Every company starts with a spreadsheet
At first it makes sense: a column for the name, one for the balance, one for days used. It works perfectly well — until headcount reaches about fifteen, or the person who maintained it leaves.
Where exactly it breaks
It does not fail all at once. It fails at four points in sequence:
Balances go stale. The sheet reflects whenever someone last opened it. An employee asks about their balance and gets a number that is two weeks old. Approvals disappear. The request arrives on WhatsApp, the approval is given verbally in the corridor, and neither is recorded. Six months later nobody can prove the leave was approved at all. Two versions of the truth. The manager keeps a copy, HR keeps a copy, and the numbers disagree. The dispute is then not about the leave but about which sheet is right. Nobody sees the whole picture. Who is off next week? Answering means opening the sheet and reading row by row — so nobody does, and two overlapping absences get approved in the same department.What replaces it
The replacement does not need to be complicated. It needs to guarantee four things:
- Request and approval in one place, both recorded with their timestamps
- Balances calculated automatically from approved requests, not by hand
- A single source of truth that the employee, the manager and HR all see
- A calendar showing who will be away before a new request is approved
Who sets the policy?
An important point: the system does not decide how much leave your employee is entitled to. You configure that according to your company's regulations and the applicable labour law. The system's job is to apply your policy consistently and keep a record of what happened — not to assume figures on your behalf.
In Remotly, leave types and policies are defined at company level, requests follow a clear approval route, and balances update from approved requests.
When to move
The practical rule: when you find yourself opening the sheet to double-check a number, or when an employee disputes their balance and no record settles it, you have already outgrown Excel.
Try it free — no employee limit, no credit card.