TimeTally - Timesheet Management AppTimeTally
Holiday and absence tracking for UK care providers

Leave Management for Care Homes

Manage annual leave, sickness absence, and staffing coverage for care workers, nurses, and support staff. A care home cannot drop below safe staffing, so every approval is a cover decision — check who is already off, then hand the uncovered shifts to someone who is genuinely free. Replace paper forms with a simple system that keeps your leave management organised and your residents safe. Timesheets are included in the same £3 per employee per month, alongside your care home time tracking.

Try Free for 14 Days Book a Demo
A care assistant selecting three days off and a leave type on their phone

“The app is simple to use, reliable, and makes managing holidays, absences, and staff records straightforward. The system has saved us a significant amount of administration time.”

CLI ManchesterJordan Ingoe, CLI Manchester

Care staff pick their dates and you approve in one tap

Care assistants, seniors and nurses select the days they want off from an interactive calendar. Their remaining holiday balance updates as they choose, and the request lands on the manager's dashboard for approval or rejection. No more forms left in the office for a manager who is on the floor.

Booking time off in TimeTally: three months of dates, the leave type grid, the selected days listed back, and a submit button

  • Three months on one screen

    A carer can see the school holidays and the fortnight after them without scrolling

  • Tap the days you want

    Selected dates are counted as you go and listed back before anything is sent

  • Pick the leave type

    Annual, sick, maternity, paternity, TOIL, or a type your home added itself

  • Add a reason, then submit

    The request reaches the manager with the dates, the day count and the type on it

See daily staffing at a glance

The team calendar gives care home managers a single view of all leave. See annual leave, sick leave, and training days side by side so you can ensure safe staffing levels every day. Each date carries a count of how many people are booked off, across every unit and floor in the home.

  • Home-wide visibility

    See who is off across your entire care home to maintain safe staffing levels at all times

  • All absence types together

    Annual leave, sick leave, training days, and custom types all visible on one calendar

  • Protect staffing levels

    Check the calendar before approving leave to make sure you have enough carers on every shift

  • Check from anywhere

    View the team calendar and approve requests on the go via the iOS app — no need to be at a desk
Three month team calendar showing how many care home staff are booked off on each day

Know who is available for every shift

In a care home, knowing who is available is not a nice-to-have — it is essential for resident safety. TimeTally's “Who's Off” widget gives you an instant snapshot of staff availability so you can plan rotas and arrange cover before gaps become a problem.

Whether you manage a residential care home, a nursing home, or a supported living facility, having a clear view of who is off and when makes all the difference to the quality of care you provide.

  • Approving a request lists the shifts that carer was rostered on across those days, so the gap is named at the moment it is created.
  • For each shift you are offered only colleagues who are actually free: nobody who already has a shift that day, and nobody with leave of their own, pending requests included.
  • People already on that schedule come first, so a night team shift is not handed to someone who has never worked the unit. Everyone else free is one click behind them.
  • Choosing someone publishes that week, so the new name is live for staff instead of sitting in an unpublished draft.

Tip: Use TimeTally alongside your rota system. Check the staff holiday tracker before building next week's rota to avoid scheduling staff who are on leave.

Rota planner Get Started
Who's off this week widget showing care home staff availability

How TimeTally works for care homes

Everything you need to manage leave across your care home, from request to approval to payroll export. Pending requests sit in one list on the manager's dashboard. Each row shows who asked, the dates, how many days it comes to, and which leave type it is — annual leave, sick leave, or a type you added yourself. A tick approves it and a cross declines it.

  • One-tap approvals

    Staff submit leave requests online. Managers get notified and approve or reject with one tap — no more paper forms or chasing signatures. A rejection can carry a written reason, and the carer can resubmit for another week without starting again.

  • Pro-rata entitlements

    Automatically calculate correct annual leave entitlements for part-time carers, variable hours workers, and mid-year starters, pro-rated from the allowance you set for the home.

  • Sickness absence records

    Track every sick day with a complete history per employee. Export records for SSP calculations, return-to-work meetings, or HR reviews.
A care home manager approving a three-day annual leave request, showing the dates, the leave pay and Approve and Reject buttons

Approve from the floor, not the office

A registered manager spends the shift on the units, not at a desk. On the phone, the pending time-off requests and the list of who is already off this week sit on the same screen, so the approval and the cover check are one glance rather than two systems. Domiciliary co-ordinators get the same view between calls.

