TimeTally - Timesheet Management AppTimeTally
Holiday tracking for UK contractors

Leave Management for Construction Teams

Track annual leave and sickness absence for site-based workers across multiple projects. Book the annual shutdown for a whole crew in one go, keep lieu days from long shifts out of the annual figure, and check the calendar before you approve project leave. Replace paper records and text messages with a leave management system that works from any phone, on any site. Timesheets are included in the same £3 per employee per month, alongside your construction timesheets.

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Site worker selecting 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

Book time off from a three-month calendar

Labourers, tradesmen and site managers tap the days they want off and pick a leave type. The day count updates as they go, and the request lands on the manager's dashboard for approval. Their remaining holiday balance is on the same screen, so nobody has to ask the office how many days they have left.

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

  • Three months on one screen

    An operative can see the run-up to the shutdown and the week after it without scrolling

  • Tap the days you want

    Selected dates are counted as you go and weekends are excluded

  • Pick the leave type

    Annual, sick, maternity, paternity, TOIL, or a type you added yourself

  • Add a reason, then submit

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

Clear the pending requests from the site cabin

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, TOIL, or a type you added yourself. A tick approves it and a cross declines it, so a site manager can clear the queue on a phone before the morning briefing.

  • Open a request to see the full detail before deciding: the person, their job title, the leave type, the day count and any reason they added.
  • A rejection can carry a written reason. A groundworker who asked for the week of a concrete pour knows why, and can resubmit for a different week without starting again.
  • Every request, approval, rejection and deletion is logged with a timestamp and the person who made it.
  • Managers can book leave on behalf of anyone, for the operative who phones a request in from site.
Leave requests Get Started
A site manager approving a three-day annual leave request, showing the dates, the leave pay and Approve and Reject buttons

Built for site-based teams

Construction workers are not sat at desks. TimeTally's iOS app lets them submit holiday requests from their phone during a break, and site managers can approve or reject with one tap without leaving the site cabin.

  • Request leave from anywhereWorkers submit requests via the iOS app — no need to visit the office or fill in a paper form
  • Approve on the goSite managers approve or reject with one tap and an optional note — staff know where they stand immediately
  • Works across all your sitesOrganise workers by project or site and manage leave from a single system, wherever they are working
A member of staff picking days off and a leave type on their phone

Track every type of time off

Construction teams deal with more than just annual leave. Create unlimited custom leave types in TimeTally — annual leave, sick leave, time off in lieu, unpaid leave, or anything else. Each type gets its own name, colour and icon on the calendar.

Track sickness absence with a complete history per worker, and use our TOIL tracker guidance to manage time off in lieu from long shifts on site.

  • Create a “Lieu Days” leave type to track time owed from overtime. Workers request time off against it, keeping everything transparent and fair.
  • Each type is set as paid or unpaid, which covers unpaid leave for a worker taking a fortnight between contracts.
  • Each type either comes off the annual leave balance or sits in its own pot, so lieu days do not eat into holiday.
  • If you track hours, overtime converts to TOIL at a rate you set — a long week in the summer becomes a day off in the winter.
The leave types list, each type with its own colour and set as paid or unpaid

Know who is available on every site

The “Who's Off” widget gives you an instant view of which workers are absent this week. Plan your labour allocation across sites, arrange cover for missing tradespeople, and avoid project delays caused by unexpected absences.

Combined with the annual leave tracker, you get a complete picture of your workforce availability — today, this week, and months ahead.

  • Each row names the person and the days they are off, so a part-week absence is not read as a full week.
  • The count on the panel is the headcount off this week, which is the number you need before you commit to a programme date.
Off this week widget showing two construction staff absent, one on Tuesday and one Monday to Friday

See who is off across every site

The team calendar shows all approved leave across your entire business. Check who is off before approving new requests, and make sure you have the right tradespeople on site for every project.

  • Multi-site visibility

    Every project is in one calendar, and grouping workers by department or site is how you export one crew's records on their own

  • All absence types together

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

  • Avoid trade clashes

    Check the calendar before approving leave to make sure key tradespeople are not all off at the same time

  • Keep projects on track

    Plan around leave to avoid delays. See upcoming absences weeks in advance and arrange cover early
Three month team calendar showing how many construction workers are booked off on each day

Every leave scenario a construction company has to handle

Tap a card to read the detail.

