How to Track Vacations & Sick Leaves in Jira

[Tetiana Bondar - Softlist]

A Situation Many Teams Know

It’s Monday morning. Sprint planning is about to start.

The team joins the call. Everyone is ready.

You open Jira. The backlog is prepared. Priorities are clear.

Everything looks fine - until someone asks:

“Wait… is Anna available next week?”

There’s a short pause. No one is sure.

One teammate opens a spreadsheet.
Another checks Slack messages.
Someone says: “I think she mentioned a vacation…”

A few minutes later, the picture becomes clearer:

• Two people are off next week

• One more might take sick leave

• And your sprint plan is already wrong

So you adjust:

• Move tasks

• Reduce scope

• Reassign work

What should take 30 minutes now takes an hour. And even then, you’re not 100% sure everything is correct.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Many Jira teams still track vacations and sick leaves using:

• Excel or Google Sheets

• Chat messages

• Personal notes

It works… until it doesn’t.

As teams grow, this leads to:

• Unclear availability

• Last-minute changes

• Decisions based on incomplete data

Why Jira Alone Is Not Enough

Jira is great for managing work. But it wasn’t built for tracking time off.

So teams try to adapt it.

Some create custom issue types like “Vacation” or “Sick Leave”.
Others build workflows or separate projects.

It works - but only to a point:

• No clear calendar view

• Hard to see availability at a glance

• Too much manual effort

At the same time, many teams rely on spreadsheets.

But over time:

• Data becomes outdated

• Multiple versions appear

• Trust in the data drops

Some companies use HR tools, but then:

• Data lives outside Jira

• Teams switch between systems

• Planning happens without full visibility

A Better Way: Manage Time Off Directly in Jira

Now imagine a different approach.

With Teamployees, time off becomes part of your Jira workflow - not something separate.

• Employees create leave requests directly in Jira

• Requests are regular Jira issues with full details

• You can require manager approval

Everything stays transparent and traceable inside Jira.

It also supports real-world flexibility:

• Full-day, half-day, and hourly leaves

• Leave schemes with rules, carryover, and accrual settings

• Holiday schemes for different countries and teams

For managers, it means better visibility:

• See team availability at a glance

• Analyze absences with reports

• Export data when needed

What You Can Do with Teamployees

Let’s go step by step and see how this works in everyday situations.

📅 A Clear Team Calendar

Instead of guessing or checking different tools, you get a shared calendar inside Jira.

You can instantly see:

• Who is on vacation

• Who is off on specific dates

• Overlapping absences

Example:
You’re planning a release and want to schedule testing.
You open the calendar and immediately see that two QA engineers are off next Thursday.
Instead of finding out later, you adjust the plan right away.

No need to ask around or double-check data.

🏖️ Flexible Leave Types

In real life, people don’t always take full days off. With Teamployees, employees can request time off, such as vacation and sick leave:

• Full days

• Half days

• Even hourly time off

Example:
A developer needs to visit a doctor in the morning.
Instead of marking a full day off or sending a message in chat, they simply request a half-day leave.
The team still knows they are available in the afternoon.

✅ Structured Requests & Approvals

Instead of informal messages like “Hey, I’ll be off tomorrow”, you can introduce a clear process.

Employees can:

• Create a leave request

• Select an approver

And these requests:

• Are created as regular Jira issues

• Include all important details (dates, duration, type of leave)

• Can be reviewed and approved like any other Jira task

Example:
An employee submits a vacation request for next month.
The team lead gets it as a Jira issue, checks the calendar, and sees that another teammate already planned time off for the same period.
They discuss it and adjust dates before approving - no surprises later!

⚙️ Leave Schemes

Different teams often have different rules. Teamployees lets you configure leave schemes where you can:

• Define how many days off users have

• Set different rules for teams or individual users

• Configure carryover

• Allow negative balances if needed

• Define accrual start dates

Example:
Your company has teams in two countries with different vacation policies.
Instead of tracking this manually, you assign different leave schemes - and the system handles the rest.

🌍 Holiday Schemes

If your team is distributed, holidays can vary a lot. With holiday schemes, you can:

• Import public holidays for a specific country

• Mark non-working days

• Add custom holidays or company-specific days off

Example:
Your team is split between Germany and the US.
A US team member schedules work on a day that is a public holiday in Germany.
With holiday schemes in place, this is visible in advance - and planning becomes more realistic.

📊 Reports & Analytics

Managers often need more than just a calendar. In the Absences section, you can:

• View vacation and sick leave statistics

• Filter by individual users or entire teams

• Analyze data for different periods (monthly, quarterly, yearly)

• See both aggregated and detailed records

• Export to Excel

Example:
At the end of the quarter, a manager wants to understand how time off affected delivery.
They generate a report, export it to Excel, and quickly see patterns - like peak vacation periods or frequent sick leaves.

Final Thoughts

Time-off tracking may seem like a small thing - but it has a big impact on planning, workload, and team confidence.

When you don’t have clear visibility, planning becomes guesswork.
When everything is in one place, decisions become much easier.

If your team is still using spreadsheets or ad-hoc solutions, it might be time to try a different approach. You can check out Teamployees on the Atlassian Marketplace.

And I’m curious - how does your team handle time-off tracking today?