A Simple Time-Off Approval Workflow for Small Teams

An office manager can track time off for a small team by keeping one record of each person's balance changes and moving every request through the same few states. The key is to deduct hours exactly once, when the time off is taken, while setting aside approved hours in advance so they cannot be promised twice.

The states of a time-off request

1. Draft. The employee is still preparing the request.
2. Pending. The request has been submitted and is waiting for a decision.
3. Approved or rejected. The approver has decided.
4. Canceled. An approved request is withdrawn before the time off starts.
5. Taken. The dates have passed and the time off happened.

Only an approved request affects what the employee can still request. Only a taken request reduces the balance.

Who approves

Name one approver for each request, usually the person's manager. Nobody should approve their own request; if the office manager also takes time off, someone else approves it. The approver decides; a spreadsheet or tool can show warnings, such as two people off on the same day, but it should not reject requests on its own.

Available, reserved, pending, and projected balances

Four numbers answer different questions:

• The available balance is what the employee can still request.
• Reserved hours belong to approved requests for future dates.
• Pending hours belong to requests that are not decided yet. They do not change the balance.
• The projected balance is what the balance is expected to be on a future date.

A worked example

Synthetic example. A fictional office of 12 people. Employee A.R. has a balance of 40 hours and nothing reserved, so 40 hours are available.

1. A.R. submits a request for 16 hours next month. It is pending: the balance stays 40 and 40 hours are still available.
2. The manager approves it. Now 16 hours are reserved: the balance is still 40, and 24 hours are available.
3. The dates pass and the time off is taken. The 16 hours are deducted once: the balance becomes 24, reserved hours return to 0, and 24 hours are available.

If A.R. had canceled before the dates, the reservation would have been released and 40 hours would be available again.

Common spreadsheet mistakes

• Subtracting a request twice: once when it is approved and again when it is taken.
• Editing a balance cell directly, with no record of why it changed.
• Mixing hours and days in the same column, or assuming every workday is 8 hours.
• Not recording the effective date, which makes it impossible to rebuild a balance for a past date.

What to record for every balance change

For each accrual, adjustment, or time off taken, record:

• the effective date,
• the unit (hours or days) and the amount,
• the type of change (accrual, adjustment, time off),
• who recorded it.

A corrected mistake should be a new adjustment entry, not an edit to an old one, so the history still explains the current number.

Keep medical details out of it

A time-off record needs a general category at most, such as vacation or personal. Do not record diagnoses or medical details in a PTO tracker. Leave covered by specific laws, such as FMLA, follows its own rules and should not be handled as ordinary PTO.

If you manage PTO for a small office and want one consistent record of balances and requests, see the pilot for small teams.

Related

• PTO accrual calculator
• PTO glossary
• PTO accrual by pay period: biweekly vs. semimonthly

Reviewed by José Luis Pérez on 2026-11-12