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

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."

Comments

Calendar?

[should_be_linear]

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

Re:Calendar?

[u38cg]

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.

Re:Calendar?

[mwvdlee]

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

Re:Calendar?

[tompaulco]

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.

uhh

[gandhi_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.

Re:uhh

[Talderas]

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.

Re:uhh

[azadrozny]

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.

Don't track it

[cryfreedomlove]

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.

Re:Don't track it

[Richard_at_work]

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.

Re:Don't track it

[mwvdlee]

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.

Re:Don't track it

[TarpaKungs]

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

Companies vary

[SirGarlon]

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.

Re:Companies vary

[davidbrit2]

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.

Do you pay these people?

[JoeMerchant]

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.

I have an app for that.

[blogan]

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.

Check out my bookmarks

[nengard]

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

Yeah seriously

[circletimessquare]

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.

you need open source?

[fitteschleiker]

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...

Re:you need open source?

[ManicMechanic]

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

Gaps in Open Source.

[jellomizer]

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.

 

http://timeoffmanager.com/

[RandomCanadianCoder]

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

Re:More info needed

[LordNightwalker]

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