One of the time saving tools I have developed recently is a Vacation Allocator. And what, may you ask, is one of those? In addition to less-money-that-you-think-you-deserve, your employer will reward you for doing more-work-than-you-think-is-fair by giving you a number of days holiday a year. It can be quite time consuming tracking what days you are considering taking, what has been approved, or just deciding how to share your allocation through the year.
As a result I have built a simple Excel spreadsheet that allows you to quickly track and plan when you are thinking of taking vacation. You can download the spreadsheet below – just click on the link and the file will open in a separate window from where you can save it to your computer. Remember to select “Enable Macros” when prompted as the spreadsheet uses a macro to allow you to choose your vacation. Alternatively, right-click on the link and select “Save Target As…”.
Once the document is open, enter your name and the year – note that once you have entered the year, the calander below readjusts to reflect this selection. Finally, enter how many days vacation you have and you are ready to select your allocation.
Now click on the day you want to identify as a vacation, and a pop-up box will appear:
If you choose ‘Public Holiday’ then the date will be shaded so that you can see where it is on the calendar (very useful for seeing when you can get a week off with only 4 days vacation) – but this will not be taken off your allocation. ‘Clear Vacation’ will obviously cancel any selection you have previously made.
You can then then choose a full or half-day of holiday – the distinction between ‘proposed’ and ‘approved’ is so that you can quickly see whether a day of vacation is just planned, or whether you have actually had it signed off by the powers-that-be. Once you have chosen then click ‘Okay’ to enter the day, or ‘Cancel’ if you have changed your mind. Note that you can highlight a whole week in one go – the pop-up appears once you let go of the left mouse button.
You can now see very quickly how many days holiday you have left to take, how many days you still need to get approved, and how your holiday looks spread through the year.
I hope you find this of useful – it would be great to hear your feedback, and any suggestions on how else this could be used.
Download Vacation Allocator