  • Approve or decline on the rowEach request shows the carer, the day count and the leave type, with a tick and a cross beside it
  • Off this week, on the same screenThe widget lists who is away and on which days, so you decide with the cover picture in front of you
  • Leave and hours in one appTime-off and timesheet approvals queue side by side, which matters when bank staff accrue leave from approved hours
A member of staff picking days off and a leave type on their phone
Custom Leave Types

Leave types built for care homes

Care homes need more than just “annual leave” and “sick leave”. With TimeTally, you can create unlimited custom leave types to match your care home's policies — training days, compassionate leave, TOIL, or anything else you need. Each type gets its own colour on the team calendar. TimeTally starts with six types — annual, sick, maternity, paternity, national holiday and TOIL — and you add your own on top, each with a name, a description, a colour and an icon.

  • Colour-coded by absence typeInstantly see whether someone is on annual leave, off sick, or on a training day from the calendar view
  • Set allowances per leave typeGive staff training day allowances, compassionate leave, or whatever your care home policy requires. Each type is set as paid or unpaid, and either deducts from the annual leave balance or sits in its own pot
  • Export for payroll and reportingExport leave data via CSV, or sync with Xero or QuickBooks to process holiday pay correctly
The leave types list, each type with its own colour and set as paid or unpaid

Every leave scenario a care home has to handle

Tap a card to read the detail.

Start your free trial

14-day free trial · No credit card needed

Watch a Leave Request Go From Phone to Approved

A short loop of the leave screens. A member of staff taps their days, picks a leave type and submits. The request then appears against their row on the manager's month grid, alongside everyone else's booked days, is opened for the detail, and is approved.

Back

Book Time Off

Jul 2026

MTWTFSS12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031

Aug 2026

MTWTFSS12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031

Sep 2026

MTWTFSS123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930

3 days selected· excl. weekends

Family holiday, flights booked ✈️

Submit Request Submitted

Leave Allowance

18

days left

Annual Leave Balance

18 days

Annual Leave Used

7 days

All Departments
Jun 2026
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
M
T
AR1

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

JK2

James Kelly

Front of house

MP3

Maya Patel

Front of house

PS4

Priya Shah

Kitchen

TW5

Tom Wilson

Bar

Timesheet Requests

1
TW

Tom Wilson

37h 30m · Week of Jun 1

Time-off Requests

2
MP

Maya Patel

3d · Annual Leave

PS

Priya Shah

5d · Annual Leave

MP

Maya Patel

Front of house

Pending Approved
Annual Leave
3days

From

Thu, Aug 14

2026

To

Mon, Aug 18

2026

Notes

Family holiday, flights booked

Approve Approved
Reject

Common leave management problems in care homes

If any of these sound familiar, it is time to replace paper forms and spreadsheets with a proper staff holiday tracker. If you run a hospital, a clinic or another healthcare provider rather than a care home, the healthcare leave management page is the better fit.

Safe staffing

Maintaining minimum staffing levels

CQC compliance requires adequate staffing at all times. Without a clear view of who is already off, managers risk approving leave that drops staffing below safe levels.

  • The team time off overview counts how many people are booked off on every date, so the number is on screen before the decision is made
  • Approving a request offers you the shifts that person was rostered on, and only colleagues who have no shift and no leave of their own that day
Shift patterns

Managing shift workers' leave

Care workers on rotating shifts, day shifts, and night shifts all need leave managed fairly. Paper systems make it almost impossible to balance requests across different shift patterns.

  • Contracted hours are set for each day of the week per person, so a three-long-day carer is not priced like a five-short-day administrator
  • If you run the rota in TimeTally, a day off can cost the paid hours of that day's rostered shift instead of a flat day
Sickness

High sickness absence goes untracked

The care sector has some of the highest sickness absence rates in the UK. Without proper tracking, patterns go unnoticed and return-to-work conversations lack data.

  • Sick leave is one of the six leave types TimeTally seeds, so an absence phoned in at 6am is recorded rather than remembered
  • Every request, approval, rejection and deletion is timestamped, which is the record a return-to-work meeting rests on
Nights

Balancing leave across day and night shifts

Approving too many day shift carers off at once is obvious, but night shift coverage is often overlooked until it is too late to find cover.

