Buyer's guide · 2026 edition
Everything you need to evaluate a leave tracker, make the case to your boss, finance and IT, and switch without losing a single balance. Seven steps, a scorecard and a checklist you can print.
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Work through them in order with whoever signs off on the purchase. Each step lists the questions to ask every vendor, then how Bueggio HR answers them, so you can hold us to the same standard.
Step 1
Before comparing tools, write down what the current system costs you. Count the hours spent answering "how many days do I have left?", fixing formula errors and chasing approvals in chat, and list the incidents of the last year: two people off on the same critical week, a balance dispute, a sick day nobody recorded.
Bueggio HR replaces the spreadsheet, the email thread and the shared calendar with one flow: request, approve, wall chart. Balances are calculated, never typed, and every request keeps an audit timeline of who did what and when.
Step 2
Most teams overbuy. Separate the features you will use every week from the ones that only look good in a demo. For leave tracking, the must-haves are short and very concrete.
All of the above is in the single plan: custom leave types with emojis and colors, pro-rata, carry-over with expiry, half days, personal working weeks, required attachments, department absence caps and date locks. What it deliberately does not do: payroll, timesheets, shift planning or performance reviews.
Step 3
Leave law is national, sometimes regional, and often set by collective agreements. A tool that only knows "25 days a year" will push the hard cases back to a spreadsheet. Check the rules for every country you employ people in.
Public holidays for 45+ countries are built in, with regional calendars and company closure days, and each person can have their own holiday country. Italy, France and Spain get the deepest rules: ROL and ex-festività hour balances, jours ouvrables or ouvrés with RTT and fractionnement, convenio extras and libre disposición days.
Step 4
The best leave tool is the one nobody has to open. Requests and approvals should happen where your team already works, and absences should land in the calendars people actually look at.
Slack (book, approve, daily who's-off summaries, automatic out-of-office status), Microsoft Teams cards with one-click approvals, Google Calendar and Outlook sync, iCal feeds, Google and Microsoft sign-in, a monthly payroll export (CSV or PDF), a REST API with webhooks and an MCP server for AI assistants like Claude.
Step 5
Leave records are personal data, and sick leave can reveal health information. Your IT lead or DPO will ask where the data lives, who can see it and how you get it out. Ask those questions before the trial, not after the contract.
Hosted in Frankfurt, EU, with encryption in transit and at rest. A DPA with every customer and a public subprocessor list. Two-factor authentication you can enforce company-wide, a sign-in log, wall-chart visibility rules, and built-in GDPR tools: full JSON export and one-click anonymizing erasure. Medical certificates are treated as special-category data.
Step 6
Headline prices hide the real bill. Ask for the total for your headcount, including the minimum number of seats, the modules you need, setup or onboarding fees and the price rise after the first year. Then add the admin time you will save or keep spending.
One plan with everything included: €1.30 per user per month, or €1.105 with yearly billing. No minimum seats, no setup fees, no paid add-ons, and only active users are billed. A 10-person team pays €13 a month. You can cancel by email at least 14 days before the renewal date, with no exit fees.
Step 7
Demos show the happy path. A trial with your own people, your own leave year and one tricky case (a part-timer, someone in another country, a balance carried over) tells you more in a week than any sales call.
A free one-month trial with every feature and no credit card. Invite people by email or CSV, set opening balances with allowance adjustments, or use the built-in Timetastic migration wizard. Most teams are booking the same day. Human support in English, Italian, French and Spanish.
The objections you will hear in the meeting, and what to reply. Use them to test any vendor, us included.
It works until the person who maintains it is on holiday. Spreadsheets don't calculate pro-rata or carry-over, don't warn about overlaps and don't notify anyone. Bueggio HR keeps the simplicity of a sheet (one wall chart) and removes the manual work behind it.
Suites often sell leave as a paid module, with minimum seats and a long setup. If your team avoids it and keeps asking on chat, it isn't doing the job. A dedicated tool your people actually use beats a module nobody opens.
At €1.30 per user per month, a 20-person team pays €26 a month. One hour of admin saved a month already covers it, and the first month is free.
It takes minutes: a company name and a country, and the leave types and public holidays are pre-filled. Invite the team by email or CSV and people can book the same day.
They don't have to. They can book from the web, from Slack or from the mobile app installed from the browser, and managers approve from email, Slack or Teams without logging in.
Opening balances are set per person with a reason, and the Timetastic wizard imports people, history and balances, then reconciles them so the remaining days match.
Each person follows their own country's public holidays (45+ countries) and their own language, all in one account, with the deepest rules for Italy, France and Spain.
Send them the security step of this guide: EU hosting in Frankfurt, DPA, public subprocessors, enforceable 2FA, sign-in log, data export and erasure. No trackers on the site, no ads, no data resale.
No lock-in: export everything as JSON at any time, cancel by email at least 14 days before renewal, no exit fees. After closure your data is erased within 30 days.
