If you manage time off with spreadsheets or a shared calendar, you have probably looked at Vacation Tracker. It is one of the more widely used PTO tracking tools for small and mid-sized teams, particularly those already running on Slack, Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace.
This Vacation Tracker review covers what the tool actually does, what it costs, where it falls short, and how actiPLANS compares as a Vacation Tracker alternative — or if you already use actiPLANS, whether Vacation Tracker is worth switching to.
Quick verdict
| Vacation Tracker | actiPLANS | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Teams already on Slack, Teams or Google Workspace who want fast setup | HR teams and managers who need detailed accrual rules, location scheduling and payroll-ready reports |
| Free plan | Yes, unlimited users but very limited (1 leave type, 1 location, 1 approver) | Yes, up to 3 users with core features |
| Paid pricing | From $1.83/user/month (monthly); annual rates vary by team size | $1.20/user/month (annual) — no minimum |
| Core differentiator | Native Slack/Teams/Google integration; chat-based leave requests | Deep PTO accrual automation, location work scheduling, payroll-export reports |
| Missing | HRIS integrations (BambooHR, JustWorks, etc.); limited Teams app; multi-level approval on Core | No Slack/Teams native bot; no burnout monitoring feature |
What is Vacation Tracker?
Vacation Tracker is a PTO tracking and leave management tool built around one idea: manage time off from inside the tools your team uses every day. Instead of asking employees to log into a separate HR platform, it works as a bot and tab within Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace.
The company describes itself as a tool for teams who want “accurate records, no more back-and-forths, and a PTO tracker that runs itself.”
Vacation Tracker does not try to be a full HRIS or payroll system. Its scope is leave tracking, PTO policy automation, and team availability visibility. Everything outside that — payroll processing, performance reviews, onboarding — you would need to handle elsewhere or integrate via Zapier and ADP.
Feature breakdown
Leave requests and approvals
Employees request time off directly from Slack, Teams or Google Workspace. A bot picks up the request and routes it to the assigned approver, who can approve or deny without leaving their chat app. Managers see a team availability view when approving, so they can spot scheduling conflicts before confirming.
- Full-day and half-day requests
- Hourly leave requests
- Auto-approval per leave type
- Multi-level approvals and substitute approvers
Leave policies
You can create unlimited custom leave types on both paid plans, vacation, sick, parental, TOIL, work from home, anything you need. Policies can include:
- Accrual rules (monthly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, weekly)
- Accrual caps and pause rules
- Carryover with optional expiry limits
- Negative balance allowance
- Proration for mid-year hires
- Seniority entitlements
- Entitlement by role
- TOIL (time off in lieu of overtime)
- Unlimited PTO option
- Hidden leave types
Scheduling and availability
The wallchart and calendar view show who is off and when across the team. Automations available include leave request notice periods, blackout periods for critical dates, and probation period restrictions.
Location and department management
Vacation Tracker supports multiple company locations, each with its own leave policies and public holiday calendars.
- Core plan: up to 3 locations, 10 departments
- Complete plan: unlimited locations and departments
Reports and insights
Three main reports are available on both paid plans: leave request history, leave balance per employee, and a monthly overview for the following 12 months. Scheduled reports, delivered automatically to nominated inboxes, are a Complete plan feature.
ADP Workforce Now sync is available, allowing you to import users and sync approved time off back to ADP. Direct HRIS integrations with other systems (BambooHR, Workday, Rippling, JustWorks) are not natively supported.
Recharge: the burnout monitoring feature
This is Vacation Tracker’s most distinctive addition. Recharge uses leave data and usage patterns to build an “energy score” for each employee, showing managers early signals of potential burnout before performance starts to slip. Each employee has a personal profile with an energy battery indicator. The system suggests optimal windows for taking time off based on individual patterns. Managers get a team-level view of who is overdue for a break.
Recharge is an add-on and is not included by default in any plan.