  • Waking nights and sleep-ins sit on the same team calendar as the day team, so night cover is visible at the moment of approval
  • A shift that crosses midnight is measured across the boundary, so a night is not counted as two part-days
Bank staff

Part-time and variable hours workers

Many care homes rely on part-time staff and those with variable hours. Calculating correct holiday entitlements for these workers manually is time-consuming and error-prone.

  • The accrual method is set per person, so a bank care assistant on hours worked sits on the same staff list as a salaried deputy manager on upfront
  • The hours worked rate defaults to 12.07% and each approved timesheet adds leave to that person's balance
Visibility

No home-wide absence view

Managers cannot see leave across the whole care home at a glance. Decisions are made in isolation, leading to clashes and dangerous staffing gaps.

  • One overview covers every unit and floor in the home, with annual leave, sickness and custom types colour-coded together
  • Care staff can optionally be shown who else in their department has booked time off, which stops four carers asking for the same week
Get Started

The Two Leave Settings a Registered Manager Actually Changes

Most of TimeTally works out of the box. These two are worth ten minutes on the day you set it up, because they are the two that care homes get wrong.

What a day off costs

Deduct a long day as a long day, not as one flat day.

By default a day of leave costs one day of allowance whatever hours are worked that day. In a home running twelve-hour days beside seven-and-a-half-hour office shifts, that is the setting most likely to cause an argument.

Change it and a day off costs the hours that person actually works that day, measured against your standard day. A short day uses less of their allowance than a long one, and days they do not work cost nothing. This needs no rota, so every organisation can use it.

If you build the rota in TimeTally there is a third option: a day off costs the paid hours of the shift rostered for that date, less any unpaid break. That is the only one that copes with a four-week rolling pattern a flat seven-day working pattern cannot express. A shift running across midnight is measured across the boundary, so a waking night is one night.

All three apply to new bookings only. Leave already booked keeps the amount it was booked at, so switching mid-year does not rewrite anyone's history.

Bank and casual staff

Accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours each bank carer works.

Set a person's accrual method to hours worked and TimeTally stops giving them a fixed number of days. Leave is added every time one of their timesheets is approved, at a percentage of the hours on it. If a timesheet is rejected, the accrual it created is reversed.

The rate is 12.07% by default. That is the figure for irregular-hours workers under the rules that apply to leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, and it comes from 5.6 weeks divided by the 46.4 working weeks in a year. You can change it, per organisation or for one person.

The accrual method is set per employee, not per home. A salaried deputy manager can take the full allowance upfront on the same staff list as a bank care assistant accruing hour by hour. Two constraints are worth knowing: the option is only offered when timesheets are switched on, and choosing it turns TOIL off for that person.

One limit worth stating plainly. TimeTally accrues the entitlement; it does not calculate holiday pay from a 52-week average of earnings. That average is a payroll calculation and stays with your payroll. Check a figure with the zero-hours holiday calculator.

Correct entitlement for every contract in the home

A salaried nurse on a fixed contract, a care assistant on three days a week, and a bank carer with no guaranteed hours all have different entitlements. Each person's record carries their own accrual method, their start date with a pro-rata switch beside it, their yearly entitlement and the rate it builds at, their current balance and any TOIL hours left. Nothing has to be worked out in a spreadsheet first.

Use our pro-rata holiday calculator to check entitlement for a part-time carer, or the zero-hours holiday calculator for bank staff on irregular hours. TimeTally applies both once each person's working pattern and accrual method are set.

UK law reminder:bank and casual care staff are entitled to paid holiday. For leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours workers accrue it at 12.07% of the hours they work. TimeTally applies that rate for you: set the accrual method to hours worked, keep 12.07% or set your own figure, and each approved timesheet adds leave to that person's balance. TimeTally does not work out a 52-week average of pay — holiday pay rates stay with your payroll.

An employee's leave allowance card showing the days left, the annual leave balance and the days already used
UK compliance

Holiday and Absence Records for a UK Care Provider

TimeTally is a leave tracking tool, not a compliance system. It keeps the record that every one of these obligations rests on. Here is what the data supports in residential and domiciliary care, and what it does not do.

