How do you stop managing employee leave in Excel?

When a spreadsheet is still enough

Excel is familiar, flexible and easy to start with. If one person maintains a small team’s records, requests are infrequent and everyone understands the same rules, a spreadsheet may be entirely sufficient. There is no need to replace a tool that is doing its job.

Keep one shared version, identify who updates it and record both approved dates and remaining allowances. Make the working week and company holidays explicit. Even a small team benefits from a clear record of which requests are pending and which are confirmed.

The warning signs are usually in the work around the file

As teams and departments grow, the spreadsheet is often only part of the record. One request is in an email, another in a chat and a manager’s approval is somewhere else. HR must put those pieces together before answering a simple question: who is away next week?

Consider switching when you repeatedly chase approvals, reconcile different file versions or manually check remaining days. The issue is not an employee count threshold. It is the repeated effort required to keep the information correct and available to the right people.

Decide what should become simpler

Request and decision

With a spreadsheet

Collect a request and record the decision separately.

With Folqo

Employees submit requests; managers and administrators review them in the app.

Remaining leave

With a spreadsheet

Maintain formulas and reconcile approved absences.

With Folqo

Check year-specific balances; approved balance-controlled leave deducts from the relevant entitlement.

Team availability

With a spreadsheet

Compare dates across rows, messages and files.

With Folqo

View approved absences alongside company holidays and non-working periods.

A shared process, from request to calendar

Folqo brings leave requests, approvals, balances and the company calendar into one workspace. Annual leave remains controlled by allocated entitlement. Sick leave can work without an allowance or use a company-configured balance. Working-day calculations use the company’s working week and configured non-working dates.

Employees can check their own leave and request dates. Managers and administrators handle decisions, with notifications keeping the relevant people informed. When an approved leave record is needed, it can be generated, printed or saved as PDF. These documents support your process; your company remains responsible for its policies and required formalities.

Move the information you already have

Start by keeping a copy of your original spreadsheet and checking which entries are current. Folqo imports employees from Excel or CSV. Only first and last names are required; departments and other supported information are optional. Review the mapped columns, match departments if you use them, and check the preview before confirming.

Employee import is not a general import of every historical leave request. Supported annual leave entitlement and used-days fields can be mapped when you have the information needed to validate them. Agree a cutover date, check each employee’s starting balance and use Folqo as the source of truth after the import.

A short checklist before your team starts

1. Confirm the working week, company holidays and any non-working periods.
2. Review leave types, employee allowances and who approves requests.
3. Import or add employees, check names and balances, then send account invitations when needed.
4. Try a request, approval and calendar check with the people who will use the process.