Questions and answers

Companies of about 5 to 250 people that have no HR software: warehouses, light manufacturing, distribution, landscaping, HVAC, the trades. Usually one office manager keeps a PTO spreadsheet and a paper calendar shows who's off. PTO Fox replaces those two things.

If you already run Gusto, BambooHR, Rippling or similar, you probably have this covered.

No. Payroll stays the system of record for what people are owed and paid. PTO Fox is the daily ledger that sits between the calendar and payroll: what was taken, by whom, when, with the balance worked out as you go. You export what payroll needs.

It is not a time clock, a scheduler or a timesheet system either.

Either, per person. Hourly people are tracked in quarter hours; salaried people can be tracked in days, half days and quarter days. Everything is stored in hours underneath, so the two mix on one calendar and in one export.

Only the ones who want to request time off and see their balance themselves. Everyone else is recorded by a manager and never signs in. A whole warehouse can run that way while the front office self-serves. Employees with an email are notified when their request is decided.

A self-service employee gets an invitation by email, opens it, and is in: no code to type and no password to remember. Any email works, personal or work; there is nothing to install. Signing in later is an email code, or a password if they choose to set one.

It depends on your policy and your size, and the setup guides you through it. It asks your policy in plain questions, takes your holidays (the US federal ones in one click), your groups, and your people pasted from the spreadsheet you keep. Each person's balance for the year is computed from that. If you are adopting mid-year, you enter what everyone has used so far, in one table.

A flat monthly price by company size, never per person: everyone counts the same, login or not, and only people who work for you today count. Someone who leaves is marked as left; their history stays, and they stop counting that day. Six plans from 25 to 250 people, starting at $19 a month, each with every feature and a 30-day free trial; the pricing page has them. We'll never charge you more for a feature someone else gets. Prices are before sales tax, which is added where it applies and shown on its own line of the bill. Over 250 people, contact us.

Your billing month starts the day your 30-day trial ends, so it is your own month, not the calendar's. On the first day of each billing month we look at how many people you have on that day and charge the plan for that size. People you add during the month are not charged for until the next billing month begins; people who leave stop counting the same way. Nothing is prorated and nothing is billed mid-month.

Everything. Every feature is on for the whole 30 days, on every plan; nothing is held back for later. We want you to run a real month in PTO Fox, requests, approvals, the calendar on the door and the export for payroll, and decide on what you saw. The 30 days are free. If you keep going past them, your card is charged the flat price for your company's size, as the pricing page shows, and nothing you entered is lost. Cancel before they end and nothing is charged at all.

So that, if PTO Fox works for you, your first month follows the trial without a gap or a second sign-up. Nothing is charged during the 30 days. An admin can cancel any time before they end, under Settings, Billing, and then nothing is charged at all; you also get a reminder by email a week before the trial ends.

Payments are taken by Stripe, on its own secure page. PTO Fox never sees or stores your card number. Receipts and invoices come from Stripe, with any sales tax on its own line, and an admin can see them and change the card under Settings, Billing. If a payment is declined, Stripe tries the card again for about a week while PTO Fox keeps working.

No. Make as many people admins as you like, at no charge; there is no limit. The price is by company size only, and an admin counts as one person like everyone else.

Yes, in two steps. First the people: paste them straight from the sheet, or choose a CSV file, and names, hire dates, groups, positions, approvers and emails are picked up from the columns. Then the history: paste the sheet's dated rows, a name, a date, the hours or days, and each person's ledger shows the whole year. If you only know totals, enter what each person has used so far in one table instead.

Starting a sheet from scratch? Our templates have the columns PTO Fox reads and a few example rows to type over.

People template (CSV)History template (CSV)

In a database in the United States, reachable only by the server. Each company's data is its own; a member of one company holds no access to another by any route. Inside your company, admins see everything, a manager sees the people under them, and an employee sees their own balance plus names and dates on the company calendar, never anyone else's amounts or notes.

What we store, and what we don't, is in the Privacy Policy. You can export everything to CSV any time and ask us to delete your company's data.

Yes. Cancel anytime; there is no contract. An admin opens Settings, Billing, and presses Cancel plan: the plan runs to the end of the month you have paid for, or to the end of the free trial, and nothing more is charged. Changed your mind before then? Press Keep PTO Fox in the same place, and the cancellation is undone with nothing charged early. After that PTO Fox is paused for your company: your data is kept, and an admin can start the plan again. Export what you need to CSV first (Settings, Export), and ask us to delete the rest. A paused company is kept for 12 months; we email its admins 30 days before deleting it.

Press Start free trial and create your account. Name your company and say roughly how many people work there, then add a card: your 30-day trial starts at once, and nothing is charged until it ends. From there setup walks you through policy, holidays, groups and people, one step at a time. Over 250 people? Contact us first.

