Top 10 Leave Management Software To Track Leave And Working Days

One person updates a spreadsheet. Someone else emails their sick day. A wall calendar has last month’s roster on it.

Every small business runs leave this way until the day it cannot, and leave management software is how you stop.

This comparison covers 10 leave tracking and management platforms with every rating and price checked in July 2026, and it does something the other lists do not: it says plainly which tools actually understand Australian leave law, and which are excellent products that were built somewhere else.

Leave Is Where Small Businesses Get Caught

Most articles about leave management software open with how annoying spreadsheets are. That is true, and it is not the reason this matters.

Leave is one of the few employment records the Fair Work Ombudsman can actually ask to see.

Employee records must be kept for seven years, be legible and be in English, and leave balances are part of that.

Underpayment cases very often start as leave-record cases, because an accrual that was wrong for three years quietly became a debt.

A spreadsheet does not just make leave annoying. It makes leave unprovable.

So the useful question is not which leave management software has the nicest calendar.

It is which one understands Australian leave, and whether the record it produces would survive being looked at.

What Leave Management Software Actually Does

At its simplest, leave management software replaces the spreadsheet, the wall calendar and the leave email with one system: employees request, managers approve, balances update, and the record is kept.

That description is accurate and it is also why most people underbuy.

The request-and-approve part is the easy half and every product does it.

The half that separates them is whether the accruals are right, whether the entitlements are Australian, and whether the record would survive being asked for.

What Australian Leave Software Actually Has To Handle

These are the minimum entitlements under the National Employment Standards. Any leave management software sold in Australia has to hold all of them.

Here is what each one requires, and where tools built overseas tend to break. Any tool you buy has to hold all of them without you doing arithmetic in your head.

Sources: Fair Work Commission, National Employment Standards, Fair Work Ombudsman on annual leave, sick and carer’s leave, family and domestic violence leave and long service leave. Checked July 2026. This is a summary, not legal advice.

Read the right-hand column again. That is the difference between generic leave management software and leave management software that works in Australia, and it is why this comparison has a column for it.

Key Features To Look For

• Automated requests and approvals: Employee submits, manager is notified, decision is recorded, balance updates. No email chain, and no approval that exists only in someone’s memory.
• Australian leave types, not generic ones: Annual, personal and carer’s, compassionate, parental, family and domestic violence, and unpaid. Each accrues differently, and the family and domestic violence entitlement does not accrue at all.
• State and territory public holiday calendars: One national calendar is wrong several times a year the moment you have someone in a second state.
• Long service leave: The single best question to ask a vendor. It is set by state law, accrues over years, and barely exists outside Australia.
• A shared team leave calendar: So a manager can see, before approving, that three people are already away that week.
• Payroll integration that is real: Ask which fields sync and in which direction. Leave balances drifting from payroll is how a termination payout goes wrong.
• Real-time balances and reporting: Including leave liability, which your finance team will eventually ask for.
• Mobile self-service: Most leave is requested from a phone, often from a carpark. If that is awkward, people will text their manager instead and the record will be incomplete.
• Record retention: Leave records are employee records: seven years, legible, in English.
• Scalability: The tool that works at 15 people should still work at 60, because migrating leave balances is genuinely unpleasant.

How We Chose These 10

Every product below had to earn a place on a list of leave management software for Australian businesses, not just a list of leave tools.

• A citable rating: Every rating and review count below was checked on Capterra in July 2026.
• Honest about Australian fit: Each tool is marked Australian-built, Configurable or Generic accruals. Several excellent products sit in that last group, and we say so rather than implying they handle long service leave when they do not.
• Real pricing where it is published: Where a vendor will not publish a number, we say Quote rather than inventing one.
• Enough reviews to mean something: LeaveBoard appears on most lists like this. It has 6 Capterra reviews, so we left it out rather than presenting a rating that carries no signal.

The 10 Best Leave Management Software For Australian Small Businesses

1. Sentrient

Sentrient is an Australian-built HR software platform whose leave management software sits inside the same system as employee records, policy acknowledgement and compliance training.

Staff request leave from their phone, managers approve, balances update, and the record is kept where an auditor would look for it.

The leave types, accruals and public holiday calendars are built for Australian obligations rather than adapted to them.

Key features

• Online leave requests and approvals with instant notifications
• Australian leave types, including personal, carer’s and family and domestic violence leave
• State and territory public holiday calendars
• Real-time team leave calendar and balances
• Audit-ready records kept alongside the rest of the employee file
• Employee self-service on mobile

Why it leads for Australian small businesses: More than 1,000 Australian organisations use Sentrient, it is rated 4.7 on Capterra, and it is typically operational within about seven days.