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Watch a Leave Request Go From Site to Approved

A short loop of the leave screens. A worker taps three days, picks Annual Leave and submits. The request then appears in the manager's time-off queue, is opened for the detail, and is approved.

Back

Book Time Off

Jul 2026

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Aug 2026

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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
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AR1

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

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Maya Patel

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Priya Shah

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Tom Wilson

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Timesheet Requests

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Tom Wilson

37h 30m · Week of Jun 1

Time-off Requests

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Maya Patel

3d · Annual Leave

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Priya Shah

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Pending Approved
Annual Leave
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Notes

Family holiday, flights booked

Approve Approved
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Common leave management problems in construction

If any of these sound familiar, it is time to move from paper records to a proper staff holiday tracker. These are the six that come up most often in leave management for a construction company, and TimeTally has an answer to each.

Records

Paper records on site

Leave is tracked in notebooks, on clipboards, or not at all. When workers move between sites, records get lost and nobody knows who has taken what.

  • Balances are held per person per leave year, so a move from one site to another changes nothing
  • A manager can adjust any balance by hand, which is how you move a year of wall-planner records across mid-season
Sites

Workers across multiple sites

With teams spread across different projects, site managers have no visibility of who is off where. Coordinating leave across sites is a headache.

  • One team calendar covers the whole company rather than one site at a time
  • TimeTally has two access levels, admin and employee, so an admin sees every project rather than only their own
Lieu

Tracking time off in lieu

Workers put in long hours during busy periods and are owed time back. But without a system, lieu days are tracked informally and disputes arise.

  • TOIL is one of the six leave types TimeTally seeds, and you can add a Lieu Days type of your own
  • If you track hours, overtime converts to TOIL at a rate you set
Seasonal

Seasonal workforce challenges

Staff numbers fluctuate with project demand. Calculating correct entitlements for workers who start and leave mid-year is done on the back of an envelope.

  • Entitlement is pro-rated from each person's start date, so an operative who starts in September is not given a full year
  • A leaver's days taken and days remaining are on the record when you settle their final pay
Absence

No central absence record

Sick days are reported by phone call to a site manager and never formally logged. Building an accurate absence history is impossible.

  • Sick leave is a seeded type, so a call at 06:30 is recorded rather than remembered
  • Every request, approval, rejection and deletion is stamped with the time and the person who made it
Programme

Leave clashes delay projects

Key tradespeople take holiday at the same time because nobody checked the calendar. Project timelines slip and clients are left waiting.

  • The team calendar shows three months at a time with a headcount on each day
  • Check it before you approve project leave, so two of the same trade are not off in the same week
Get Started

Plan the annual site shutdown

Most sites close for a fortnight at Christmas and often again in the summer. Everyone has to book the same days, which is the one leave problem construction has that other industries do not. These two settings are what it turns on.

Shutdown booking

Book the shutdown for a whole crew in one go.

Open Book Leave, select every worker the shutdown applies to, select the dates and pick the leave type. TimeTally creates one booking per person from that single form. You do not wait for thirty individual requests and you do not approve them one at a time.

It checks each person before it books. Anyone who does not work the days selected is skipped. Any day someone already has leave on is skipped, so a booked holiday is never overwritten. Anyone without enough allowance left is named with the exact figure they have, before you confirm.

Leave booked this way goes in as approved, and the admin who booked it is recorded as the approver. The audit trail is the same as it would be for a request the worker submitted themselves.

Bank holidays are blocked out automatically for England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, so the two bank holidays inside a Christmas shutdown do not get booked twice.

Leave year and carryover

Run the leave year to the shutdown, then decide what carries.

The leave year runs January to December unless you change it. Set any reset date you like and the year starts the day after it, which suits a contractor whose year ends with the site closed rather than mid-programme.

Carryover is off by default. Turn it on and you can cap the number of days that carry, and set an expiry so carried days are used in the winter rather than in the middle of a summer pour.

