Best Vacation Tracker for Real Estate Teams (2026)

Seventy percent of REALTORS® get no paid vacation or sick days at all. That’s from NAR’s 2026 Member Profile. It’s what you’d expect when 86% of members are independent contractors. On the brokerage side, NAR’s 2025 Profile of Real Estate Firms found 91% of firms offer no vacation or sick days to their contractor agents.

So most “vacation tracker” software, built to count accrued days against a balance, is counting something your agents don’t have.

This guide argues one thing. A real estate team doesn’t have an accrual problem. It has a coverage problem. When an agent goes to the beach, nobody’s balance goes down. What goes wrong is that leads keep arriving, showings keep getting requested and clients keep calling, and nobody decided who answers. The tool that fixes that is mostly the CRM you already pay for, plus a shared calendar. A real PTO tracker is for the handful of people on your team who are actually on payroll.

Below: the away switch in each major real estate CRM, how to hand over what that switch doesn’t cover, and the eight trackers worth using for W-2 staff, with prices we checked on each vendor’s own site on 24 September 2026 and again on 15 October 2026.

What’s changed (October 2026): none of the 9 published prices here moved in three weeks (six trackers and three CRMs). Two things did change. Jibble’s pricing address now redirects to its homepage, which calls the product “100% free”, while its help centre still describes a 14-day trial and paid seats. And when we asked Gemini on 15 October for the best vacation tracker for a real estate team, it recommended Vacation Tracker but linked vacationtracker.com, a different company from the vacationtracker.io priced below. Check the address before you sign up.

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The short answer

Who’s going away	What you need	Use
A 1099 agent on a team with lead routing	An away switch in the CRM	Follow Up Boss Pause Leads, Lofty or BoldTrail Vacation Mode, and the others below
Any agent	A named covering agent and a written split	A one-page coverage agreement (template below)
Everyone	One place that shows who’s out	Google Calendar Out of office or Outlook Automatic Replies
Up to 10 W-2 staff	A free PTO tracker	Connecteam (free to 10 users) or Day Off (free to 10 users)
More than 10 W-2 staff	A paid PTO tracker	Timetastic (from $1.50/user) or Vacation Tracker (from $1.83/user)
W-2 staff you already pay through payroll	Accruals tied to pay	Gusto or BambooHR

The planner above builds this list for your own team: your CRM’s exact setting, and whether you need a tracker at all.

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Why accrual software is the wrong place to start

Paid time off is a benefit an employer grants an employee. Most agents aren’t employees, for two separate reasons.

The tax code says so. Under IRC §3508, a licensed real estate agent who is paid on output rather than hours, under a written contract saying they’re not an employee, is a “statutory nonemployee”. The IRS puts it plainly: such agents “are treated as self-employed for all federal tax purposes.” (That’s the federal tax test. State labor law has its own tests.)

No law requires paid vacation anyway. The Department of Labor: “The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations” (DOL). Paid vacation is a matter of agreement. About 18 states plus DC require paid sick leave for employees (DOL Women’s Bureau, as of December 2024). Those laws cover your W-2 staff, not your 1099 agents.

An agent on r/realtors put it better than the statute does:

“This isn’t a traditional job where you ask your Broker for vacation time… they aren’t paying your bills.” (r/realtors)

The broker doesn’t approve the time off and nothing accrues. The broker’s only real stake is that the business keeps being answered.

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What actually goes wrong when an agent is away

Leads go unanswered. And that’s already the norm before anyone leaves town.

Mike DelPrete ran more than 100 secret shops across 25+ brokerages in 2024. Of the inquiries sent through brokerage websites, nearly half got no reply at all, and the average response took 8 hours 17 minutes. Every one of those inquiries went out on a weekday, during business hours, while agents were nominally at work. The WAV Group found the same thing with 2013 data: 48% of buyer inquiries never answered.

Speed matters because leads decay fast. The Harvard Business Review study of 1.25 million leads found firms that tried to make contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that waited even an hour longer. (It measured a meaningful conversation with the decision-maker, not closed sales, and none of the 42 companies were in real estate.)

Now take the agent out of the office for a week. One r/realtors thread titled “The vacation curse is true” sums it up:

“Agents often lose clients because they can’t be available 24/7/365 and the clients won’t wait and call whoever is available.” (r/realtors)

That’s the thing to manage. Coverage has four parts: routing, handover, the calendar, and a tracker only if you have payroll. In that order.

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Part 1: Your CRM’s away switch

If your team routes leads through a CRM, that CRM is your most important vacation tool, and you already own it. We checked every major real estate CRM’s help centre for a way to take an agent out of routing. All of them have one. They differ in who can flip it, and whether it turns itself back on. (Still choosing a CRM? Here’s how they compare on price, contracts and what happens to your data when you leave.)