Integrations
| Integration | What it does | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Slack | Leave requests, approvals and notifications via bot; status auto-update on leave | All plans |
| Microsoft Teams | Leave management via Teams bot and dedicated tabs | All plans |
| Google Workspace | Leave tracking via Gmail; auto-import of users from directory | All plans |
| ADP Workforce Now | Import users and leave balances; sync approved time off back to ADP | Core and Complete |
| Zapier | No-code automation to 7,000+ apps | Core and Complete |
| OpenAPI / MCP | Direct API access and AI tool connector | Core and Complete |
| Personal calendar (Google / Outlook) | Sync personal leave to Google Calendar or Outlook | Core and Complete |
| Shared iCal | Team-wide iCal calendar feed | Core and Complete |
| Shared Google / Outlook calendar | Full shared calendar sync | Complete only |
What is missing or weak
- No direct HRIS integrations (BambooHR, Workday, Rippling, JustWorks) — data must be maintained in two systems
- Reports lack flexible date ranges and custom filtering, creating problems for non-calendar-year payroll periods
- Multi-level approval (3+ approvers) not supported even on Complete plan
- Full Microsoft Teams app is limited — admin tasks require switching to the web dashboard
- Hourly leave and advanced accrual rules locked to Complete, creating an unexpected upgrade barrier for Core users
Vacation Tracker pricing
Vacation Tracker has three plans: Free, Core and Complete. Prices below are for monthly billing. Annual billing is tiered by team size, so the per-user rate varies depending on how many people you have. The annual minimum is $25/month for Core and $75/month for Complete.
| Free | Core | Complete | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price (monthly billing) | $0 | $2/user/month | $4/user/month |
| Minimum (monthly billing) | None | $50/month | $100/month |
| Price (annual billing) | $0 | Tiered by team size — see site calculator | Tiered by team size — see site calculator |
| Minimum (annual billing) | None | $25/month | $75/month |
| Users | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Approvers | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Locations | 1 | 3 | Unlimited |
| Departments | 1 | 10 | Unlimited |
| Leave types | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Accruals | No | No | Yes |
| Hourly leave | No | No | Yes |
| TOIL | No | No | Yes |
| Multi-level approval | No | No | Yes |
| Scheduled reports | No | No | Yes |
| Shared Google / Outlook calendar | No | No | Yes |
| Shared iCal | No | Yes | Yes |
| Personal calendar sync (Google/Outlook) | No | Yes | Yes |
| ADP Workforce Now | No | Yes | Yes |
| Company activity logs | No | 3 months | Full history |
| SSO | No | No | Yes |
| Automations | None | 3 (notice period, blackout, probation) | All 7 |
| Trial | None (free forever) | 14-day free trial | 14-day free trial |
| Support | Helpdesk only | Email and chat | Priority support + training |
Free plan in depth
The free plan is permanently free with no credit card required, and there is no user limit. The practical constraints are significant: one leave type, one location, one department and one approver. Enough to evaluate the product, not enough to run it properly for most organisations.
Where it works: very small teams in a single location with simple leave policies who need only one leave type tracked and one person approving everything.
Vacation Tracker vs actiPLANS: pricing and features compared
actiPLANS is a leave management system from the same company that makes actiTIME. It has been on the market since 2014 and serves 10,000+ clients globally. Unlike Vacation Tracker, it is a standalone web app rather than a Slack/Teams-native tool.
Pricing comparison
| Vacation Tracker Core | Vacation Tracker Complete | actiPLANS (1-40 users) | actiPLANS (41-200 users) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $2/user/month | $4/user/month | $1.90/user/month | $1.50/user/month |
| Monthly minimum | $50/month | $100/month | None | None |
| Annual price | Tiered by team size (see calculator) | Tiered by team size (see calculator) | $1.50/user/month | $1.20/user/month |
| Annual minimum | $25/month | $75/month | None | None |
| Users covered | Unlimited | Unlimited | 1-40 users | 41-200 users |
| 200+ users | Contact sales | Contact sales | $270/month flat | $270/month flat |
| Free plan | Yes (unlimited users, 1 leave type) | Yes (same free plan) | Yes (up to 3 users) | N/A |
| Free trial | 14 days on paid plans | 14 days on paid plans | 30 days, all features | 30 days, all features |
For 200+ people, actiPLANS flat $270/month is significantly cheaper than any per-user plan.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Vacation Tracker | actiPLANS |
|---|---|---|
| Custom leave types | Unlimited (paid plans) | Unlimited (all plans) |
| PTO accrual automation | Complete plan only | Yes |
| TOIL tracking | Complete only | Yes |
| Hourly leave requests | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-level approvals | Yes | Yes |
| Location-based policies | Core (3) / Complete (unlimited) | Yes |
| Holiday calendar by country | Yes | Yes (iCal import) |
| Work location scheduling (office/remote) | No | Yes |
| Blackout dates | Yes | Yes |
| Reports | Leave request / balance / monthly (scheduled on Complete) | Leave time, balances, location, history — CSV/PDF export |
| Calendar sync | Personal (Google/Outlook): Core+Complete; Shared Google/Outlook: Complete only; iCal: Core+Complete | iCal export, Google Calendar and Outlook |
| Slack / Teams native bot | Yes (core differentiator) | No (web app only) |
| Mobile app | iOS and Android | iOS and Android |
| actiTIME integration | No | Yes |
| Burnout monitoring | Yes (Recharge add-on) | No |
| Payroll-ready CSV export | Limited (no custom date ranges) | Yes |
| 200+ users flat fee | Contact sales (per-user) | $270/month flat |
Value analysis
Vacation Tracker is better value if your team lives in Slack or Teams and the ability to request and approve leave without leaving the chat app is worth paying for. The integration is genuinely deep, and adoption is fast.