Negative balances are off by default too. Turn them on, with a limit, for the operative who joins in November and has to take the Christmas shutdown before they have earned it.

How leave years, carryover and balances work

Correct holiday entitlement for every contract on site

A salaried site manager, a bricklayer on a four-day week and a zero-hours labourer all have different entitlements. You set the full-time allowance for the company — 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 and their start date.

Set a person's accrual method to hours worked and leave is added every time one of their timesheets is approved, at a percentage of the hours on it. The rate defaults to 12.07%, the figure for irregular-hours and part-year workers under the rules for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024. You can change it, for the whole company or for one person.

Use our zero-hours holiday calculator to check entitlements for irregular-hours labourers, or the pro-rata holiday calculator for part-time and mid-year staff. One limit worth stating plainly: TimeTally accrues the entitlement, but it does not calculate holiday pay from a 52-week average of earnings. That average is a payroll calculation and stays with your payroll.

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

How TimeTally works for construction

Everything you need to manage leave across your sites, from request to approval to payroll export.

Mobile-first for site workers

Workers request leave from their phone on site. No paper forms, no trips to the office. The iOS app works wherever they have a phone signal, and the same screens run in any browser for anyone who prefers a laptop in the site cabin.

Pro-rata entitlements

Automatically calculate correct annual leave entitlements for seasonal workers, mid-year starters, and part-time staff. You set the company allowance and TimeTally works out each person's share of it from their working pattern and start date.

Export for payroll

Export leave data via CSV, or sync with Xero or QuickBooks. No more re-keying holiday information into your payroll system at month end. Paid leave is included in the export alongside timesheet hours for the same period.

Paid leave in the construction industry

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 on a construction project, and what it does not do.

Statutory Entitlement

Every worker you employ 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 company; 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.

CIS Subcontractors

A self-employed subcontractor paid under the Construction Industry Scheme is usually not a worker for holiday-entitlement purposes and does not build up statutory leave. Your directly employed operatives do. Employment status is a decision for you and your accountant, not for the software. TimeTally accrues leave for the people you set up as employees, and it makes no judgement about anyone else.

Irregular Hours and 12.07%

For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year 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. The method is only offered when timesheets are switched on, because the accrual is written when a timesheet is approved and reversed if it is rejected. The zero-hours holiday calculator checks a figure by hand.

Bank Holidays and the Shutdown

There is no right to a paid day off on a bank holiday in the UK. 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. That last setting is set once for the whole organisation, not per employee. Days worked on a bank holiday go on a lieu type of your own.

Sickness Absence

Sick leave is one of the six leave types TimeTally seeds, so a call at 06:30 is recorded rather than remembered, and the pattern behind it is visible across every site. TimeTally does not calculate or pay Statutory Sick Pay — use the statutory sick pay calculator for that, the sick leave tracker for how absence recording works, and the Bradford Factor calculator to score short repeated absences.

Records You Can Produce

Every request, approval, rejection and deletion is stored with a timestamp and the person who made it. Balances, entitlement and days taken are held per employee per leave year. If a former operative disputes their final holiday pay, the record of what they booked and what they had left is in the system rather than in a site diary. Leave exports to CSV, Xero or QuickBooks alongside the hours for the same period.

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-site or per-department level in between, so anyone you make an admin sees leave across every project you run.

Simple, Transparent Pricing

One price. Every feature. No surprises.

£3/employee/month

Billed monthly, incl. VAT. Cancel anytime.

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

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In short

What is leave management for a construction company?

Leave management for a construction company records who has booked time off across every project, how much holiday each worker has left, and who is already off before a site manager approves the next request. TimeTally does this for UK contractors from £3 per employee per month. Workers book from the iOS app or any browser, in hours, half days or full days. Site managers approve or reject in one tap, with a written reason on anything sent back. An admin can book the annual shutdown for a whole crew from one form, and TimeTally names anyone who does not have the days for it before the booking is made. Lieu days from long shifts go on a leave type of your own, so they stay out of the annual figure. Salaried staff take their allowance upfront, and zero-hours labourers accrue at 12.07% of the hours they work as their timesheets are approved. Timesheet tracking is included in the same price.