CRM	The setting	Who sets it	Turns itself back on?	Published price
Follow Up Boss	Pause Leads	An admin (Admin › Teams)	No, stays paused until unticked	From $69/user/mo (pricing)
Lofty	Vacation Mode + Working Hours	The agent, or an owner/admin	No dates in the docs	Quote only
BoldTrail (kvCORE)	Vacation Mode, with start and end dates	The agent, in their profile	Yes, if you give it an end date	Quote only
Sierra Interactive	Lead Routing Availability	Managers only	No scheduling in the docs	From $299.95/mo on a 12-month term (pricing)
Real Geeks	Round Robin Availability	Admin, team leader, or the agent with permission	No dates in the docs	$399/mo incl. 2 users, plus a $500 setup fee (pricing)
KW Command	Pause Leads, with start/end dates or indefinite	Whoever manages lead routing	Yes, with dates	KW’s own platform
CINC	On Vacation status	A broker account	No, but it re-weights the agent to catch up	Quote only

Two details are worth knowing before you rely on these.

Only BoldTrail and KW Command let you set an end date. Everywhere else someone has to remember to switch the agent back on. Put the return date on the team calendar as its own event.

CINC is the only one that makes up the lost share afterwards. When an agent returns to Active, CINC’s routing “weights them more heavily” until they’ve caught up on their share of leads. On the others, a week away is a week of leads that went to someone else for good. That’s usually fine, but tell your agents before they find out from the lead report.

What the switch doesn’t do

Every one of these pauses stops new leads that come through routing. The docs are explicit that the rest still reaches the agent:

• In Follow Up Boss, leads that come in on the agent’s own lead email, Google or API connections are not paused.
• In BoldTrail, agent-owned leads still arrive, and the help article itself tells agents to “work out coverage with another Agent.”
• In Sierra, pausing doesn’t touch the agent’s tracking links, subdomains, ponds or single-property sites.

And none of them hands over the agent’s active clients, scheduled showings or pending deals. That’s still a person’s job.

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Part 2: The handover (what software can’t do)

This is the part that goes wrong, and it goes wrong the same way every time: nothing was agreed until after it mattered. One r/realtors thread from September 2026 is a dispute over 18 days of cover that nobody priced in advance. Moderators removed it.

Agents describe roughly four arrangements:

1. Pay per showing. “I typically offer $50 if it’s in town” (r/realtors). One agent pays “$100… to cover 3-5 days” just to be on standby (r/realtors).
2. A referral split if the covering agent writes the deal. On forums the number people quote most is around 25–30%. It is not a standard, and commission is always negotiable. Settle the number between the two agents. The brokerage then pays it out, because the commission belongs to the brokerage (r/RealEstate).
3. Reciprocal cover, no money. “I don’t take her clients or her commission, but I do showings and write offers for her while she’s gone. And she does the same for me” (r/RealEstate). It works as long as both sides actually return the favour.
4. Be on a team. “You really should have taken this one on as a team, knowing you would be gone” (r/realtors).

Our view: for a team, write a one-page coverage agreement once and reuse it. It needs five lines:

• Who covers, with their phone number going to clients.
• Dates, matching the CRM pause and the calendar event.
• What’s covered: showings, inspections, offers, new leads that come in personally.
• What it pays: per showing, and what happens if the covering agent writes a contract.
• Handback: a 15-minute call on the day you return, deal by deal.

Then do what one agent recommends and introduce the covering agent to your listing clients in person before you leave (r/realtors). A client who has met the backup doesn’t call around.

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Part 3: Tell people you’re out

This is the only part of “vacation tracking” that everyone on a real estate team needs, and it’s free.

• Google Workspace: add an Out of office event in Google Calendar. It “automatically declines” meetings during the event and shows on the calendars of anyone who can see yours. It needs a work or school account.
• Microsoft 365: set Outlook Automatic Replies with a date range, and “this will turn off automatic replies at the date and time you enter.” Name the covering agent in the reply.
• Slack: you can schedule a status in advance and pause notifications until it clears. It’s a signal, though, not a record, so the dates still belong on the calendar.

Make one shared “Team — Out” calendar and have everyone put their dates on it. For a team of 1099 agents, that calendar is the vacation tracker. It costs nothing, and it’s where the broker looks before a big listing appointment.

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Part 4: The 8 best vacation trackers, for your W-2 staff

Your transaction coordinator, office admin and inside sales agent are probably employees. They may accrue paid time off, and some states require you to track their sick leave. That’s what these tools are for. We ordered them from the smallest team up.

