Everything you need to know about TimeTally — leave management, rota scheduling, time tracking, and more. Can't find your answer? Contact us or book a demo.
TimeTally comes with Annual Leave, Sick Leave, TOIL (Time Off in Lieu), Unpaid Leave, Maternity Leave, and Paternity Leave built in. These cover the most common UK leave requirements out of the box and can be used immediately without any configuration.
Yes. You can create unlimited custom leave types with any name you choose (e.g. Study Leave, Compassionate Leave, Volunteering). For each custom type you can set: whether it is paid or unpaid; whether it deducts from the employee's annual leave balance; or whether it has its own separate balance (e.g. Study Leave — 5 days per year). You can also choose a colour and icon so they're easy to identify in the calendar.
Yes. As an admin you can set exactly how many days (or hours) employees are allowed to carry over into the next leave year. You can also set an expiry date for carryover — for example, any carried-over leave must be used by 31 March. If the expiry date passes, unspent carryover is automatically forfeited. You can also set carryover to zero if you do not allow it at all.
When you mark an employee as part-time, you select which days of the week they work. TimeTally automatically calculates their pro-rata annual leave entitlement based on those working days as a proportion of a full-time week. It also accounts for bank holidays — if a bank holiday falls on a day the employee doesn't work, they aren't disadvantaged. For example, an employee working 4 days a week receives 80% of the full-time entitlement.
Yes. Managers and admins can submit leave requests on behalf of any employee — useful if an employee calls in sick and can't log in themselves. Managers are also responsible for approving or rejecting leave requests submitted by their team.
Yes, if your organisation has half-day leave enabled. Employees can book AM or PM half-days. If leave is tracked in hours rather than days, employees can book leave for specific hours of the same day, allowing even more granular bookings.
TimeTally detects clashes to prevent double-booking — if a bank holiday is already booked on a date, a standard leave request for the same date will be flagged. Employees can delete the bank holiday entry and replace it with a different leave type if needed. Bank holidays can be set to auto-book for all employees, or employees can manually book them using the Bank Holiday leave type.
Yes. You can set any start date for your leave year — 1 January, 1 April, 1 September, or any other date that suits your business. The leave year drives accrual calculations, carryover, and annual leave resets for all employees.
You can choose to have bank holidays auto-booked for all employees at the start of the leave year, or leave it for employees to book themselves using the Bank Holiday leave type and selecting whichever days apply to them. Bank holiday entries can be deleted at any time by a manager. The system is aware of England, Scotland, and Wales bank holiday calendars.
Yes, but this is a setting you control. Admins can enable a team calendar view that shows employees who else in their department has approved leave — useful for planning without revealing personal details. This is off by default and can be toggled on in organisation settings.
If your organisation uses TOIL, overtime hours worked by an employee are converted into TOIL at a rate set by the admin (e.g. 1:1 or 1.5:1). The TOIL balance is updated when the timesheet is submitted (not when it's approved), and is restored if the timesheet is rejected. Employees can then request time off using their TOIL balance in the same way they request annual leave.
Yes. Admins can manually adjust any employee's leave balance from the employee profile — for example to correct a historical error, add a one-off bonus day, or set a specific balance. You can set an exact current balance or change the yearly entitlement while keeping the current balance unchanged.
The reports section includes: Leave Trends (monthly leave days taken by type across the year), Leave Balance Status (remaining balances for all employees), and per-employee leave history. You can filter all reports by department.
Yes. You can configure your organisation to track leave in hours rather than days. This is useful for employees with irregular working patterns or variable daily hours. Half-day and specific-hour bookings are all supported in hours mode.
The rota is a weekly shift planner that lets managers schedule which employees are working on which days and at what times. Each shift has a name, a start time, and an end time. You can see the full week at a glance and publish it for employees to view. The rota also shows who is on approved leave each day, so you never accidentally schedule someone who is off.
Yes, but only once a manager has published the rota for that week. Once published, employees can log in and see their shifts for the week. Shifts are not visible to employees until they are published.
Yes. You can create shifts with a start time later than the end time (e.g. 22:00–06:00) and TimeTally correctly calculates the shift duration as 8 hours. Night shifts are fully supported.
Yes. You can copy an entire week's rota to the following week with one click, saving you from building the same schedule from scratch each time. You can then make any adjustments for the new week.
Shift templates are pre-saved shift configurations (name, start time, end time) that you can drag and drop into the rota for any employee on any day. If your business runs recurring patterns — like a Morning shift (07:00–15:00) or a Late shift (14:00–22:00) — you create them once as templates and reuse them every week.
Yes. You can assign multiple shifts to the same employee on the same day (split shifts). Each shift has its own start and end time, and the total hours are summed across all shifts for that day.
Yes. When building the rota, you can see which employees have approved leave on each day, so you avoid scheduling someone who is already off. This gives managers full visibility before publishing.
Not automatically by email — employees need to check the rota in the app to see their published shifts. We recommend letting your team know when you publish each week. We plan to add publish notifications in a future update.
