The Bindle Blog

Most businesses offer some type of paid time off to their employees, whether it is sick leave, vacation time, or personal days. Offering paid time off has several benefits, especially if you want to retain your employees over the long term. However, it can be difficult to keep track of all leave and absences. Many businesses end up losing a lot of money because they don’t calculate PTO effectively. Fortunately, things are easier today because you can use employee vacation tracking software for this purpose. Here’s a look at the numerous benefits of such software:

Paid time off is a perk businesses can offer their employees to keep them happy and retain them over the long term. Different businesses have different approaches to PTO based on their unique requirements. Some are obligated by their local laws to provide some sick leave or paid time off benefits whilst others provide it as an added incentive for their employees. Here are some tips on how you can make it easier to calculate paid time off:

How many of us have dreamed of having unlimited vacation time? No PTO balance to manage, no accruals to wait for for that week away - perfect, right?

Of course, if you ask anyone what the biggest drawback is for an unlimited PTO policy, you’ll probably hear:

“But what’s to stop employees from taking off too much time and not getting their work done?”

In many workplaces, that may well be a legitimate concern. In practice however, the majority of organizations that have implemented an unlimited PTO policy have a completely different problem:

“Employees aren’t taking enough days off - they’re burning themselves out.”

How is this possible? To understand, we’ll look into:

• the psychology behind vacations and productivity

• why employees take (or don’t take) time-off

• the potential benefits of an unlimited PTO policy (and how to actually reap them)

• practical steps for tracking, measuring and understanding when employees most benefit from PTO.

Setting up a new employee in Bindle is a quick and simple process, but you will need to make a few key decisions in the setup process to ensure their vacation days are accruing the way your business needs.

In this article, we’ll go through how to add, customize entitlements for and welcome a new employee to Bindle.

If you aren’t already using Bindle, it’ll help if you sign up for a free 30 day trial here and follow along with the steps, as that way you can test it out with your team right away.

How much paid time off or vacation time am I entitled to?

In the USA, there’s no federal requirement to grant employees paid time off including any of the 10 federal holidays.

This means that the exact amount of PTO you’re entitled to can vary from workplace to workplace. Every company may calculate PTO accrual differently.

However, the state or county you’re in may have laws that entitle you to a certain amount of sick leave.

For example, Californian employers must allow employees to take up to 24 hours or 3 days paid sick leave per year. There are also extra requirements for paid time off provisions if you’re a contractor working with the federal government.

Ultimately, this means that there are 3 key places you’ll need to look to understand how much vacation and PTO time you’re personally entitled to:

1. State and County Legislation (for the bare minimum PTO you’re entitled to)
2. Your employer’s PTO & Vacation policy (for understanding how your PTO is accrued, when you’re entitled to it and how to apply for it)
3. Your own employment contract (for specific additional vacation entitlements you’re entitled to)

Bindle is ideal for tracking all the different things that take people out of the office. Historically, this has meant things like PTO, Vacation and Sick Leave. Increasingly it includes days spent Working From Home.

One of the first companies to use Bindle to track WFH days pointed out that their staff don’t require approval to book and change WFH days. They asked if we could make Bindle more flexible in this area. We were happy to oblige.

Having a clear leave policy in place is a good way for your business to avoid ambiguity and confusion around what to do when taking time out. It’s also a good idea to avoid potential conflict and misunderstanding if at all possible.

It’s just common sense for everyone to be on the same page, right?

Bindle to the rescue! We’ve made a free tool to generate leave policies for Australian companies.

At Bindle we’ve created a free time off tracker for Excel. It’s a free spreadsheet for you to download and use to record time off requests and to calculate remaining time off balances.

This Excel template is basically a free time off manager for you to track employee time off. It is a great tool to use if you know your way around Excel a bit and you have around 5 employees or less.

We’re happy to announce that Bindle now integrates with Twist, the communication tool for teams who believe there’s more to work than keeping up with group chat apps.

We’ve just added a great new little feature to Bindle. The ability to upload important upcoming company events.

This is useful to remind staff of things like busy periods, office closures, and holiday block out dates when they’re requesting and approving time off.

We’ve been busier than usual at Bindle recently. Too busy for regular blog updates, it seems!

We’ve enhanced Bindle to make it more suitable for places like the U.S.A. where there aren’t that many legislated rules about time off.

Basically, in the States it’s a free-for-all. Bindle can now cope with that.

This concludes the series of posts on 10 things to know when creating a PTO policy.

Using the information in this series, you should now be able to draft a clear and concise PTO policy that’s right for you and your staff.

This is a post in the continuing series about 10 things to know when creating a PTO policy.

In the U.S., depending on what state your employees are located in (including your staff working remotely), it may be left to your discretion as to whether or not you decide to pay out PTO balances upon termination of employment.

This post is part of the series of articles about 10 things to know when creating a PTO policy.

Ahhhh, T.G.I.F. Anyway, on to business…

Another thing to consider when drafting your PTO policy is when to start each PTO year.