1. Connecteam: best free option for a small office

connecteam.com

The Small Business plan is free for up to 10 users, with every hub included and up to 9 time-off balance policies. That covers most small brokerages outright: agents and staff on one calendar, with real balances for the staff. Past 10 users, time off sits in the HR & Skills hub: Basic is $29/mo billed yearly ($35 monthly) for the first 30 users, Advanced $49/$59, Expert $99/$119. Accrual caps start on Advanced. There’s a 14-day trial.

Choose it if you want one free app for scheduling and time off, and your whole team is under 11 people.

2. Day Off: best free calendar-style tracker

day-off.app

Free forever for up to 10 users, but the free plan has no accruals, carryover or integrations. That’s fine for a team whose only real need is “who’s out.” Pro is $2/seat/month with a $20 monthly minimum and adds accruals plus Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack and Teams sync. It ranks #2 on Google for both “pto tracker” and “employee vacation tracker,” which says something about how many teams want exactly this.

Choose it if you want a clean who’s-out view and nobody on your team accrues anything.

3. Timetastic: cheapest per-user paid plan

timetastic.co.uk

Business is $1.50/user/month, Pro $2.50, and Rota & Time Clock $5.50, month to month with no minimum stated. Slack and Google Workspace work on Business and Pro. Microsoft Teams and accruals are Pro only. There’s a 30-day trial, no card.

Choose it if you’ve outgrown the free plans, work in Slack or Google, and want the lowest bill.

4. Vacation Tracker: best if the team lives in Slack or Teams

vacationtracker.io

The #1 result for “vacation tracker.” It runs inside Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace on both plans. Core is $2/user/month ($1.83 billed yearly); Complete is $4 ($3.67 yearly). Accruals are on Complete only. Note the minimum: teams of 1–25 are billed as 25 users, so Core starts at $550 a year. There’s no free plan, whatever the page title still says; the help centre lists two paid plans. There’s a 14-day trial with no card.

Choose it if you have 25+ people on Microsoft Teams, where it’s the strongest option here.

(vacationtracker.com, which ranks #2 for the same search, is a different company. Gemini mixed the two up when we asked it in October, so check the address.)

5. Gusto: if your staff are already on Gusto payroll

gusto.com

Gusto isn’t a vacation tracker. It’s payroll that tracks PTO policies, which is the right place for accrued leave, because accrued leave is a payroll liability. Simple is $49/month + $6/person, Plus $80 + $12, Premium $180 + $22. Accrual policies (by hours worked or a fixed amount) run on all three. Companies joining on Simple on or after 31 August 2026 get accrual-based policies only; unlimited PTO needs Plus or Premium.

Choose it if your W-2 staff are already paid through Gusto. Don’t track their balances anywhere else.

6. BambooHR: for a brokerage with a real HR function

bamboohr.com

Pricing is published: a flat rate from $250/month for 25 employees or fewer, then Core $10, Pro $17 and Elite $25 per employee per month above that. Core includes time-off requests, accruals and approvals. That’s a lot of software for a team of six; it fits a multi-office brokerage with dozens of salaried staff.

7. Jibble: free, but check the plan

jibble.io

Jibble markets leave tracking as free for unlimited users, and Google’s AI Overview cites it heavily for “best vacation tracker software.” But its own plans help article puts accrual policies and leave balances on the paid Premium plan, and it doesn’t publish paid prices on its site. Its /pricing address now redirects to the homepage, which calls Jibble “100% free”, while its help centre still says new accounts “automatically start with a 14-day free trial”. Try the free plan, and confirm in the app which features you actually get before you depend on them.

8. A spreadsheet: fine until it isn’t

“Vacation tracker excel” gets 210 searches a month for a reason. For two or three W-2 staff, a sheet is enough. There’s a layout in the FAQ below. It stops working when someone needs to request time off without emailing you, or when a state sick-leave rule means you have to show a record.

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Where Reallyo fits (and doesn’t)

Reallyo doesn’t make a vacation tracker, and nothing above is ours. What we make is relevant to Part 1’s gap, though. Pausing routing stops new leads going to you, but buyers still land on your listings at 10pm, and nobody answers them. AgentAI, Reallyo’s real estate chatbot, ships with every Reallyo agent website. It answers visitors’ questions from your own listings, qualifies them and captures their name, email and phone number, whether you’re in the office or in Aruba. The covering agent still has to follow up, but starts with the buyer’s details instead of a missed message. Here’s how to add it to your site.

