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Ask Slashdot: Open Source Employee Vacation-Day Tracking Software?

Posted by timothy on from the how-about-open-source-sexual-harassment-training? dept.

First time accepted submitter sprior writes "I'm looking for preferably open source software that a business would use to track vacation/sick days for employees and so far have come up empty. I found WaypointHR which looks defunct and I'm looking at OrangeHRM which looks half defunct, half bait and switch, and half strange in general with a bunch of website bugs thrown in. Along the way I've seen a couple of other OS projects which look defunct as well. I realize that a solution might be more than just vacation tracking because once you configure the employee info for a company you tend to want to use that for more than one thing. Paid solutions are a possibility."

68 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Calendar? by should_be_linear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We use Google Calendar for this. It has nice API, which we don't even need (only 20 employees).

    --
    839*929
    1. Re:Calendar? by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      100 percent agree.
      Google Calendar. When you need pretty reports you can even export one or multiple calendars to csv and do what you will.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    2. Re:Calendar? by u38cg · · Score: 2
      My (20k employee) company hands out an A4 form every January with your total number of days entitlement written at the top. You keep it, and when you want holiday during the year, you write it down, subtract the total, and your manager signs it off. At the end of the year the form goes back to local HR, who file it.

      My lawn, get off it.

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
    3. Re:Calendar? by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      Well, I guess that's one way of keeping HR personel employed.

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    4. Re:Calendar? by INT_QRK · · Score: 1

      Libre Office Calc. You can make it as pretty or as ugly as you like, but either way, the functionality is limited mainly by your imagination combined with your level of expertise and/or willingness to invest the time to customize to your needs.

    5. Re:Calendar? by TarpaKungs · · Score: 1

      Not only - but you can even use the GoogleAPI to completely automate stuff as far as you wish.

      --
      Why can't women be like Hedy Lamarr - beautiful, talented and inventors of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum techn
    6. Re:Calendar? by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      We use Google Calendar for this

      How do you associate the number of vacation days to which an employee is entitled? How to do you forward vacation requests to a manage for approval? How does Google Calendar deduct taken vacation from the pool that the employee has? How does the pool reset at the end of the year? Does Google calendar automatically add vacation days as an employee accrues them? What about vacation carry-over from one year to the next? Is there a mechanism to notify HR / management if an employee hasn't used their vacation time?

      Enquiring minds want to know...

    7. Re:Calendar? by tompaulco · · Score: 2

      At my company, they give you two weeks vacation that you can use any time you want. Well, except for dates when an important project is being worked on, which is all the time. Then on December 31st, when you haven't used any of your vacation, all your days go away because they don't roll over.
      To get around this problem, I just take vacation whenever I want to, and if anybody calls me or sends me an e-mail, then it wasn't a vacation day. Then I keep track of how many extra hours I have worked and how many vacation days I haven't been allowed to take that were rightfully mine in preparation for the eventual lawsuit.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    8. Re:Calendar? by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 1

      Or better yet, take your "vacation" and if/when they call you in, tell them it's overtime!

    9. Re:Calendar? by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 1

      Make the event name the employees number/name/what-ever then export as CSV. Then import into LibreOffice/MSOffice/GoogleDocs and tally the hours/days/star-dates.

  2. drupal with views and calendar modules by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Define your own custom content type and date fields then build your calendar view from the calendar views template.

    1. Re:drupal with views and calendar modules by sprior · · Score: 1

      My early thought was Drupal as well, but I'm holding off on purpose to see if an off the shelf application works before I go all custom.

  3. uhh by gandhi_2 · · Score: 2

    how about a spreadheet.

    you could just hook a macro to a button that decrements x days from y employee when they take days off.

    or a database with a simple html front end that lets the hr goon do the same thing.

    --
    THL phish sticks
    1. Re:uhh by Talderas · · Score: 2

      A spreadsheet is a horrible idea. It does not scale well and only is effective if you have a single point of control.

      My company uses spreadsheets to track the usage across 6 physical sites with 3 points of contact. There's essentially three sheets that are kept and must be periodically synced to verify data is identical. It's not reliable. I've seen one issue already where the number of days an employee had were off between the central point and the person who records for the site.

      --
      "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
    2. Re:uhh by azadrozny · · Score: 2

      I wouldn't say it is a horrible idea, but you are correct in that it won't scale well. I have used spreadsheets successfully on teams as large as twenty, with everyone collocated at one facility. We simply had color coded cells to denote the reason for being out of the office, vacation, training, travel, etc... If the goal is to coordinate among a small(ish) group of people, then keep it simple. If you need to tie this into payroll and coordinate a large number of employees across several sites, then you are going to need a more comprehensive SW package.