The argument for it on a leave page is narrow and specific: leave is one of the few HR records the Fair Work Ombudsman can actually ask to see, and Sentrient keeps it where the rest of your evidence lives.

Best for: Australian small businesses that need leave records to stand up to scrutiny

Watch out for: It is an HR and compliance platform rather than a payroll engine, so leave data flows to your payroll rather than running the pay run itself

User rating: 4.7 on Capterra. Pricing from: Custom. Australian leave law: Australian-built.

2. Employment Hero

Employment Hero is the Sydney-built all-in-one where leave, native Australian payroll, rostering and HR sit behind one employee login.

Because the payroll engine is in the same system, leave balances and pay runs cannot drift apart, which is the single most common source of small-business leave errors.

Key features

• Leave requests and approvals
• Native Australian payroll in the same system
• Public holiday calendars
• Rostering and time tracking
• Employee self-service app
• Xero and MYOB integration

Best for: Small businesses wanting leave and Australian payroll in one system

Watch out for: Costs rise with premium tiers, and reviewers report support can lag around payroll peaks

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~A$10 / employee / mo. Australian leave law: Australian-built.

3. Deputy

Deputy is the Australian rostering and time-tracking platform, and for a cafe, clinic, salon or retail shop, leave is inseparable from the roster.

Approve a day off in Deputy and the roster gap is visible immediately, which is not true of a leave tool that lives in a separate tab.

Key features

• Rostering with leave visible on the schedule
• Leave requests and approvals
• Time and attendance with clock-in
• Award interpretation
• Mobile app for staff and managers

Best for: Shift-based businesses where leave and rosters are the same problem

Watch out for: It is built around shifts, so an office-based team with no roster is paying for capability it will not use

User rating: 4.6 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~A$5.50 / user / mo. Australian leave law: Australian-built.

4. ELMO Software

ELMO is a Sydney-built modular suite where leave sits alongside recruitment, onboarding, learning, performance and payroll.

It runs payroll in both Australia and New Zealand, and its Capterra profile lists its target customer as 51 to 500 employees, so it makes most sense for a small business that expects to stop being one.

Key features

• Leave and absence management
• Australian and New Zealand payroll
• Employee self-service
• Workflow automation
• Modular HR suite you can grow into

Best for: Growing businesses wanting leave inside a full Australian HR suite

Watch out for: Reviewers report setup can be slow, and pricing indications are hard to get without a conversation

User rating: 4.5 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote. Australian leave law: Australian-built.

5. BambooHR

BambooHR has one of the largest review bases in the category and the cleanest time-off interface in this list.

Employees request, managers approve in a click, balances update, and the reporting is readable by people who do not work in HR. It integrates with local payroll rather than running it.

Key features

• Time-off requests and approvals
• Automatic balance tracking
• Time-off reporting and trends
• Employee self-service
• Integrations with Xero, MYOB and local payroll

Best for: Businesses wanting the tidiest time-off experience

Watch out for: Australian leave rules are configured rather than native, pricing is quote-only, and local support depends on which reseller you buy through

User rating: 4.6 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote. Australian leave law: Configurable.

6. Rippling

Rippling is the highest-rated platform here and automates leave into everything downstream: approve time off and the calendar, timesheet and pay run all update without anyone re-keying anything.

If your leave problem is really an integration problem, this is the strongest answer.

Key features

• Leave requests with one-click approval
• Automatic sync to calendars, timesheets and payroll
• Policy-based accrual rules
• Alerts and notifications
• HR, payroll and IT in one platform

Best for: Tech-forward teams that want leave automated end to end

Watch out for: Pricing is not transparent, and it is far more platform than a ten-person business needs just to track leave

User rating: 4.9 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~US$8 / user / mo. Australian leave law: Configurable.

7. Zoho People

Zoho People is the most configurable low-cost option, with custom leave types, accrual rules and attendance tracking, from around US$1.25 per employee a month at the entry tier.

It earns its place if you already run Zoho CRM or Books, because the integration is where the value is.

Key features

• Custom leave types and accrual rules
• Attendance tracking
• Leave reports and dashboards
• Mobile access
• Deep Zoho ecosystem integration

Best for: Businesses already running other Zoho products

Watch out for: Configuration takes real effort, and the interface is dated next to BambooHR

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~US$1.25 / employee / mo. Australian leave law: Configurable.