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What we’d do, by team size

• Solo agent: no tracker. Set one reciprocal cover partner with a written split, set your email auto-reply, and put your dates on the brokerage calendar.
• A team of 2–10 with lead routing: use the CRM away switch, the one-page coverage agreement and a shared “Team — Out” calendar. If you have even one W-2 employee, add Connecteam free for them. At under 11 people you can put the whole team on it.
• A brokerage with more than 10 W-2 staff: everything above, plus Timetastic (Slack/Google) or Vacation Tracker (Microsoft Teams) for their balances. Budget $1.50–$3.67 per staff member. The agents still only need the calendar.
• Staff on payroll already: track their balances in Gusto or BambooHR, where the liability lives, and keep the calendar for everyone else.

For more on the lead side of this, see real estate lead generation.

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FAQ

Do real estate agents get paid vacation? Mostly not. In NAR’s 2026 Member Profile, 70% of REALTORS® said they do not receive paid vacation or sick days, and only 4% get them from their firm. 86% are independent contractors, and the IRS treats licensed agents paid on commission under a written contract as self-employed.

Who covers my listings and showings while I’m on vacation? A covering agent you name in advance, usually someone on your team or at your brokerage. Agree the dates, what they cover and what they’re paid (per showing, or a negotiated referral split if they write a deal) in writing, and introduce them to your listing clients before you leave.

What is the best app for tracking vacation days? For a real estate team, a shared calendar (Google Calendar Out of office or Outlook Automatic Replies) is enough for 1099 agents. For W-2 staff, Connecteam and Day Off are free up to 10 users. Timetastic ($1.50/user) and Vacation Tracker ($1.83/user billed yearly) suit bigger teams.

Is there a free vacation tracker available? Yes. Connecteam’s Small Business plan is free for up to 10 users and includes time-off balance policies. Day Off is free forever for up to 10 users but has no accruals on the free plan. Google Calendar’s Out of office event is free with a work account.

What is the best employee vacation tracker? It depends on where the team works: Timetastic is the cheapest per user on Slack or Google Workspace, and Vacation Tracker is the strongest inside Microsoft Teams. If your employees are already paid through Gusto or BambooHR, track their balances there, because accrued leave is a payroll liability.

How do most companies track PTO? Through payroll or HR software that accrues leave against hours or a fixed schedule, since the balance is money owed. The BLS reports 80% of private-industry workers have access to paid vacation. Most real estate agents are among the exceptions, because they aren’t employees.

Is Vacation Tracker legit? Yes. Vacation Tracker (vacationtracker.io) is a paid leave-management tool with published pricing, a 14-day free trial and listings in Slack’s and Microsoft’s app marketplaces. It has no free plan. vacationtracker.com is a separate company with a similar name.

How do I make a PTO tracker in Excel? Make one row per employee with columns for annual allowance, days carried over, and days taken each month, then a balance column (allowance + carryover − the sum of days taken). Add a second sheet that logs each request with dates and an approved flag. A spreadsheet works for two or three employees. Move to software once people need to request time off themselves.

Is 20 days of PTO a lot? It’s above the US average. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ December 2022 data, private-industry workers averaged 11 paid vacation days after one year, 15 after five, 18 after ten, and 20 only after twenty years of service.

Can my CRM stop sending me leads while I’m away? Yes, all the major real estate CRMs can. Follow Up Boss has Pause Leads, Lofty and BoldTrail have Vacation Mode, Sierra has Lead Routing Availability, Real Geeks has Round Robin Availability, KW Command has Pause Leads and CINC has an On Vacation status. Only BoldTrail and KW Command document an end date that switches it back on automatically.

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Sources

• NAR, 2026 Member Profile press release and full report (Exhibit 4-2, contractor status; Exhibit 4-5, paid vacation/sick days)
• NAR, 2025 Profile of Real Estate Firms (benefits offered to independent-contractor agents)
• IRS, Statutory nonemployees; 26 U.S.C. §3508
• US Department of Labor, Vacation leave; Women’s Bureau, Paid leave
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Paid leave access, March 2025; Paid vacation days, December 2022
• Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads, Harvard Business Review, March 2011
• Mike DelPrete, Secret Shopping: 47% of Online Property Inquiries Are Ignored, August 2024
• WAV Group, Agent Responsiveness Study, January 2014
• CRM help centres: Follow Up Boss, Lofty, BoldTrail, Sierra Interactive, Real Geeks, KW Command, CINC
• Tracker pricing, from each vendor’s own page, checked 24 September 2026 and 15 October 2026: Connecteam, Day Off, Timetastic, Vacation Tracker, Gusto, BambooHR
• Agent comments on coverage: r/realtors and r/RealEstate threads linked inline. These are anecdotes, not a survey.