Vacation Tracker review

Vacation Tracker is a leave management and PTO tracking tool for distributed teams. It centralizes policies, requests, approvals, team calendars and reporting rather than leaving each step in email or a spreadsheet. Employees can request time off through Slack, Teams, the web or mobile apps. Managers can review balances and overlapping absences before approving requests. Policies can vary by location and cover accruals, holidays, seniority and blackout periods. Teams can compare reports across locations, teams or time periods and schedule reports for payroll. The Vee AI assistant can answer questions about who is away, policy details or booking leave.

It has two paid tiers: Core and Complete. Core is aimed at smaller teams with straightforward leave rules; Complete targets larger teams with multi-region policies. The difference matters in practice: Core allows one approver, while Complete supports multi-level approvals. There is no free plan, though Vacation Tracker offers a 14-day trial.

Vacation Tracker puts the main planning questions in one place: who is away, how much leave they have available and whether another absence overlaps. That can help managers spot coverage issues before approving requests, while the team calendar gives colleagues a shared view of upcoming time off. One Reddit thread describes how spreadsheet-based leave tracking became harder when teams needed visibility into availability and overlapping requests; Vacation Tracker’s calendar and approval features address that kind of workflow.

Requests through Slack, Teams, the web and mobile apps give employees several ways to submit leave. Location-specific policies are useful for teams whose holidays, accrual rules or blackout periods differ by region. Reporting can compare teams, locations or time periods, with scheduled reports available for payroll.

The pricing page lists Core at $2 per user per month and Complete at $4 per user per month. Core includes full- and half-day requests, a basic shared calendar via iCal and three months of activity logs. Complete adds hourly leave tracking, full activity history, multi-level approvals and optional substitutes. Integrations are included, and only active users are billed.

The headline per-user rates are not always the amount a small team will pay. Core has a $50 monthly minimum, covering up to 25 users; Complete has a $100 monthly minimum for up to 25 users. Beyond that, the listed rates are $2 or $4 per user per month, respectively. Check the minimum against your active-user count before comparing plans.

Core also has specific limits: up to three locations and 10 departments, single-approver workflows and only three months of activity logs. Teams needing unlimited locations or departments, hourly leave, multi-level approvals or full activity history need Complete. That makes Core a less suitable fit for complex, multi-region rules.

There is no free plan. The pricing page lists a 14-day trial, and says annual billing saves about 10%, but annual tier prices are not published here. The monthly price is therefore easier to verify than the annual total. The available pricing details also do not list paid add-ons; confirm any requirements beyond the included integrations before budgeting.

Vacation Tracker lists Core at $2 per user per month and Complete at $4, with no free plan and a 14-day trial. Complete costs twice as much, adding unlimited locations and departments, multi-level approvals, hourly leave tracking, full activity history and priority support with a listed one-hour response. Core is limited to three locations, 10 departments, single-approver workflows and three months of activity logs.

The per-user rate is not the whole bill: Core has a $50 monthly minimum covering up to 25 users; Complete has a $100 minimum for up to 25. Above that, the listed rates apply per user. Only active users are billed. The pricing page says annual billing saves about 10%, but does not publish annual tier prices. It lists no paid add-ons and says integrations are included. Check the minimum against your headcount before comparing the headline $2 rate with another tool.

The published product and pricing information does not say how to import existing balances, policies or request histories, or how much migration help is available. It also does not document data-export options or formats. Before moving, ask Vacation Tracker what you can export and whether historical requests, balances and policy settings are included. This matters if you later move again: Core includes three months of activity logs, while Complete includes full activity history, but the feature list does not clarify what can be retained or exported after cancellation.

We don’t have Reddit posts or comments in the published material, so we can’t reliably say what users report as reasons for leaving. Treat export terms, cancellation access and migration support as questions to resolve before switching—not as confirmed product limits. Teams moving from Vacation Tracker should also check whether their destination can reproduce location-specific policies, approval steps and calendar workflows; those are central parts of the product, but compatibility is not documented here.