Mark daily attendance with dropdown codes. Track CL, SL, and EL balances automatically. Get a month-end summary with payable days, absent days, and attendance percentage. Works for restaurants, retail, offices, factories, clinics, and more.
Day-by-day attendance for up to 50 employees. Select from 13 dropdown codes: P, A, HD, WO, H, CL, SL, EL, CO, LWP, ML, PL, OD. Colour-coded cells make it easy to spot absences and leaves at a glance.
Opening balance, leaves used, and closing balance for CL, SL, and EL per employee. Negative balances get flagged in red automatically. Tracks LWP days and annual attendance percentage.
Present days, absent days, leaves taken, LWP, attendance percentage, late marks, OT hours, and payable days. All auto-calculated. Attendance below 85% is highlighted in red.
Set annual quotas for each leave type. Defaults follow Indian labour law: 15 EL (Factories Act, Section 79), 7 CL, 7 SL. Includes carry-forward rules and legal references for each type.
50-employee capacity with department, designation, phone, date of joining, weekly off, shift assignment, and status tracking. Dropdown validations for every field keep data clean.
Step-by-step setup guide with complete Indian leave law references. Covers Factories Act, Shops & Establishments Act, Maternity Benefit Act, weekly off rules, and record-keeping requirements.
Your cook didn't show up today. Was he on approved leave? Does he have any casual leave left? Nobody's sure, because the attendance register is a notebook stuffed in a drawer.
Sound familiar? Most Indian SMEs with 10-50 employees still track attendance on paper. Or worse, they don't track it at all. The result: salary day turns into a guessing game. HR spends hours calling managers, checking WhatsApp messages, and reconciling who was present when.
The real cost isn't just the time spent counting days. It's the disputes. An employee says they took 2 sick leaves, the manager remembers 3. With no records, there's no way to settle it. Under the Shops & Establishments Act, employers are legally required to maintain an attendance register. During labour inspections, missing records can lead to penalties.
Indian leave law adds another layer. The Factories Act, 1948 (Section 79) mandates 15 earned leave days per year. The Maternity Benefit Act (amended 2017) requires 26 weeks of paid leave. State-level Shops & Establishments Acts add CL and SL quotas that vary from 7 to 12 days depending on the state. Tracking all of this on paper, honestly, is a recipe for errors.
This tracker replaces the notebook with a structured Excel sheet. Mark attendance with dropdown codes. Leave balances calculate automatically. Month-end summaries give you payable days in one click. It won't replace a full payroll system, but it'll keep you organised and compliant until you're ready for one. If you also need to plan weekly shifts, check out the Staff Shift Schedule Template.
Here's a preview of what you'll get inside:
Average absenteeism rate across Indian SMEs. For a 30-person team with average daily wages of ₹500, that's ₹22,500 per month in lost productivity. Tracking attendance is the first step to reducing it.
Source: Directional estimate based on India Labour Bureau data and industry surveysMinimum earned leave per year mandated by the Factories Act, 1948 (Section 79). Employees earn 1 day for every 20 days worked. Not providing this, or not tracking it, is a compliance violation.
Source: Factories Act, 1948, Section 79Fine for not maintaining proper attendance records under the Shops & Establishments Act in many states. Labour inspectors can ask for records going back 3 years. Registers must include daily hours and leave.
Source: State Shops & Establishments Acts (penalty varies by state)Without a documented leave policy, every leave request turns into a negotiation. Employees don't know their entitlements. Managers approve inconsistently. Put CL, SL, EL quotas in writing. This template includes a configurable Leave Policy sheet as a starting point.
EL isn't granted on day one. Under the Factories Act (Section 79), an employee must work 240 days in a year to qualify for 15 EL the next year. Many businesses grant all 15 EL upfront, which creates issues if the employee leaves early. Use a leave encashment calculator to estimate the payout liability.
CL and SL quotas vary by state. Maharashtra's Shops & Establishments Act provides 8 days SL. Karnataka provides 12. Delhi provides 12 CL. Using a generic policy across all states puts you at compliance risk.
A soggy notebook or a torn register is all it takes to lose 6 months of attendance data. Maintain digital records (this template, for instance) alongside any physical register. Keep backups on cloud storage.
An employee who took approved CL and an employee who didn't show up without notice are very different situations. Using a single "Absent" code for both means you can't identify patterns of unauthorised absenteeism. For field teams, field employee tracking apps add GPS verification on top of attendance codes.
If salary is processed without checking attendance, you might pay for days an employee wasn't present. Or worse, deduct for days they were. Always reconcile attendance before payroll runs. The Monthly Summary sheet here gives you payable days per employee.
The Maternity Benefit Act (amended 2017) provides 26 weeks of paid leave for the first two children. Not factoring this into leave tracking, or treating it as LWP, is a legal violation. This tracker includes ML and PL as distinct codes. Read more about comp off leave rules and carry-forward policies in India.
| Aspect | Paper / Manual | With This Tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Month-end tally time | 2-4 hours for 30 employees | Instant, auto-calculated |
| Leave balance accuracy | Manual counting, frequent errors | Auto-calculated from opening balance |
| Leave types tracked | Usually just "leave" or "absent" | 13 distinct codes (CL, SL, EL, ML, etc.) |
| Attendance percentage | Not calculated | Auto-calculated per employee + team average |
| Compliance readiness | Paper register, no backup | Digital record with leave policy documentation |
| Payable days calculation | Guesswork on salary day | Present + approved leaves = payable days, auto-calculated |
| Dispute resolution | "I don't remember" situations | Clear records with date-wise entries |
Download the free Attendance & Leave Tracker and know everyone's payable days in seconds.
Petpooja is India's leading SME business software suite, trusted by 1,50,000+ businesses across restaurants, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. From billing and payroll to task management and procurement, Petpooja helps Indian businesses run better, every day.
Petpooja Payroll tracks attendance with biometric and face recognition hardware (works with oily/wet fingerprints in kitchens and factories). Leave balances sync directly with salary calculation. No more spreadsheets.