Statutory Entitlement

Every worker in a UK care home gets 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, which is 28 days for someone on a five-day week. You set the full-time allowance for your home; TimeTally starts at 25 days plus 8 bank holidays, and an admin can change either figure. TimeTally then works out each person's share of it from their working pattern and their start date. It does not decide the statutory figure for you.

Irregular Hours and 12.07%

For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period. That is the rate TimeTally applies when a person's accrual method is set to hours worked, and it is editable. Bank staff are how most homes cover sickness and leave, so this is usually the first setting a manager changes. The zero-hours holiday calculator checks a figure by hand.

Safe Staffing Evidence

CQC inspectors ask how you knew the home was staffed, not whether software told you. TimeTally holds the approved-leave record behind that answer: who was off on any given date, who approved it and when, and which rostered shifts were reassigned to cover it. It does not calculate a dependency score or a staffing ratio, and it will not stop you approving leave that leaves a unit short.

Sickness and Return to Work

Sick leave is one of the six leave types TimeTally seeds, so an absence phoned in before an early shift is recorded rather than remembered. Absence patterns are visible across every unit. TimeTally does not calculate or pay Statutory Sick Pay and does not score absence — use the statutory sick pay calculator and the Bradford Factor calculator for those, and the sick leave tracker for how absence recording works.

Bank Holidays

There is no right to a paid day off on a bank holiday in the UK, which is why a care home runs on Christmas Day like any other. TimeTally uses the correct bank holiday set for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, blocks them out automatically unless you turn that off, and lets you decide whether they sit inside the annual allowance or on top of it. Whether bank holidays are included is set once for the organisation, not per person. Days worked in lieu go on a custom leave type of your own.

What TimeTally Does Not Do

It does not calculate holiday pay from a 52-week average of earnings — that is a payroll job. It does not chase anyone automatically: there is no scheduled reminder, only a manual nudge you send to one person. And there are two access levels, admin and employee, with no per-unit or per-floor level in between, so anyone you make an admin sees leave across the whole home.

Simple, Transparent Pricing

One price. Every feature. No surprises.

£3/employee/month

Billed monthly, incl. VAT. Cancel anytime.

Sick leave tracking
Team calendar view
Unlimited leave types
Timesheet tracking included
Get Started

No credit card required

Book a Demo

In short

What is leave management software for a care home?

Leave management software for a care home records who has booked time off, how much holiday each person has left, and who is already off before a manager approves the next request. TimeTally does this for UK residential, nursing and domiciliary care providers from £3 per employee per month. Care staff book from the iOS app or any browser, in hours, half days or full days. Managers approve or reject in one tap, and approving a request offers them the shifts it just left uncovered along with the colleagues who are genuinely free to take each one. Salaried staff take their allowance upfront, and bank staff accrue at 12.07% of the hours they work as their timesheets are approved. A day off can be deducted as a flat day, as the hours in that person's working day, or as the paid hours of the shift they were rostered on. Timesheet tracking is included in the same price.

Price
£3 per employee a month
Booking
iOS app or any browser
Bank staff
12.07% of hours worked
Units
Hours, half days, full days
Cover
Offered at the moment of approval

Frequently Asked Questions

How does TimeTally help us maintain minimum staffing levels when approving leave?

TimeTally's team calendar shows all approved leave across your care home in one view. Before approving any new request, managers can see exactly who is already off on those dates. This makes it straightforward to check whether approving the request would leave you short-staffed, helping you maintain the staffing levels your residents need. TimeTally does not set or police a staffing ratio for you — it puts the numbers the decision needs in front of the person making it.

How do I assign shifts based on time-off and leave data?

Approve the leave, and TimeTally immediately shows you the shifts that person was rostered on across the approved days. For each one it offers the colleagues who are genuinely free that day — nobody who already has a shift, and nobody with leave of their own, pending requests included. People already on that schedule are offered first, and everyone else free is one click behind them. Choosing someone writes the change onto the shift itself, exactly as dragging it across the rota grid would, and publishes that week so the new name is live for staff rather than sitting in a draft. Days already in the past are left out, because a shift that has been worked cannot be handed to anyone.

Can TimeTally help us track sickness absence patterns?

