How to use the TOIL tracker
- Add your people. Type each name once. Names must be different, so add a surname or initial if two people share a first name.
- Log hours earned. Pick the person under “Show entries for”, then add the date worked, the extra hours, the rate (1.0, 1.5 or 2.0), who approved it and, if your policy sets one, the date the hours expire. The tracker multiplies the hours by the rate: 4 hours at 1.5 earns 6 hours of TOIL.
- Log time taken against the hours it used. Add the date and the hours, and choose which earned entry they came from. The tracker offers the oldest hours that are still in date. If the time off used hours from two entries, add it twice, once for each.
- Check the balances. A balance below zero shows in red. Hours that expire in the next 30 days show in amber, so you can remind people to book the time before it goes.
- Back it up. Export a CSV every week or two, and print the balances when you need a paper copy.
Mistakes are easy to fix: delete the entry and add it again. If you delete hours earned that time off was taken against, the time off stays and is marked as taken against no entry.
How the balance is worked out
These are the same rules as the free TOIL tracker spreadsheet, so the two give the same figures:
- Earned: every entry’s extra hours × its rate, added up.
- Taken: all the time off taken.
- Expired, not taken: the hours left on entries whose expiry date has passed. An entry expires at the end of its expiry date.
- Balance: earned − taken − expired.
- Next expiry: the soonest expiry date, from today on, among entries that still have hours left.
- Expiring in the next 30 days: the hours left on entries that expire between today and 30 days from now.
Everything is in hours. To explain a balance in days, divide by the person’s working day: 15 hours is 2 days for someone on 7.5-hour days. The TOIL calculator does that for you, and works out tiered rates too. For a rate other than 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0, work out the TOIL hours there and enter them here at 1.0.
What this tracker does not do
- It lives in one browser. There is no shared copy for a team, and it does not sync between devices. Moving it means exporting and importing a CSV.
- No approvals. “Approved by” is a note. Anyone at the keyboard can add or delete entries, and staff cannot ask for TOIL through it.
- No reminders. Nobody is told when hours are about to expire. You see it only when you open the page.
- No history. It does not keep a log of changes. A deleted entry is gone unless you press Undo straight away or have a CSV.
- Not linked to holiday or the rota. It does not check who else is off on the day someone takes their TOIL.
The CSV file
Export saves one line per person and one line per entry, with these columns: Record (person, earned or taken), Person, Date, Hours, Rate, TOIL hours, Approved by, Expires on, Taken from, Note and ID. Dates are saved as YYYY-MM-DD. The file opens in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice. If you edit it there and save it again as CSV, the tracker can still import it, and it reads dates written as DD/MM/YYYY.
Import checks the whole file first. If any line is wrong, nothing is imported, and you see which lines to fix.
When you need more than a tracker
A tracker in one browser suits one person keeping the record. It starts to slip when several managers approve overtime, staff keep asking “how much TOIL have I got?”, and nobody notices hours expiring.
Rotaleave has TOIL built in. An admin switches it on in Settings, and then:
- Staff request TOIL for hours they have worked, on the web or in the iPhone and Android apps.
- Managers approve or decline each request on the Approvals page, and can set an agreed expiry date while approving. Approved hours land in the person’s balance.
- Expiry is set once as a default (“TOIL expires after 30 days”) or as a date on each credit. Staff see an amber “expiring soon” warning for hours that lapse in the next 30 days.
- Booking TOIL works like booking holiday. You choose whether it is taken in hours (in 15-minute steps), half days or full days.
- A negative TOIL limit lets staff borrow a set number of hours. Without one, staff and managers cannot take a balance below zero (admins can override with a reason).
- A TOIL report shows earned, taken, available and expiring hours across the team.
As here, you enter hours after your rate is applied: Rotaleave credits the hours you enter and does not work TOIL out from timesheets. See TOIL tracking software for the overview, and how TOIL works in Rotaleave for the detail. It is free for teams of 10 or fewer, then £5 a month plus £1 for each person over 10; see pricing.
For the rules behind TOIL, including rates, the law and what to put in a policy, read what is TOIL.