PTO Tracker

Time-off balances go wrong quietly and cost money on someone's last paycheque, so every balance is checked every Monday.

A request arrives with the facts attached. Not the balance today, the balance as it will actually stand on the days requested, including accrual still to land and time already approved but not yet taken. That last number is the one everyone forgets, and it is why two reasonable approvals can leave someone in the negative.

Coverage gets checked before anyone says yes. Who else is already off those days, whether it lands in a blackout, and whether saying yes leaves the shop below what it needs. Your manager decides with that in front of them instead of from memory.

Sick and family leave are never treated as vacation. The moment a request looks like sick, family, medical, bereavement, jury, or military leave, it stops and goes to a person. Those carry their own rules and their own protections, and running one through an ordinary approval is how a week off turns into a claim.

Every Monday it checks every balance. Somebody about to hit their accrual cap hears about it a month out, with the date they stop earning, because that is compensation they are about to stop accruing. Somebody about to lose carryover hears the deadline. A negative balance or an absence nobody recorded goes to the manager to sort out, never to a quiet correction.

Nothing is forfeited on its own. Where a policy says carryover expires, it asks rather than expiring it, because earned leave cannot be taken back at all in several states.

Before anyone leaves, the balance is reconciled. Accrual through the final day, every absence checked, so the final paycheque is built on a number somebody actually verified.

It never approves time off, sets the policy, or pays anything. It makes sure the person who does has the right number.