. Pro is $37.50 a month for up to 50 people, or $33.75 a month billed annually ($405 a year).