The three options most teams weigh, on the points that matter day to day.
| Spreadsheet, HR suite module or a dedicated tool? | Spreadsheet | HR suite leave module | Bueggio HR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book from a phone, Slack or the web | Doesn't: Email or chat, then someone copies it | Partly: Usually through the suite's own app | Does it well: Web, mobile app, Slack, AI assistants |
| Balances calculated automatically | Doesn't: Manual formulas | Does it well: Yes | Does it well: Pro-rata, carry-over, half days |
| One-click approval without logging in | Doesn't: No | Partly: Rarely | Does it well: Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams |
| Shared wall chart with conflicts shown before approving | Partly: If someone keeps it up to date | Partly: Often a report, not a view | Does it well: Yes, by department |
| Country rules and public holidays | Doesn't: Typed by hand every year | Partly: Depends on vendor and country | Does it well: 45+ countries, deep IT/FR/ES rules |
| EU hosting and GDPR tooling | Partly: Depends where the file lives | Partly: Varies by vendor | Does it well: Frankfurt, DPA, export, erasure |
| Price | Partly: Free, paid in admin hours | Partly: Bundles, modules, minimum seats | Does it well: €1.30 per user per month, all in |
| Time to go live | Partly: Never finished | Doesn't: Weeks | Does it well: Same day |
Leave software is a small purchase with many opinions. Here is what each person cares about, and the one-line answer to give them.
What they ask
“Will it save time without becoming another thing to manage?”
What to tell them
It runs itself once set up: approvals in one click, balances calculated, and one wall chart to see who's off before you plan anything.
What they ask
“Will it end the questions, the corrections and the spreadsheet?”
What to tell them
People see their own balance, requests reach the right approver automatically, and the payroll export is ready at the end of the month.
What they ask
“What does it really cost, and what is the commitment?”
What to tell them
€1.30 per active user per month, no minimum, no setup fees, monthly or yearly, cancellable by email with 14 days' notice.
What they ask
“Where does the data go, and is it secure?”
What to tell them
EU hosting in Frankfurt, DPA, public subprocessors, enforceable 2FA, Google and Microsoft sign-in, full export and erasure.
What they ask
“Will it make asking for time off easier, or just add a step?”
What to tell them
Booking takes seconds from a phone or Slack, and approving takes one click from the email. Nobody needs a training session.
Two realistic paths. Most small teams take the first one.
5 minutes
Company name and country: leave types and public holidays are pre-filled.
30 minutes
Set the yearly allowance, departments and who approves what.
Same day
By email or CSV. People book from their phone straight away.
Days 1 to 3
Recreate your leave types and test the tricky cases with real people.
Day 3
CSV import plus opening balances, or the Timetastic migration wizard.
Day 4
Slack or Teams, calendar sync, Google or Microsoft sign-in.
Days 5 to 7
Everyone books in Bueggio HR; keep the old file read-only for reference.
Timings are typical for teams of 5 to 100 people and depend on how many leave rules you need to recreate.
One plan, every feature, public price. Move the slider to your headcount.
/ month
Rate each tool from 0 to 5 on every criterion after your trial. The weights reflect what matters most for small teams; adjust them if your priorities differ. The weighted score is out of 100.
| Criterion | Weight | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of use for employees Can someone book leave from a phone in under 30 seconds, without training? | 20 | |||
| Allowances and country rules Are balances, half days, carry-over and your countries' rules right without workarounds? | 20 | |||
| Approvals and visibility Can managers approve in one click and see conflicts first? | 15 | |||
| Security and GDPR EU hosting, DPA, 2FA, export and erasure? | 15 | |||
| Integrations Does it work inside the tools you already use? | 10 | |||
| Total cost over three years All seats, modules and fees included? | 10 | |||
| Setup and migration Can you go live in days, with your balances intact? | 10 | |||
| Weighted score | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Scores stay in your browser. The PDF has the same scorecard, ready to print.
The current cost of tracking leave by hand, the must-have features, country rules and public holidays, integrations, security and GDPR, the total cost over three years, and a trial and rollout plan. This guide covers all seven, with the questions to ask every vendor and a weighted scorecard.
Dedicated tools usually charge per user per month, from about one to a few euros, while HR suites bundle leave into larger plans with minimum seats. Bueggio HR costs €1.30 per user per month with everything included, or €1.105 with yearly billing.
A small team starting fresh can be live the same day. Switching from another tool, with balances and history to bring across, typically takes up to a week including a short pilot.
Whoever signs off on the budget, the person who manages leave today (HR or office manager), IT or the DPO for the security review, and one or two managers and employees who will use it every week.
The best way to finish this guide is to run step 7 for real.
Free for a month, every feature, no credit card. Most teams are booking the same day.
Questions from your boss, finance or IT? Write to us and we'll answer in your language within 48 hours.