A Timetastic alternative that's free for small teams

Other Timetastic alternatives at a glance

Absenca isn't the only option. Five other leave tools, one line each, with every fact from the vendor's own site:

• · Leave Dates: Leave Dates includes a shared wall chart and a year chart.² Leave Dates charges every employee $1.40 (Starter), $2.70 (Essential) or $3.40 (Plus) a month in US dollars, or less billed yearly.³
• · LeaveBoard: LeaveBoard is free for up to 9 employees.⁴ From the 10th employee, LeaveBoard's PRO plan costs $1.35 per active employee per month, or $13.50 a year.⁵
• · Vacation Tracker: A Vacation Tracker workspace connects to one platform at a time, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace or email, and there's no Google Chat bot.⁶ Vacation Tracker's Core plan costs $2 and Complete $4 per user per month, with monthly minimums of $50 and $100.⁷
• · Calamari: Calamari prices Time Off, Time & Attendance, Core HR and Scheduling as separate per-user modules, with Performance marked as coming soon.⁸ Calamari's Time Off module costs $2.50 per user per month, or $2.00 billed yearly, and Calamari charges at least 10 seats.⁹
• · absentify: absentify integrates with Microsoft Teams and has no Slack or Google Chat integration; its webhooks can post to Slack.¹⁰ absentify's free plan covers any number of users, with 2 departments, 1 administrator and 1 leave allowance.¹¹

Timetastic vs Absenca

Absenca vs Timetastic →

What a team pays each month

Monthly prices in US dollars, before tax. Absenca bills Pro for all 50 seats, so every team from 11 to 50 people pays $37.50.

Why teams pick Absenca

How to switch from Timetastic

1. 1.

   Pick a cut-over date

   Choose the day Absenca takes over, and on that day note each person's remaining balance in Timetastic. Keep that day's figures on file. Timetastic exports summaries, a full backup and an audit trail to Excel, and emails daily and weekly absence digests.¹⁷

2. 2.

   Set up your office

   Add your office with its work week, leave year start and public holidays for its country. Then add your leave types and policies: accrual schedules, carry-over caps and expiry, and seniority tiers.

3. 3.

   Import your people from a CSV

   Fill in Absenca's template with each person's name, email, department, role, office and start date. Absenca checks every row before it imports anyone, then emails each person an invitation. CSV import is on every plan.

4. 4.

   Set opening balances

   Adjust each person's balance to what Timetastic showed on the cut-over date. Absenca records each adjustment, with your reason, in the audit log.

5. 5.

   Split TOIL out of the allowance

   Timetastic records TOIL by adding it to a person's annual allowance rather than keeping a separate balance.¹⁴ Absenca keeps TOIL as its own balance, so take each person's TOIL out of the annual allowance you set, then import the TOIL hours from a CSV of email, date and hours.

6. 6.

   Go live

   Your team signs in with a Google, Microsoft or Slack account. Approved leave syncs to Google or Outlook calendars, on every plan. Turn on the Slack bot, on Pro, to request and approve leave in Slack.

The full walkthrough, with what to check before and after the cut-over: move your leave data.

Where Timetastic might be the better fit

• · A long track record. Timetastic has run since 2012 and says more than 275,000 people book time off with it.¹
• · Native mobile apps. Timetastic has iPhone and Android apps.¹⁸
• · Public holidays for more places, and a public API. Timetastic includes public holidays for 250 countries and 3,000 regions.¹³ Timetastic has a read and write REST API.¹⁹

We'd rather you pick the right tool than the loudest one. If the points above matter more to you than price, Timetastic is a perfectly good choice.

Frequently asked questions