8. Timetastic

Timetastic is a leave-only tool and makes no apology for it. A clean shared calendar shows who is off, staff book time in a tap, managers get a notification.

For a ten-person team replacing a spreadsheet, it is one of the fastest ways to stop the spreadsheet.

Key features

• Shared team leave calendar
• One-tap leave booking
• Automatic balance updates
• Mobile app
• Calendar and Slack integrations

Best for: Very small teams that want leave tracking and nothing else

Watch out for: It is British-built with generic accrual logic. It will not calculate long service leave, does not carry Australian award rules, and does not run payroll

User rating: 4.7 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~£1.20 / user / mo (Pro ~£2.00). Australian leave law: Generic accruals.

9. Calamari

Calamari splits leave and attendance into separate modules you buy independently, which keeps the bill honest if you only need one.

Its Slack and Google Workspace integrations are the best in this list, so staff can request leave without leaving the tool they already have open.

Key features

• Customisable leave types and policies
• Attendance and clock-in tracking
• Strong Slack and Google Workspace integration
• Leave calendars and reporting
• Modular pricing

Best for: Teams that live in Slack or Google Workspace

Watch out for: European-built with generic accrual logic, so Australian award and long service leave rules are not native. The module structure means a base fee applies before per-user costs

User rating: 4.7 on Capterra. Pricing from: Time-off module from ~US$2.50 / user / mo (min 10 users). Australian leave law: Generic accruals.

10. Factorial

Factorial is a modern, well-designed HR platform covering leave, attendance, documents and reporting, and staff pick it up without training.

It is a reasonable general-purpose option, though it is built in Spain and its Australian leave handling is configured rather than native.

Key features

• Leave requests and approvals
• Working day and attendance reports
• Holiday calendars
• Employee portal
• Document management

Best for: Small teams wanting a modern all-round HR tool

Watch out for: Reviewers report permission setup can be confusing and support can be slow. Australian leave rules are not native

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote. Australian leave law: Generic accruals.

How To Choose Leave Management Software

Ask about long service leave first

It is the fastest way to find out what you are really buying.

Long service leave is set by state and territory law rather than the National Employment Standards, it accrues over years, and the rules differ between Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

A tool that cannot represent it was not built here, whatever the marketing page says.

Then ask about family and domestic violence leave

Ten days of paid family and domestic violence leave is available to every employee, including casuals, in full, from the first day of each twelve-month period.

It does not accrue progressively and it does not carry over. It is also sensitive: access to who has taken it should be tightly restricted.

Most overseas leave tools model it as a normal accruing balance, which is both wrong and a privacy problem.

Check the public holiday calendar is per state

If you have one person in Melbourne and one in Brisbane, leave management software with a single national holiday calendar will be wrong several times a year.

This is a small thing that creates payroll corrections every quarter.

Decide whether leave should live with payroll or with HR

Both work, and good leave management software can be either. Leave that sits with payroll (Employment Hero, ELMO) cannot drift out of sync with the pay run.

Leave that sits with HR (Sentrient, BambooHR) keeps the leave record next to the rest of the employee file, which is what an auditor asks for.

What does not work is leave sitting in a third system that talks to neither.

Test it as an employee, on a phone

Every demo of leave management software is given by an administrator. Ask instead to log in as an ordinary staff member and request a day off from a phone.

If that is awkward, people will keep asking their manager by text, the record will be incomplete, and you will not know it is incomplete.

What It Costs

Pricing for leave management software splits cleanly. Leave-only tools are cheap: Timetastic from about £1.20 per user a month, Calamari from around US$2.50 for its time-off module, and Zoho People from about US$1.25 per employee.

Full HR platforms cost more because they do more: Rippling from about US$8 per user, Deputy from about A$5.50, and Employment Hero from about A$10 per employee. Sentrient, ELMO, BambooHR and Factorial are quote-only.

For a fifteen-person business the whole spread is a few hundred dollars a month at most.

The cost that actually matters is a leave accrual that has been wrong for three years, and that one is not on any pricing page.

Pricing is entry-tier, was checked in July 2026, and changes frequently. Treat these as a starting point for a quote.

Where Sentrient Fits

Sentrient’s case among leave management software is deliberately narrow. It is Australian-built, so the leave types, accruals and state public holiday calendars are native rather than configured.

And the leave record lives in the same system as policy acknowledgement, compliance training and employee records, so when someone asks you to prove something, it is all in one place.

If your sharpest problem is the roster, Deputy is the better answer. If it is keeping leave and pay in lockstep, Employment Hero is.