actiPLANS is better value if you need granular PTO accrual rules on all paid plans, payroll-ready reporting with flexible date ranges, or work location tracking. It has no minimum charge, and has a flat Enterprise tier that becomes significantly cheaper at 200+ users.
Who Vacation Tracker is for and who it is not for
Ideal users
- Teams of 10-100 people already on Slack or Microsoft Teams who want leave management built into the tools they use daily
- Companies that switched from spreadsheets and want something simple that does not require HR expertise to manage
- Remote or distributed teams where managers cannot easily see who is off without a centralized tool
- Businesses with relatively straightforward leave policies where the main need is visibility and approval workflow automation
- Companies in multiple countries who need location-specific holiday calendars without building anything custom
Less ideal users
- Teams that need HRIS integrations (BambooHR, Workday, JustWorks) without manual data transfer
- Companies with complex multi-level approval chains (3+ approvers) on a budget
- HR teams that need payroll-aligned reporting with custom date ranges
- Small teams on monthly billing where the $50 Core minimum creates a high effective per-user cost
- Teams that need hourly tracking or accruals but cannot justify the Complete plan price
- Large enterprises (200+ employees) who would benefit from flat-fee pricing
- Companies looking for leave management plus time tracking in one stack
Vacation Tracker: our scorecard
| Area | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | 9 / 10 | Setup is fast; employees adopt it without training |
| Slack / Teams integration | 9 / 10 | Deepest native integration in this category |
| Leave policy flexibility | 7 / 10 | Excellent on Complete; Core is limited; accruals and hourly leave locked to higher plan |
| Reporting | 5 / 10 | Basic reports only; no custom date ranges; scheduled reports on Complete only |
| Pricing value | 6 / 10 | Annual rates are tiered and vary by team size; monthly minimums hurt small teams |
| Customer support | 9 / 10 | Consistently praised across Capterra and G2 |
| Integrations (non-chat) | 7 / 10 | ADP on Core and Complete; personal calendar on both paid plans; no native HRIS |
| Mobile app | 7 / 10 | Functional; Teams mobile less capable than web dashboard |
| Overall | 7 / 10 | Strong product for its target use case; meaningful gaps in reporting and plan flexibility |
Conclusion: should you use Vacation Tracker?
Vacation Tracker does one thing particularly well: it puts leave management where people already spend their day. If your team lives in Slack or Microsoft Teams, the friction of switching to another app for PTO requests disappears, and that matters more than it might sound. Adoption is high and ongoing admin is genuinely low.
Where it falls short is in the depth of HR operations. Custom date range reporting, payroll integration with most HRIS systems, and complex approval workflows are all either missing or locked to the more expensive Complete plan.
Pricing also takes some unpacking. The monthly plan has a $50/month minimum on Core and $100/month on Complete. Annual billing is cheaper, but the per-user rate is tiered by team size rather than a flat figure, so the effective cost depends on how many people you have.
For teams that need deeper HR functionality, more flexible reporting, work location scheduling, or an alternative that works without a Slack or Teams subscription, actiPLANS is worth evaluating. It starts at $1.20/user/month annually with no minimum and no tier-based variation, includes a 30-day full-featured trial, and has built-in work location tracking that Vacation Tracker does not offer at any price.