The two main options are to start the PTO year at the start of the calendar year, or to start each year on the anniversary of each employee’s start date.

Each option has their own implications depending on the other policy clauses you have in place.

This post is part of the series of articles about 10 things to know when creating a PTO policy.

Now that we’ve written about the 3 broad categories of PTO policies that are out there, it’s time to start thinking about some additional considerations.

This post focuses on the different methods for earning PTO. You’ll need to decide which one is right for your business.

This is the third post in a series about 10 things to know when creating a PTO policy.

As mentioned in a previous post, PTO policies generally fall into 3 broad categories:

• Unlimited PTO Policies
• Traditional PTO Policies
• PTO Bank Policies

This post focuses on the second option, which is still the most popular (especially with large organizations), but is gradually falling from favor; The Traditional Paid Time Off Policy.

Firstly, apologies for the click-bait title. I just couldn’t help myself.

This post is the first in a series about 10 things to know when creating a PTO policy. The series is aimed at U.S. small business owners and administrators.

It outlines your 3 main policy options, plus some additional considerations for you to think about.

The series will help you craft a competitive PTO policy that allows you to attract and retain top talent, while giving you a rough idea about your legal responsibilities, and the relative administrative burden certain policy options might entail.

Right-o, chocks away!

Whoah, time is flying by. I can‘t believe it is July already. Summer in California. Yay! Anyway, time for an update on what we‘ve been up to if you haven’t been following us on Twitter.

Since I last wrote, we‘ve been busy investigating chatbots, releasing some oft asked for improvements, adding some more endpoints to our API, and getting some fantastic reviews on Capterra.

Today we announce the launch of Bindle Partner Accounts.

Partner Accounts are specifically designed for HR consultancies, accounting & bookkeeping firms, and their clients.

A Partner Account allows you to access multiple Bindle accounts from one place, so you can easily manage leave bookings and balances for all your clients.

Partner accounts are simple to get up and running and are completely free, forever. Sign-up for a free account here. It costs nothing, and there are no contracts to sign.

We’ve finished all the long service leave calculators for all Australian states and territories.

The way to calculate long service leave balances is slightly different for each Australian state and territory, so we built a specific calculator depending on where you work.

After we had created calculators for Victoria and New South Wales, the rest just fell out without too much trouble. 🎉 Yay!

Now all Australians can see their current long service leave balance, check future balances, and make long service leave bookings.

THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING! Now you wonderful folks in Victoria can book long service leave using Bindle.

Every Australian state has different rules for calculating long service leave balances. This means we need to build a slightly different balance calculator for each state, so the other states are in the pipeline and will be released real soon. Promise.

We’ve added another oft requested feature to Bindle. You can now use Bindle to book compassionate (or bereavement) leave.

Well, we have been having a busy time here at Bindle, but not just working on Bindle.

Howard and I both decided to eat our own dog food and use Bindle to book some time off. What a great idea. Howard took off to Bali (indah!) and I travelled to Italy for a few weeks (fantastico!). And here’s a picture, or two…

At Bindle we’ve created a free Excel spreadsheet for you to download and use to record leave bookings and calculate leave balances.

This spreadsheet is a great tool to use if you know your way around Excel a bit and you have around 5 employees or less.

We’ve just put the finishing touches to a major new feature. You can now view the Bindle Wallchart in the calendar apps you use every day on your computer and phone.

To set this up, click View the Wallchart in your own calendar at the bottom of the Wallchart page in Bindle. In most cases, this will open your calendar app and ask you to confirm the subscription.

How much annual leave am I entitled to?

Paid annual leave is one of the 10 minimum entitlements of Australian workers under the National Employment Standards.

All full-time workers are guaranteed a minimum of 4 weeks paid annual leave. If you’re a shift worker you may be entitled to 5 weeks.

We are delighted to announce that Bindle is now a paid product.

Right from the start it’s been our intention to build a business for the long term. We believe the best way to do this is to charge a fair price for a great product with outstanding customer service.

Our pricing couldn’t be simpler.

We’ve just added some new features to Bindle that give you more control over adding and inviting staff.

Previously, when you added a new user, Bindle immediately sent them an invitation email with details of how to activate their account.

Some of our customers wanted to get everyone set up before sending any invitations, so we separated the two tasks.

We’ve just made a quick improvement for approvers. Now when you view a request Bindle tells you how many other people are off on the requested dates.

We’ve just added two new features requested by our customers.

First up, is there someone in your company who needs to be notified whenever leave is approved or cancelled? Maybe they are involved with payroll or need to keep some other system up to date.

Administrators can now go to the Company page and enter an email address that will be cc’d on all approval and cancellation emails.

You can now use Bindle to manage your company’s personal leave.

Staff report personal leave just like they book annual leave - by clicking or tapping Make A Booking, selecting the required leave type and entering their dates.

When you create a new user in Bindle, they get the default public holiday calendar and annual leave allowance for your company.

If these defaults don’t suit you, go to the Company page in the Admin section to change them.