  4. Don't track it by cryfreedomlove · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hire adults and let them self manage how much time they need off. They won't abuse it, they'll love you, and you can avoid this complex project.

    1. Re:Don't track it by zarthrag · · Score: 1

      THIS! Why build in additional bureaucratic bs when you can make your company an even better place to work? The US is infamous for making people work every minute of every day as it is - buck the trend, there are benefits for doing so...starting with this overhead.

      --
      Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
    2. Re:Don't track it by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That doesn't work.

      Because the larger the working group gets, the more people need to know that Frank has a week off in two months time - otherwise someones going to book that very important meeting with that very important client slap bang in the middle of it. People are going to see that someones off at the same time as they require, and they are going to mark themselves down for vacation anyway and just argue it out later on.

      But a vacation calendar should actually track more than just vacation time - it should track all planned and plan-able absence time. Vacations, lates, earlies, shift patterns, moved time, training periods etc etc etc. It should ideally track person dependencies - who cannot be off at the same time without serious authorisation. It should track banked hours and lieu time. It should track vacation preferences (I dont agree with it, but some companies give preference to those with children and families during known school holidays).

      Theres an awful lot that a simple calendar or "just let them sort it out like adults" simply won't handle for you.

      In answer to the parents question - I wrote my own, with all the above, about 10 years ago. I'd opensource it if I still had the code.

    3. Re:Don't track it by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      I think Google's calendar can handle this very well. I'm sure Microsoft's Office365 and other calendar tools can handle it equally well.

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    4. Re:Don't track it by QuantumRiff · · Score: 1

      We just have a single OoO (Out of Office) calendar for this exact reason.

      We are spread all over, with remote people. When someone is looking for bob, its really easy to look at the OoO calendar, and see he's out for the afternoon.

      We use zarafa for our email, and a public calendar, but pretty much any groupware (or even davical for just calendars) would work.

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    5. Re:Don't track it by TarpaKungs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They'll still book the meeting because they'll forget to check the calendar.

      --
      Why can't women be like Hedy Lamarr - beautiful, talented and inventors of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum techn
    6. Re:Don't track it by Outtascope · · Score: 1

      Because the larger the working group gets, the more people need to know that Frank has a week off in two months time - otherwise someones going to book that very important meeting with that very important client slap bang in the middle of it.

      Hah! You think having vacation time on your calendar keeps them from doing that? Happens every friggin' time. Shared calendars aren't for YOU to manage your time, they are for the clerical staff to manage your time.

    7. Re:Don't track it by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      But the audit logs will show who booked what first, and who checked what - which is the point of having such a system...

      Plus you can always have the meeting calendaring as part of this system.

    8. Re:Don't track it by japhmi · · Score: 1

      We use a table in an internal wiki. Going to be gone, shade the block for that day grey.

      We're all engineers though.

      --
      "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
    9. Re:Don't track it by CrankyFool · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it does. I work for a ~1000 person company without any vacation tracking (you don't accrue vacation days, you don't spend vacation days, you take whatever vacation you want). It works just fine.

      And just to prerebut: Yes, people take vacations. All the time.

    10. Re:Don't track it by CrankyFool · · Score: 1

      We're a tech company. I'm talking about every single person in the company, including the engineers responsible for releasing and maintaining critical services.

      Sure, you can't have 75% of your employees taking the same time off. But if you've hired adults then you find that they can actually be pretty responsible about this sort of thing.

  5. Companies vary by SirGarlon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given how greatly companies differ in the details of their HR policies (when vacation accrues, what forms of paid leave are available, whether employees can 'buy' extra time off), I would be surprised if there is an off-the-shelf solution that fits your needs.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
    1. Re:Companies vary by davidbrit2 · · Score: 2

      What he said. We had to roll our own. There is an astounding amount of "the devil is in the details" when dealing with this subject. For examples: How do you handle accrual of vacation/sick time for an employee whose start date is in the middle of a pay period? Is there a delay before they start accruing? Is there a maximum allowable amount? Does it increase based on seniority? How do you integrate your system with your time clock to deal with hourly employees (don't forget to credit them paid leave for holidays)? What if somebody is out for a span that includes the paid lunch hour? Will you allow entries that would cause the current balance to be pushed into the negative? If not, how will you forecast future remaining time, while taking all these rules into account?

      This is one of those business cases where the ol' 80/20 rule just doesn't cut it. Just tracking who's here and who isn't is pretty simple, but when you start automating the payroll side of it, it becomes many times more complicated and customized.