Open PTO Fox in any browser, nothing to install. On My time off, pick the first and last day (and, if your company keeps vacation and sick time apart, which one it is), and your balance after and any coverage clash show before you send. Your approver gets an email, and you get one with the decision. You can withdraw a request while it is still pending. Approved time off you no longer need: press Cancel days and pick the days; days still ahead are cancelled at once and your approver is told, and a day that has already passed goes to your approver with your reason.

Your company's policy grants an amount for the year based on your hire date and years of service, sometimes in several pieces (vacation and sick time, for example). What you have taken this year is subtracted; an adjustment by an admin, with its reason, is added or subtracted. The pieces are listed under your balance.

If your balance says a piece was set by an admin, an admin typed an amount for you that differs from the policy; ask them if it looks wrong.

Most companies have a probation period, often 90 days, during which no time off is granted. When it ends, a first-year amount is granted, prorated for the part of the year that remains. Your screen says when probation ends.

Yes, for everything. Every action on your company's account is logged with who did it and when: a day recorded or approved, a balance adjusted, a person added or deactivated, a policy saved, an invitation sent, a file exported. What PTO Fox does on its own is logged too, as PTO Fox: the grant it works out when a policy changes or someone reaches a step-up. An admin reads the log under Settings, Activity, filters it by person, and downloads it as CSV. Entries in the log are never edited or deleted.

Entries are never edited, so the ledger always matches what payroll was told. If a day did not happen at all, cancel it (below). If too little was recorded, record a new entry for the difference; if too much, an admin adds an adjustment with a reason. Each shows in the ledger with who did it and why.

Open their ledger (click their name on the calendar), press Cancel days, tick the days and press Cancel. It works for time you recorded and for requests you approved, for anyone you approve for. The days leave the calendar and the hours go back to their balance; the lines stay in the ledger, struck through, with who cancelled them and why. A day that has already passed needs a reason, since it may already be in a payroll export. If the person signs in, they get an email.

Employees can cancel their own approved days too, from My time off: days still ahead go at once and you are told; a day already passed comes to you to approve.

Yes, if they sign in. When a manager or admin records time off for someone, one email per save tells them the days, the amount, your note and their balance after it; the same goes when you cancel days for them. People who never sign in get nothing, and nobody is emailed about time they recorded for themselves. Opening balances and an imported history send nothing.

The person's position has a limit on how many can be off at once, and this day would go over it. It is a warning, never a block: a manager can approve anyway, with a note saying why.

On the calendar, pick the group and the month, then Print for the door: one month, three months or twelve, starting with the month on screen. Each month comes out as its own landscape page with just the calendar. To jump to another month, click the month's name between the arrows.

Check spam first; it comes from Clerk, our sign-in provider. On the People page, the person's row shows whether they are invited or have signed in, and you can revoke and send the invitation again. An employee can also sign in directly with the email address you entered and accept the invitation on the first screen.

Ten minutes. Type your email address, press Continue, and a code comes by email; it works for 10 minutes. The countdown beside Send a new code is only the wait before you can ask for another one, not the time the code lasts.

Rather use a password? Set one from the account menu, the round button at the top right of PTO Fox: Manage account, then Security, then Set password. Next time, press Continue, then choose “Use your password or another way”.

A manager sees and acts for the people assigned to them as approver, and the people under those, down the chain. If someone is missing, open their row on the People page and check who their approver is.

No. Each person is assigned one approver, and that is who sees and decides their requests. An admin can always approve as well, whatever the approver field says, so a request is never stuck while the approver is out: another admin approves it. If a manager will be away for a stretch, an admin can name a substitute with from and to dates, and the substitute sees and decides for that manager's people until the dates pass.

Yes. In Settings, Policy, the question Unused time at the end of the year takes the most someone may carry into next year, in days or hours. Enter 0 if unused time is lost on December 31. At the new year, each person's unused time up to that amount is carried into their new balance and shows on their ledger as a carryover line; the rest is gone. Every employee sees the rule on My time off beside what they have left.

If you keep vacation and sick time as separate balances, each type can have its own rule: in Settings, Time off, edit the type and fill in Unused at the end of the year. A type left blank follows the policy.

Yes, two CSV files with the columns PTO Fox reads and three example rows: one for your people, one for the time off they have already taken. Open one in Excel or Google Sheets, type over the examples, save it as CSV, and choose it on the People page under Import (or Import history for the second). Only a name is required for a person; leave out any column you don't use.

People template (CSV)History template (CSV)

On the People page, press Opening balances. One table lists everyone hired before you started here who has no opening yet: enter what each has used so far this year, then save them all at once. If nobody had used anything, say so with the button under the table. Once set, a balance is corrected from the ledger with an adjustment.

From inside PTO Fox, the help icon at the top of every screen opens a form that comes to us with your company already filled in. Otherwise email support@ptofox.com. We read everything, and we answer, usually within one business day.