Price
£3 per employee a month
Booking
iOS app or any browser
Shutdowns
Booked for a crew in one go
Zero hours
12.07% of hours worked
Includes
Timesheets at no extra cost

Frequently Asked Questions

Can construction workers submit leave requests from site?

Yes. TimeTally has an iOS app that lets workers submit leave requests from their phone, wherever they are. Site managers receive a notification and can approve or reject with one tap. There is no need for anyone to be at an office or a desktop computer.

How does TimeTally handle leave for workers across multiple sites?

All leave sits in one team calendar for the whole company, so a contracts manager can see who is off on every project in a single view. You can group workers by department or site, which is how you filter and export one crew's records at a time. Be aware of the access model before you plan around it: TimeTally has two roles, admin and employee, and there is no per-site access level in between. Anyone you make an admin can see and approve leave across every site, not only their own.

Can I track time off in lieu for long shifts on site?

Yes. TOIL is one of the six leave types TimeTally starts with, and you can create your own type called 'Lieu Days' or anything else you prefer. Each type gets a name, a colour and an icon, and you set whether it is paid or unpaid and whether it comes off the annual leave balance or sits in its own pot. Lieu days therefore do not eat into annual leave. If you track hours as well, overtime converts to TOIL automatically at a rate you define, so a long week in the summer becomes a day off later in the year.

Does TimeTally calculate pro-rata holiday for seasonal construction workers?

Yes. You set the full-time allowance for your company — 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 and their start date. An operative who joins in September gets the part of the year they actually work, not a full year. Use the pro-rata holiday calculator if you want to check a figure by hand.

Can I export leave data for payroll?

Yes. You can export all leave data via CSV, or sync directly with Xero or QuickBooks for payroll processing. This means no more re-keying holiday and absence information into your payroll system at month end.

How do I handle the annual site shutdown in TimeTally?

Book it for everyone at once instead of waiting for individual requests. Open Book Leave, select every worker the shutdown applies to, select the shutdown dates and pick the leave type. TimeTally checks each person before it books: anyone who does not work those days is skipped, any day someone already has leave on is skipped, and anyone without enough allowance left is named with the exact figure they have. Leave booked this way goes in as approved with the admin who booked it recorded as the approver. You can also set your leave year to reset around the shutdown, so the year ends with the site closed rather than mid-project.

Is paid leave in the construction industry different from other sectors?

The statutory position is the same — 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year for a worker on a fixed week — but two things make construction harder in practice. The first is the annual shutdown, where an entire site closes and every employed operative has to take the same days. The second is employment status: a self-employed subcontractor paid under CIS is usually not a worker for holiday-entitlement purposes and does not build up statutory leave, while your directly employed operatives do. Deciding status is your call, not the software's. TimeTally accrues leave for the people you set up as employees.

Is TimeTally suitable for small construction firms?

Absolutely. TimeTally costs just £3 per employee per month with no setup fees. For a team of 15 workers, that is £45 per month — and it includes both leave management and timesheet tracking. There is a free 14-day trial with no credit card required.

Is this leave management for a construction company or for individual sites?

Both, from one account. TimeTally is leave management for construction company teams of any size: operatives book from the site cabin, a site manager approves, and every request sits against one staff list. Group people by site or trade to filter and export a single crew. Construction attendance and hours are tracked in the same £3 per employee per month if you want the timesheet side too.

Still have a question? See all FAQs

Related Resources

Trackers and calculators for construction leave

Staff Holiday Tracker

Balances, bookings and remaining days for every worker on the booksLearn more

TOIL Tracker

Time owed from long shifts, tracked separately from annual leaveLearn more

Sick Leave Tracker

Record a call from site at 06:30 and see the pattern behind itLearn more

Pro-Rata Holiday Calculator

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

Zero-Hours Holiday Calculator

Work out accrued holiday for irregular-hours labourers at 12.07%Open calculator

Construction Timesheets

The hours side of the same £3, and where hours-worked accrual comes fromLearn more

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