    2. Re:Companies vary by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      What he said. We had to roll our own. There is an astounding amount of "the devil is in the details" when dealing with this subject. For examples: How do you handle accrual of vacation/sick time for an employee whose start date is in the middle of a pay period? Is there a delay before they start accruing? Is there a maximum allowable amount? Does it increase based on seniority? How do you integrate your system with your time clock to deal with hourly employees (don't forget to credit them paid leave for holidays)? What if somebody is out for a span that includes the paid lunch hour? Will you allow entries that would cause the current balance to be pushed into the negative? If not, how will you forecast future remaining time, while taking all these rules into account?

      This is one of those business cases where the ol' 80/20 rule just doesn't cut it. Just tracking who's here and who isn't is pretty simple, but when you start automating the payroll side of it, it becomes many times more complicated and customized.

      Most of those can be answered with the term "pro-rate". Still, your point is valid - do you prorate or not?

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  6. Do you pay these people? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What do you use to track days/hours worked? Isn't vacation accounting built into that system? If it's not, you're going to be running parallel non-communicating software which gives you multiple opportunities for the databases to get out of sync with reality, and each other.

    1. Re:Do you pay these people? by DdJ · · Score: 1

      You don't always need to track days/hours worked. For many salaried employees, you get paid an annual salary and your hours aren't really supposed to be tracked.

      The vacation day policy lays on top of that. If you use more than you're supposed to, it's not that you're getting paid for more days than you're supposed to, it's that you're getting paid the right amount but you're also violating company rules/policies.

      (This is how it is for my own job.)

      The vacation tracking system doesn't really need to sync up with anything else in situations like this. In my own case, the vacation tracking system needs to emit three pieces of data once a year:
      1) was the policy complied with?
      2) how many "ordinary rollover days" get fed into the formulas for the next year?
      3) how many "sick day bank days" get fed into the formulas for the next year?

      Of those, only #1 is ordinarily used outside of the vacation/PTO tracking workflows, so from the outside, the only data syncing is normally "did this employee comply with policy or not?".

    2. Re:Do you pay these people? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I've worked "salaried - exempt" what have you jobs since 1990, no time clock, no overtime, no hour tracking.

      Every single one of them tracked my days worked, sick days, vacation days, etc. with the same time tracking software used on hourly employees - only difference is that the "exempt" employees always get 80 hours, regardless of what's actually worked.

      I even worked at a place that "didn't track" vacation time for higher level managers - some managers took two month long vacations every year with additional days in between - which was acceptable by policy. They still tracked days worked.

  7. I have an app for that. by blogan · · Score: 2

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logan.bryan.ptotrack

    Or if you want to bust the bank and pay $.99 and not have ads - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logan.bryan.ptotrackpro

    It's not Open Source, but if there's something specific you want, let me know and I can think about adding it. Or, if you'd like to purchase the entire source and open source it yourself, I'd be open to discussion.

    1. Re:I have an app for that. by blogan · · Score: 1

      That's planned in a future release. It makes the GUI a little more complex, and I want to keep it nice and simple for the single case scenario. Plus I want to handle some of those more odd accrual rules for when you have those multiple types (such as accrues on a yearly basis, no-rollover, etc).

      If you wanted to track just two of them for now, you could use the free app and the paid app and have them track separately.

    2. Re:I have an app for that. by RattFink · · Score: 1

      Perhaps I am misunderstanding the app but from the page it seems like it can only track "your" time off. Can it track time for an business with many employees?

      --
      "I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
  8. Check out my bookmarks by nengard · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have many such tools bookmarked and shared publicly here: http://delicious.com/nengard/opensource+timetracking Hope that helps! Nicole

  9. I Recommend by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    one of these

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  10. Spreadsheet? by DdJ · · Score: 1

    My own PTO days are tracked via a spreadsheet. My employer uses Excel, but I keep my own "shadow copy", usually in Google Docs spreadsheets (it has varied year-to-year).

    There are plenty of open source spreadsheets. The first one that I really liked using, many years ago, was "sc", a curses/terminal-based spreadsheet that built upon the vi keyboard commands. It's still around somewhere. My housemates and I used it collectively (via shared directories with ACLs on NFS mounts) to track shared expenses. There are many modern GUI options, of course.

    Whether something more complicated than a spreadsheet is worth thinking about depends on details you haven't given us yet. What are your actual requirements? What's your PTO/vacation policy?

  11. Yeah seriously by circletimessquare · · Score: 2

    The guy's question sounds like agonizing over the what color car to get before he has even picked out a car.

