TimeTally features: timesheets, leave and rota management for UK businesses

Click any empty cell to create a shift — no forms or menus. Drag to move a shift to a different day or time. Drop onto a different employee to reassign it instantly. Building a week's rota or making last-minute changes takes minutes, not half a morning.

The rota shows confirmed annual leave, sick leave, and TOIL alongside shifts in the same view — no cross-referencing a separate system. See exactly who's available before you schedule them. Approved leave blocks are visible to all managers on the team, so nothing gets double-booked.

Hit publish and every affected employee gets a push notification on their phone immediately. No printed schedules, no group chats. Staff can view their upcoming shifts and full schedule from the app at any time. If you edit a published rota, employees are notified of the change automatically.

Duplicate any previous week's rota as the starting point for the next — then just adjust for leave or cover. For predictable rotating patterns you can plan weeks or months ahead in one go. Consistent shift cycles go from hours of work to a few clicks.

Save your common shift types — e.g. 'Early 6am–2pm', 'Late 2pm–10pm', 'Night 10pm–6am' — and apply them in one click instead of re-entering times every week. Templates keep shift names and hours consistent across your rota and speed up the planning process significantly.

Employees request a shift swap with a specific colleague directly in the app — no manager involvement needed to initiate. The manager gets a notification, reviews the proposed swap, and approves or rejects it in one tap. If approved, the rota updates automatically. No group chats, no manual edits.

Every day in the rota carries its own Hours and Cost row, updating as you build. Costs use each employee's hourly rate, and because roles carry an unpaid break that is deducted from paid hours, the figure you see is what you will actually pay — not gross hours. The same breakdown flows through to analytics, CSV export and print, so the rota, your reports and payroll all agree.

Run a rota per location and switch between sites from one dropdown — useful when staff work across more than one venue. Each employee gets a default job role and can belong to several locations at once, so they only appear where they actually work. Roles define the unpaid break that comes off paid hours, keeping costs consistent everywhere they are shown.

Toggle between a week view for building and adjusting shifts in detail, and a month view for seeing cover across the whole period at a glance. Spot thin weeks, clustered leave and patterns that only show up over a longer window — then drop back into the week to fix them.

Two triggers: threshold overtime kicks in once an employee exceeds a set number of hours per day or week. Time-of-day overtime pays a premium for hours worked in a specific window (e.g. after 6pm or before 6am), regardless of total hours. Two pay methods: a rate multiplier (e.g. 1.5×) or a fixed hourly rate for overtime hours. Stack multiple rules, build tiers, and configure each employee independently.

Entirely optional — only enable it if you need it. When on, employees split their hours across projects when submitting (e.g. 3h on Client A, 4h on internal work). You can add a billing rate per project (charged per hour) or a flat fee per entry (useful for callouts or site visits). Managers get a clear breakdown of where time is actually going.

An optional alternative to paying overtime — enable it only if you want to offer time off in lieu instead of (or alongside) extra pay. Set a TOIL conversion rate (e.g. 1h overtime = 1.5h leave) and overtime hours automatically accrue as a TOIL balance — no manual tracking. TOIL is kept separate from annual leave so it never eats into holiday entitlement. Employees book it the same way they book any other leave.

Managers approve or reject timesheets from any device — phone, tablet, or desktop. Rejections include a written reason so employees know exactly what needs fixing and can resubmit. Automated deadline reminders chase employees before cut-off so managers never have to. Pay totals are calculated automatically from approved hours — no manual maths at payroll time.

Two submission modes — employees use whichever fits their workflow. Clock-in mode starts a live timer the moment they begin their shift. The timer runs in the background even if the app is closed, so no hours are lost. Form mode lets them enter start time, end time, and breaks at the end of the day or week. Both work on mobile and desktop.

Set each employee's own hourly rate and pay totals are calculated automatically from their approved hours. Scope managers to their department so they only ever see their own team's data. Want to keep salaries private? Hide pay rates and totals from managers entirely — they see hours, but never figures. Full control over who sees what.

Send approved timesheets to payroll in a few taps. Export to CSV, Xero, or QuickBooks — filter by date range, employee, or department, and choose exactly which columns to include. You can combine timesheet and leave data in a single export so your payroll software gets everything it needs in one file.

Set a weekly deadline and employees earn a point every time they submit on time. Reach a points threshold you configure and they automatically earn extra leave days as a reward. A team leaderboard makes it visible — friendly competition does the chasing for you. On-time submissions become the norm without you having to ask.

Employees see their current balance and their projected future balance — accounting for leave already booked but not yet taken. Optionally let staff see who else in their department has booked time off, so they can plan around colleagues. Managers can manually adjust any employee's balance at any time — ideal when setting up mid-year from a previous system.

Pick the accrual method that fits each employee: upfront (full entitlement from day one), monthly accrual (earned gradually each month), daily accrual (builds day by day), or zero-hours (earned per hour worked at a rate you set). All calculations are handled automatically — no spreadsheets needed.

TimeTally includes annual leave, sick leave, maternity, paternity, and compassionate leave as standard. Need something else? Create unlimited custom leave types with any name. For each type you control: whether it's paid or unpaid, whether it deducts from the annual leave balance or has its own separate pot, and which employees it applies to.

Decide exactly what happens at year end: toggle carryover on or off, set a maximum number of days that can carry, and optionally add an expiry date so carried-over days must be used within e.g. 3 months. You can also allow employees to book leave before they've earned it (negative balance), with an optional cap to limit exposure.

Set each employee's contracted hours per day of the week (or use a company default). TimeTally uses this to deduct the right amount of leave — a half-day Tuesday only costs half a Tuesday's hours — and to pay the correct amount for each day taken. Pro-rata entitlements for new starters and leavers are calculated automatically from their start date.

Employees can request leave in hours, half days, or full days from the app or website — no training required. Managers can book leave on behalf of any employee. National holidays auto-block for the country of your choice. Set a custom leave year start date (e.g. 7th April) and balances reset automatically. Easy to set up even when migrating from another system mid-year.

Managers can approve or reject any leave request in one tap. Rejections include an optional reason so employees know why. Employees can then resubmit an updated request without starting from scratch. Managers can also request changes before making a decision, and any booked leave can be deleted if plans change — all with a full audit trail.

Leave sits in the main team calendar alongside timesheets and rota shifts — one view of the whole business. If you use time tracking, overtime converts to TOIL automatically at a rate you define. Leave analytics give managers a clear picture of absence patterns, entitlement usage, and remaining balances across the whole team.