Mediaburst develops Timetastic app to help SMEs schedule staff holidays

Holiday requests are made using the book time off tab, with the system automatically emailing ‘the boss’. When the request has been approved it automatically updates the system and emails employees back.

Mediaburst created the dashboard with simplicity in mind, with authorised staff holidays displayed on an online wall chart so administrators can view days booked and avoid holiday clashes.

Employees can also view their own calendar to review days booked and see how many days they have left to take. An ICS feed also links it to Outlook, iCal or Google Calendars.

The system was created to tailor to each company’s needs - including company name, holiday allowance allocation per employee and the days of the week each employee works.

Company heads can group people in departments and allocate a different or additional administrator who will approve requests for leave.

In addition, there are different categories for different types of days off - such as maternity, paternity and sick leave and bank holidays are automatically added.

Gary Bury, managing director of Mediaburst who created the system, said: “As managing director at Mediaburst, I was put in charge of managing and recording everyone’s annual leave. What an unbelievable amount of messing around, passing papers from person to person, waiting for a decision, scrabbling around to see who was also off on that day - just to take a day off. But I knew this was normal for small businesses.”

He went on to explain the decision to build Timetastic: “I looked around to see what systems were out there and found a handful of applications, but I found them complex, expensive, poorly designed and littered with unnecessary functionality. Aimed more towards helping you manage your entire HR department, none of them felt like they were for “us”, a small business.

So we built Timetastic.”