    Vacation/sick days are something you track from within an employee hour tracking system that you should be worrying about first. And once you've chosen that, your solution is vacation/ sick day tracking becomes obvious.

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:Yeah seriously by sprior · · Score: 1

      There is no requirement to track employee hours for us, just days on leave. A spreadsheet on a shared drive worked for a while, but doesn't scale so we're looking for a distributed solution. We're primarily a Linux shop for servers (I'm sure we have some Windows servers as well) and will self host whatever solution is chosen.

  12. you need open source? by fitteschleiker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why the fuck you need open source? You aren't going to modify it, you just think open source is synonymous with free.
    My company uses its book keeping / payroll software to do this, but from reading the comments here, apparently america doesnt have humane
    vacation / sick days forced upon employers, I guess its that "free market" thing that works so well...

    1. Re:you need open source? by ManicMechanic · · Score: 2

      Not the OP but I will answer why I use open source when I can.

      Yes the cost factor is nice, but I prefer open source because I have more trust that the system isn't leaking information to it's copyright holder. That and the endless update cycle.

      I really with there was an effective way to use cash as a bounty to help pet projects along.

      MM

    2. Re:you need open source? by sprior · · Score: 1

      While open source is also a bias of mine, I've also already looked at the source of the packages I've been considering partially for documentation. I've also got a history of taking open source packages and making some tweaks to fit the requirements a bit more. An active developer community around a project is also a critical indicator of liveliness in software and whether it continues to be viable. Note that I said that non-free packages will also be considered, open source is just a preference.

  13. Gaps in Open Source. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Open Source Software usually has gaps in Business software.
    First OSS developers tend to have a negative views towards companies. Making free software so a company can make more money just doesn't sit right. OSS does tend to give tools for the IT side of business but a lot less on the side of the people with Suits.

    Second OSS developers are mostly on IT and really don't have a big picture understanding on how to operate a business. (some of them do, but most don't, judging by a lot of the idiotic comments from FSS supporters on how business need to operate) So most OSS Business systems tend to be small and only work for the company the product was designed for, and rarely ever useful in an other company.

     

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  14. http://timeoffmanager.com/ by RandomCanadianCoder · · Score: 2

    shameless plug (I work for this company) but there is timeoffmanager.com it's not open-source, but it's web based, free to try, and with lots of customizable options for different hr policies, and we offer great customer support

  15. Re:More info needed by LordNightwalker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Or instead of reinventing the wheel, try something like OpenERP which has an HR module that does this already. Disclaimer: I work for them.

    --
    Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
  16. But I don't have any Open Source Employees! by undulato · · Score: 1

    Arf.

  17. It may be overkill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It may be overkill, but TimeTrex Time and Attendance is open source and has a scheduling module with complete accrual tracking and employee self-service for requesting time off. It does a bunch of other stuff too (ie: attendance, payroll), but that can all be disabled in the permission system if you don't want to bother with it.

  18. Kuali KPME: Leave Management module by r2nd2ll · · Score: 1

    Definitely still a work in progress, but one to watch: http://www.kuali.org/KPME

    The Time and Attendance module has been released and implemented in at least a couple places. Leave Management is the next module with an expected first release sometime in October.

  19. MySQL + PHP/ASP by Lumpy · · Score: 1

    set up a DB, make a web interface in PHP or ASP. call it done. that way employees can look and request without adding software, and HR can approve, deny and pull reports.

    Honestly, less than a day's worth of work for someone that is mildly capable in web programming.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  20. Gambas App: Employear by webgang · · Score: 1

    There is a gambas application on sourceforge: Employear, to keep holidays but also normal working days, etc. It is a Linux desktop application written in Gambas, a Java-like language with a Visual Basic like development environment. It stores data in MySQL database. It makes sense to take an open source app; we adjusted some small thing so that we can read data from a timetracker system to auto-fill the normal, worked days.. We use for some years now; the monthly totals are delivered to HRM for payroll caculations.

  21. RoR based PTO tool by cyrus007 · · Score: 1

    I had built an RoR 2.x version based PTO tool to learn RoR (a copy of our company's HTML & JS based tool) but never got around to releasing it. I was going to upload it to heroku.com but was waiting to port it to v3.x If you want I can upload it to github and you can take it from there.

  22. This application by X86Daddy · · Score: 1

    It's funny... Every company I've worked for has built this application over and over... different languages, different platforms to integrate with different generations of desktop / networked calendaring, etc... and even different versions for different departments when there's variation allowed on a per-manager basis. It seems like it's always a bespoke, in-house sorta thing. It's also usually treated as the "get started" application when switching technology platforms... "If we can figure out how to build a vacation tracker, we can then handle migrating a bunch of other workflow apps."