Yes. Sick leave is one of the leave types TimeTally seeds, and every sickness absence is recorded against the employee's profile, giving you a complete history. You can add your own types alongside it if you separate, say, certified from self-certified absence. You can export this data via CSV for analysis or payroll processing. Having accurate records makes it easier to spot patterns and have informed return-to-work conversations. TimeTally does not calculate or pay Statutory Sick Pay — use the statutory sick pay calculator for that.

How do we manage leave for night shift workers?

TimeTally lets you set up different working patterns for each employee, including the hours in each of their working days. Waking night staff and sleep-in cover submit leave requests exactly as day shift staff do, and their absence appears on the same team calendar, so night cover is visible at the moment a manager approves anything. A shift that runs across midnight is measured across the boundary rather than being split into two part-days. If you run your rota in TimeTally you can also price a day off by the hours actually rostered, so a night is deducted at its own length.

How does TimeTally calculate entitlements for part-time carers?

You set the full-time allowance for your home — TimeTally starts at 25 days plus 8 bank holidays, and an admin can change either figure — and TimeTally works out each person's share of it from their working pattern. A care assistant working three days a week gets the right proportion for a three-day week, and mid-year starters and leavers are pro-rated from their start date. Bank holidays can sit inside that allowance or on top of it, which is an organisation-level choice rather than a per-person one. For bank and casual staff on irregular hours, set the accrual method to hours worked instead and leave builds at 12.07% of the hours on each approved timesheet.

How do we track time off for home care workers visiting clients?

Domiciliary care workers use the same leave screens as residential staff. They book from the iOS app between calls, the request reaches the co-ordinator with the dates and the leave type on it, and it appears on the same team overview as everyone else's. Because the accrual method is set per person, a domiciliary carer on irregular hours can accrue at 12.07% of hours worked while an office-based scheduler on a fixed contract takes their full allowance upfront, on one staff list.

Can care staff submit leave requests from their phone?

Yes. TimeTally has an iOS app that lets employees submit leave requests from anywhere. Managers receive a notification and can approve or reject with one tap. This is particularly useful for care workers who are on the floor with residents all day and rarely sit at a computer.

Is there a care home staffing calculator in TimeTally?

TimeTally is not a dependency or staffing-ratio tool, and it does not tell you how many carers a unit needs. What it does is hold the leave and cover data those decisions rest on: who is off, who is left, and which rostered shifts an approved request has just emptied. Alongside it we publish free calculators you can use for the arithmetic — the shift pattern calculator for building a rotating pattern, the rota cost calculator for what a week of cover costs, and the working hours calculator for hours across a period.

Is TimeTally cost-effective for care homes?

TimeTally costs £3 per employee per month with no setup fees or hidden costs. Managers who only approve, without submitting timesheets of their own, are free and do not count towards your bill — so your registered manager can use the system without adding to the cost. For a care home with 25 staff who do submit, that is £75 per month. There is a free 14-day trial with no credit card required.

Still have a question? See all FAQs

Related Resources

Calculators and guides for care home and domiciliary care managers

Sick Leave Tracker

Record an absence phoned in before an early shift and see the pattern behind itLearn more

Absence Management Software

Absence patterns and reporting across every unit and floor in the homeLearn more

Healthcare Leave Management

The sibling page for hospitals, clinics and other healthcare providersLearn more

Pro-Rata Holiday Calculator

Entitlement for part-time carers and mid-year starters and leaversOpen calculator

Zero-Hours Holiday Calculator

Work out accrued holiday for bank and casual care staff on irregular hoursOpen calculator

Shift Pattern Calculator

Build a rotating pattern of long days and waking nights before you plan coverOpen calculator

Also Explore

Leave Management SoftwareStaff Holiday TrackerAnnual Leave TrackerFree Leave TrackerSick Leave TrackerCompassionate Leave TrackerUnpaid Leave TrackerCare Home Timesheets

Explore TimeTally

Leave Tracking SoftwareLeave Request SoftwareHealthcare Leave ManagementCare Home Time TrackingRota PlannerAll Industries

Better leave management for your care home.

Try TimeTally free for 14 days. Manage annual leave, track sickness absence, and keep your staffing levels safe — all in one simple tool.

Book a Demo Get Started

No credit card required · Free 14-day trial · Cancel anytime