There is one rota per organisation. However, you can filter the rota view by department, making it easy to focus on one team at a time when building schedules. Department managers only see the employees assigned to their department.
Yes. If you use the clock-in/clock-out feature alongside the rota, employees can clock in when their shift starts and clock out when it ends. This records their actual hours worked, which feeds into their timesheet for manager review and approval.
There are two ways: (1) Manual entry — employees log in to their weekly timesheet and enter their start time, end time, and any breaks for each day, or simply enter a total number of hours. (2) Clock in/out — employees tap Clock In when they start work and Clock Out when they finish. TimeTally builds their weekly timesheet from those entries automatically. Once complete, they submit the timesheet to their manager for review.
Yes. Employees can clock in when they arrive and clock out when they leave, directly from their phone, tablet, or computer. TimeTally records the exact times and builds their weekly timesheet automatically. At the end of the week (or whenever they're done), they review and submit it to their manager.
Yes. When entering hours, employees can record their break times. Breaks are deducted from the total worked hours so that the approved hours accurately reflect productive time rather than time on site.
Yes. Employees are not restricted to the current week — they can go back and submit timesheets for previous weeks at any time. This is helpful for catching up after holidays or illness.
Once an employee submits a timesheet it moves to Pending status. Managers can review all pending timesheets in their dashboard. They approve or reject the full week's timesheet with one click — there is no need to approve day by day. Managers can add a rejection note so the employee knows what to correct before resubmitting. Employees receive an email notification when their timesheet is approved or rejected.
Yes. Employees can add one or more projects to any timesheet entry and specify how much time they spent on each project that day. This gives you a breakdown of hours across different clients or workstreams.
If your organisation has TOIL enabled, any overtime hours in an approved timesheet are automatically converted to TOIL at the rate set by the admin (e.g. 1:1 means one hour overtime = one hour TOIL). The TOIL balance is credited when the timesheet is submitted and restored if the timesheet is later rejected. Employees can then use their TOIL balance to book time off.
Yes. You can export timesheet data as a CSV or Excel file at any time. You can also connect directly to Xero or QuickBooks — TimeTally generates a payroll journal entry that posts directly to your accounting software. You'll need to sign in to your Xero or QuickBooks account the first time you connect.
Employee-level pay details (hourly rates, pay totals) are never shown to employees — only to admins. Managers can also have pay details hidden from them at the admin's discretion, so sensitive payroll data stays with the right people.
TimeTally costs £2.00 per active employee per month (prices in GBP). There are no setup fees, no long-term contracts, and no hidden charges. Managers can be added free of charge — you only pay for employees who submit timesheets or leave. A team of 20 employees costs £40/month.
Yes — a 14-day free trial with full access to every feature, no credit card required. Most UK businesses are fully set up and tracking hours within 10 minutes of signing up.
Yes. You can add as many managers as you need at no extra cost. When adding a manager you can configure: which department(s) they oversee (so they only see relevant employees), whether they can view employee pay details, and whether they can submit their own timesheets, request leave, and be rostered on the rota.
We accept all major UK credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) via Stripe. All payments are in GBP and card details are handled securely by Stripe — we never store them on our servers. Invoices are provided for every payment and meet HMRC record-keeping requirements.
Yes. There are no lock-in contracts and no cancellation fees. When you cancel you keep access until the end of your billing period. Before it ends you can export all your data as CSV/Excel. We retain your data for 90 days after cancellation in case you return, after which it is permanently deleted in line with UK GDPR.
TimeTally integrates directly with Xero and QuickBooks for payroll journal exports. You connect once by signing in to your accounting software, and then generate payroll entries from within TimeTally. You can also export timesheet data as a CSV or Excel file for use with any other payroll or HR system.
Yes. TimeTally has a web app that works on any browser on any device, plus a dedicated iOS app on the App Store and an Android app on Google Play. Employees can clock in/out, submit timesheets, request leave, and check their balances from their phone.
Yes. You can assign each employee to a department and assign a manager to that department. Department managers only see employees in their own department. Reports, rotas, and the team calendar can all be filtered by department.
You can archive an employee — they immediately lose access but all their historical timesheet, leave, and payroll data is retained and still visible to admins. If they ever return, you can unarchive them and their full history is restored. If you want to permanently remove someone, you can delete them — this removes all their personal data in compliance with UK GDPR.
Yes. TimeTally is fully compliant with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are registered with the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office). All data is stored in EU data centres and is never transferred outside the UK/EU.
All data is transmitted using TLS 1.2+ encryption (the same standard used by banks). Data is stored in encrypted databases with automatic daily backups. We use Row-Level Security policies to ensure complete data isolation between organisations — no organisation can ever see another's data. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt and are never stored in plain text.
Yes. TimeTally runs automatic daily backups of all data. In the event of any issue, data can be restored from the most recent backup with minimal data loss.
You own your data at all times. Before cancelling you can export everything as CSV/Excel. After cancellation we retain your data securely for 90 days in case you return. After 90 days all personal data is permanently deleted. Billing records are kept for 7 years to comply with HMRC requirements.
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Our UK-based support team is happy to help — usually within one business day.