    Due to all the situational dependencies, you can't just find the perfect OSS one. Follow up your question with what you use for email, calendaring, and what kind of server tech you are good with deploying and you might find suitable answers... i.e. a LAMP stack based tool that ties to Google Calendar perfectly ain't gonna help an all-Microsoft shop much.

  23. OpenERP has a module for this. by RattFink · · Score: 1

    It is a pretty large software package and support tends to suck if you don't pay but it is updated consistently is open, and once you get your head around things, pretty easy to extend.

    --
    "I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
    1. Re:OpenERP has a module for this. by glodime · · Score: 1

      This seems to be the most appropriate answer here.

  24. Nice utopia you must live in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hire adults and let them self manage how much time they need off. They won't abuse it, they'll love you, and you can avoid this complex project.

    Which is fine and dandy unless you have to comply with labor laws that require documentation of the amount of leave granted. Or accounting rules which require you to report earned time off as a liability.

  25. Honestly... by mschaffer · · Score: 1

    How about Outlook, Excel, paper and pencil, Libre Office Calc, etc...
    Write something in PHP, ASP, or whatever.

  26. I use Remind by dskoll · · Score: 1

    I wrote a program called Remind and I use it to track vacation days, who has the support pager, etc.

    It's very old-school UNIX. You enter all your data in a text file and it renders the calendar. I use git for revision control so it's easy to see who booked time off and when.

    I'm guessing Remind will appeal to about 0.001% of the target audience. :)

  27. build your own by JigJag · · Score: 1

    We're a company of about 400 people so off-the-shelf calendar applications wouldn't fit. So when this issue came up, we decided to build our own. It took about a month for a sole programmer, but at least it matches our company requirements perfectly.

    JigJag

    --
    "The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
  28. Another alternative option... by rurich · · Score: 1

    http://leavewizard.com/ is another web based system that you might want to take a look at, again it isn't open source but it's free for 5 users and reasonably priced for more.

  29. TimeTrex seems to fit your needs by Lancer · · Score: 1

    Have a look at TimeTrex: http://www.timetrex.com/ The type of software you're looking for is often called "Time and Attendance" tracking. Hopefully that helps your Googlefu.

    --
    Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
  30. OrangeHRM by bhenson · · Score: 1

    OrangeHRM open source has a leave module. They can even apply for leave using it

    1. Re:OrangeHRM by sprior · · Score: 1

      I've been looking at OrangeHRM for a couple of days and have it installed in a virtual machine. However a few things have made me cautious:

      - The registration page on their website to download the documentation doesn't work.
      - I called their "global" technical support number to report that their registration page doesn't work and got voicemail.
      - They haven't called me back 2 days later.
      - The wiki site for their community version has almost no content and has been polluted with spam links that haven't been cleaned up.
      - Their free online demo site which I signed up for doesn't show the basic Leave module which comes included, they only show the advanced version which is only available as a paid add-on.
      - I've played with their open source version on my server and it's got some serious issues - you have to change the system date in order to be able to work with years besides the current year, and the function to roll over previous years days only pops up in specific situations and it's easy to do it wrong and get stuck.
      - They don't support two employees with the same name even if they have different id numbers.

      All of this just gave me a bad feeling about them.

  31. Re:Fuzzy math by sprior · · Score: 1

    I had to throw something in there for a nitpicker to catch and be satisfied.

  32. Re:Why Open Source? by sprior · · Score: 1

    I'm surprised I have to explain this on Slashdot, but...

    While open source is also a bias of mine, I've also already looked at the source of the packages I've been considering partially for documentation. I've also got a history of taking open source packages and making some tweaks to fit the requirements a bit more. An active developer community around a project is also a critical indicator of liveliness in software and whether it continues to be viable. Note that I said that non-free packages will also be considered, open source is just a preference.

  33. Re:Open Source app Employear by sprior · · Score: 1

    Looks interesting, never heard of Gambas before. Is this application web based or does the client connect directly to MySQL?

  34. Re:Oh FFS... by sprior · · Score: 1

    I'm REALLY not a PHB/MBA type, but an experienced programmer trying to explore off the shelf options before I go an implement something from scratch which is a diversion from my normal responsibilities and a problem which I assume others have had to deal with.

  35. Re:Why Open Source? by HappyPsycho · · Score: 1

    Intergration with other tools like the authentication server for terminating access when an employee gets fired seems like a simple addition that carries quite a few variables that would deter a company from developing it.