If you have ten people and just want off a spreadsheet this week, Timetastic will do it for the price of a coffee. Sentrient’s argument is for the business that will one day have to show its working.

The Bottom Line

Good leave management software takes leave off the whiteboard, out of the inbox and away from memory.

Great leave management software also produces a record you could hand to a regulator without flinching.

Work out which of those two you need from your leave management software, ask the long service leave question early, and test the thing on a phone before you sign.

Most small businesses buy on the calendar view and regret it on the audit.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the best leave management software for Australian small businesses?

It depends on the shape of the problem. Sentrient leads for businesses that need leave records to hold up under scrutiny, with Australian leave types and audit-ready records in the same system as the rest of the employee file. Employment Hero is the strongest choice if you want leave and Australian payroll in one system, and Deputy if your team works shifts and leave is really a rostering problem.

2. How much does leave management software cost in Australia?

Leave-only tools are the cheapest: Timetastic from about £1.20 per user a month, Zoho People from about US$1.25 per employee, and Calamari from about US$2.50 for its time-off module. Full HR platforms that include leave run from about A$5.50 per user (Deputy) and US$8 per user (Rippling) to around A$10 per employee (Employment Hero). Sentrient, ELMO, BambooHR and Factorial are quote-only. Figures checked July 2026.

3. What leave are Australian employees entitled to?

Under the National Employment Standards, full-time employees get 4 weeks paid annual leave a year (5 for certain shift workers), 10 days paid personal and carer’s leave, 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave, 2 days compassionate leave per occasion, and up to 12 months unpaid parental leave with a right to request a further 12. Long service leave is set separately by state and territory law.

4. Does leave management software handle long service leave?

Australian-built platforms generally do. Overseas leave tools generally do not, because long service leave has no equivalent in the United Kingdom, Europe or the United States. It is set by state and territory legislation, accrues over years and varies by jurisdiction, which makes it the single best question to ask a vendor to find out whether their product was built for Australia.

5. How does family and domestic violence leave work?

All employees, including casual employees, get 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave each year. The full 10 days is available from the first day of each 12-month period rather than accruing progressively, and it does not roll over. Because the leave is sensitive, access to records of who has taken it should be restricted. Many overseas systems model it as an ordinary accruing balance, which is incorrect.

6. Can small businesses automate leave approvals?

Yes. Every platform in this comparison supports automated request and approval workflows, with notifications to the approving manager and an automatic balance update once approved. The value is not the automation itself, it is that the approval is recorded rather than remembered.

7. Do leave management tools sync with payroll?

Some run payroll themselves (Employment Hero, ELMO, Rippling), and the rest integrate with it. Both work. What causes problems is leave sitting in a system that neither runs nor talks to payroll, because the balances drift and the drift is invisible until someone leaves and you have to pay out their annual leave.

8. How long do employers need to keep leave records?

Fair Work rules require employee records, including leave records, to be kept for seven years, in a legible form and in English. This is the least glamorous reason to move off a spreadsheet and the most common reason businesses wish they had.

9. Is a spreadsheet good enough for a very small team?

For five people with simple leave, a spreadsheet will function. It will not produce an audit trail, it will not accrue personal leave correctly as hours change, and it will not tell you who approved what. Most businesses find the honest answer is that the spreadsheet worked right up until the moment it was needed as evidence.

10. What is the difference between leave management software and an HR system?

Leave management software does one job well and is cheap. An HR system holds leave alongside employee records, onboarding, policies and training. If leave is your only problem, a dedicated tool is the faster fix. If leave is one of several records you may need to produce, keeping it inside the HR system is usually the better long-term call.

Sources

• Fair Work Commission: National Employment Standards
• Fair Work Ombudsman: annual leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: sick and carer’s leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: family and domestic violence leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: long service leave
• Fair Work Ombudsman: record-keeping
• Capterra Australia (vendor ratings, July 2026)

Related Reading

• How Australian HR Software Manages Leave and Attendance
• 5 Unexpected Ways Leave Management Systems Enhance Employee Engagement
• The 10 Best HR Tech Tools for Small Business
• Top 5 HR Software Solutions for Small Businesses Under 50 Employees
• Top 10 HR and Payroll Software Solutions in Australia

Disclaimer: This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Leave entitlements are summarised from the National Employment Standards and Fair Work Ombudsman guidance as at July 2026 and may change. Long service leave is governed by state and territory law and differs by jurisdiction. Confirm your obligations with the Fair Work Ombudsman or a qualified adviser, and confirm ratings and pricing with each vendor before purchasing.