Excel is free, flexible, and everywhere. It's also where your time-off tracking goes to die.
A spreadsheet is the right tool for a hundred things at your centre. Tracking who's off, who's owed what, and who can't both be off Friday isn't one of them. Here's the honest breakdown.
No credit card · Import your spreadsheet · Cancel anytime
The spreadsheet didn't fail because you're bad at Excel
It failed because a spreadsheet is a blank canvas, and staff time off is a process. The canvas doesn't know that someone quit in March, that two people can't both be off the same Friday, that a sick day needs a doctor's note, or that Maria's balance should have rolled over from last year.
So you become the formula. You re-key requests from texts. You eyeball conflicts. You rebuild the vacation tab every January. The math is right the day you build it and wrong by the time anyone trusts it. None of that is an Excel skills problem — it's a "wrong tool for the job" problem.
This isn't "spreadsheets are bad." It's "here's the exact line where a spreadsheet stops being free."
Spreadsheet vs purpose-built, side by side
"Spreadsheet" here means Excel or Google Sheets used to track staff time off — the way most centres start.
| For tracking staff time off | Excel / Sheets | Time Off Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $99/mo flat |
| Staff submit their own requests | You re-key them | From their phone |
| Balances that stay right all year | Until a formula breaks | ✓ |
| Blocks a conflict before you approve it | – | ✓ |
| Approve / deny by SMS, with a note | – | ✓ |
| Physician notes attached to the request | – | ✓ |
| Accruals that carry over automatically | Manual every year | ✓ |
| Timestamped trail of who changed what | Easily overwritten | Full history |
| Usable one-handed during drop-off | Not really | ✓ |
| Bend it to do literally anything else | ✓ | It's opinionated |
– = a spreadsheet can't do this without a person doing it by hand every time.
Keep your spreadsheets. Just not for this.
Excel is still the right tool for
- ✓Your budget and cash-flow forecasting
- ✓Enrollment and waitlist projections
- ✓One-off "what if" calculations
- ✓Anything you'll build once and not maintain daily
Hand time off to something built for it
- ✓Requests, approvals, and denials with one tap
- ✓Balances and accruals that maintain themselves
- ✓Coverage rules that stop conflicts up front
- ✓A clean record the day licensing asks
Recognize your January in this? Read the longer story →
Close the spreadsheet. For good.
$99/month flat. Unlimited staff. Bring your current spreadsheet — we'll help you move it over.
Built by a daycare director who ran the same broken spreadsheet for years.
Start your free trial30 days free. No credit card. Cancel anytime.