Built for teams without an HR department
Leave management for small business, minus the spreadsheet
When you don't have an HR team and time off lives in a spreadsheet, leave gets tracked badly. Absenca gives a small business one shared calendar, fast approvals and balances that stay right — free for up to 15 people.
For a small business with no HR team, the best leave management is a focused, easy-to-run tool rather than a heavy HR suite — a shared calendar, fast approvals and balances that stay right. In a small business there's usually no HR department, so the owner or office manager tracks time off in a spreadsheet between everything else. It works until someone double-books a week, a balance is wrong at year end, or a request gets buried in email. Absenca replaces that spreadsheet with a tool the whole team can use in an afternoon, no implementation project and no training day.
It's deliberately not a heavyweight HR suite you'd need a specialist to run. It does leave and absence properly — requests, approvals, balances, accruals and public holidays — and is free for up to 15 people, which is most small teams. Grow past that and it's a flat $0.75 per user per month, not the $3–4 per user that bigger platforms tend to charge as of 2026.
Set up in an afternoon
Add your team, set the allowance, import your country's public holidays, and you're live. No onboarding call or HR background needed.
One shared calendar
Everyone sees who's off at a glance, so you stop two people booking the same week — the question a spreadsheet can never answer quickly.
Balances that stay right
Every approved day updates the balance automatically, with accrual, carry-over and part-timers handled — no more year-end reconciliation.
Approve from your phone
Requests reach the right person and approve in one tap from the web, email, Slack or Microsoft Teams — no chasing, no lost threads.
Why a spreadsheet stops working
A shared spreadsheet is fine for three people. By ten or fifteen it quietly breaks: someone edits the wrong cell, a sick day never gets logged, two people book the same Friday, and nobody's sure how many days they have left. The owner ends up as the single point of truth — and the bottleneck.
A dedicated leave tool fixes the root cause. Requests, approvals and balances live in one place that updates itself, so the numbers are correct without anyone maintaining them. Employees self-serve, managers approve in seconds, and the person who used to own the spreadsheet gets their time back.
Everything a small team needs, nothing it doesn't
Absenca covers vacation, sick, personal, parental, unpaid and any custom leave type, with half-days and hourly time off, automatic accruals and carry-over, blackout periods, and public holidays for 190+ countries applied automatically. If you run a second office in another country, each location gets its own work week, leave year and holiday calendar.
What it isn't is a full HRIS with payroll and recruiting bolted on — and for a small business without HR, that's the point. It's quick to learn, quick to run, and works alongside anything else you use. When you're ready to compare options, see our roundup of the best leave management software.
Why teams choose Absenca
- Free for up to 15 people — most small teams never pay
- No HR team or setup project required
- Shared calendar ends double-booked weeks
- Automatic balances, accruals and carry-over
- Public holidays for 190+ countries, applied per office
- Flat $0.75/user/month if you outgrow the free plan
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best leave management for a small business?
- For a small business without dedicated HR, the best fit is a focused, easy-to-run leave tool rather than a heavy HR suite. Absenca handles requests, approvals, balances, accruals and public holidays in one shared calendar, sets up in an afternoon, and is free for up to 15 people.
- Do I need an HR department to use it?
- No. Absenca is built for teams where the owner or office manager handles time off alongside other duties. There's no implementation project — add your team, set allowances and public holidays, and you're running.
- How much does it cost for a small business?
- It's free for up to 15 people with the full feature set, and no credit card to start. Beyond 15 it's a flat $0.75 per user per month — typically well below the $3–4 per user other platforms charge as of 2026.
- Can it replace our PTO spreadsheet?
- Yes — that's exactly what it's for. Your spreadsheet's allowances, sick days and bookings move into one calendar that updates balances automatically, so the numbers stay accurate without anyone maintaining a sheet.
- What if we grow past 15 employees?
- You move to the paid plan at $0.75 per user per month and keep all your existing data, balances and settings — nothing is reset, and there's no migration to a different tool.