An Honest Review of Timetastic Including Screenshots
We owe a lot to Timetastic. They were one of the first to build a truly intuitive and simple holiday and leave tracker so we could finally do away with broken spreadsheets and endless paper holiday request forms.
Why we're telling you this
It was the product we used before we built Book Time Off which was initially an internal tool and has now become an incredible standalone product.
This review is a write up of the market research we did when we built Book Time Off. We trialled every annual leave tracking software we could find and took the best bits of each whilst fixing the consistent pain points we found.
Timetastic was the product we used for our team for years so we knew it well. It's also trusted by thousands of users in the UK and you'll see why.
That said, whilst the product is hard to find fault with, we found ourselves having to pay a premium to access features like single sign-on, company-wide reporting and integrations with Teams.
Like so many SaaS products it's easy to be lured in with a headline price only to find costs escalating when you upgrade to access what should really be standard features.
As you'll see in what follows, we took a lot of inspiration from Timetastic when we launched Book Time Off. Our product is a tribute to what's great about it: simplicity and effectiveness. The difference is that we included all the features at one (lower) price point.
Read on for the full review or trial Book Time Off for free now · cheaper and loaded with premium features.
First impressions
When you first sign up and login to Timetastic, you're met with a simple wallchart landing screen. A horizontal calendar with team down the left and date along the top.
It's a mark of the simplicity that follows throughout and you feel immediately as though you know where you should go next with a few simple options on display.
The thing that also follows throughout is a permanent "click here to add payment details" banner. A mark of the relentless approach to encouraging you to become a paid user that also follows!
We can't fault the sales effort but it can feel a little pushy and we found it to be slightly overwhelming to be met with prompts to pay up before even adding a user.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
By comparison Book Time Off took that same simple landing point (in our case the calendar view) to allow users the space to head exactly where they want to be.
The difference is that we chose to do away with the pushy sales banners. We wanted our trial users to have the space to enjoy a month, genuinely for free, and then sign up because they've enjoyed the product.
Setting up your team
Adding people in Timetastic is a single screen pop-out modal. There's an option to import users from a CSV and otherwise you're asked for name, email, department, start date, leave year start month, annual allowance (in days or hours).
You're also given the option to email the login details as well as upgrade to the first of many pro-features, the accrual system.
It's a simple enough way to add users and does the job. The frustration was that whilst you can choose a department, you can't add one from that screen so it's back to digging around settings for that if you're initially adding users and haven't set up any departments yet.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
Book Time Off levels up by giving users the option to quickly add their departments at this point too. And for companies that aren't quite big enough for full departments, you can assign an avatar colour instead if you prefer to keep it simple.
The other glaring omission from the add user option is the 'approver'. It's great adding someone in a single step but if you've got to trawl through the settings to choose who signs off their leave requests, it suddenly takes away the simplicity.
Book Time Off includes the 'Approver' option to keep it simple. It also includes the option to set up the user as a standard or admin user, another option we felt was missing with Timetastic.
The only remaining gripe is yet another sales pitch, this time in the form of upgrading to a pro-feature (the accrual system). It's no doubt a good feature but a new trial user has now already been sold to twice within a few clicks of landing on the home screen and adding their first user.
We felt that having useful options to assign an approver or add a department were more important to our trial users than being sold to when we made Book Time Off.
Calendar and leave types
Timetastic gives you 8 leave type options straight out of the box (Holiday, Unpaid Leave, Sick, Maternity, Paternity, Meeting, Compassionate and Work From Home). It's comprehensive.
The wallchart option lets you see these for your team at a glance though you land on today with the next 30 days ahead of you rather than seeing a calendar month. Not a major issue and you can move back and forward to get it back to the actual month.
You can filter by department as well as by account type and sorting by names and departments though you'll find that hidden in a filters dropdown at the top left.
It's a genuinely solid and simple layout which you'll get on with.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
When we built Book Time Off we decided to streamline the leave type options to 5 so users can add what they actually use rather than having to delete things they don't.
We also went with the same simple wallchart approach but called it Team (seemed more logical). The difference is the quick options to select department in view (no need for filter dropdowns) and the snap to month rather than today+30 days approach.
Importantly, Book Time Off also uses colours that can be assigned to users, which is far more visually insightful and simple to use than the staple grey we found on Timetastic.
Requests and approvals
Arguably the most important feature on any holiday tracking system, requests on Timetastic need to be simple to make and approvals need to be obvious and efficient to review.
Timetastic does this without fault. A big '+' button allows you to book time off (good name for a product!) and approvers get notified in their inbox as well as via email with one click approval or decline.
The only thing I found a little weird as an admin is that my leave was automatically approved. It's not that I can't approve my own leave, just that being an admin doesn't always mean you don't also have a line manager of your own.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
Book Time Off fixes that with a toggle to auto-approve or send for approval. A simple modification but a practically important one. Otherwise, it's a seamless process that we adopted too.
Settings and admin
This is where so many products let themselves down and Timetastic excels. Again it harks back to the simplicity aspect.
Everything is in the right place and given in non-technical framing so every user from the small business owner to the huge corporate can get what they need quickly.
Of course, they couldn't resist a few more opportunities to upsell here and that's a really common thing throughout. If you're looking for integrations or single sign-on you'll find those behind a pro-wall.
There's also another settings section purely to upgrade you to a wider HR product. The Plans and Billing is also around 70% on screen selling for upgrades too.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
The settings section is genuinely simple and we mimicked it (with a bit of extra tidying) but removed the noise. The beauty of Book Time Off is that there's a single low price point so you're not bombarded with upselling when you're looking to change a setting.
Integrations
Timetastic integrates with Slack, Google and Teams (though you'll need to pay for an upgrade to access Teams).
It's all done very well and they do include an option for API and Webhooks if you have your own developed internal apps.
Can't fault Timetastic on this area though it would be nice if they included the Teams integration without having to pay to upgrade.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
Book Time Off shares all the same integrations with no 'pro' upgrade needed and a lower overall monthly price.
Reporting
You won't realise how important good reporting is until you need it. When you need to reflect on patterns in absence for someone or you're concerned about burnout.
Timetastic gives you the basics in its standard plan (monthly and annual reports) but, again, you'll need to pay extra to get their burnout board, risk alerts and company-wide absence reports.
You'll end up needing them at some point and the jump from £1.20 to £2 per user per month will feel like a lot if your team has grown to the point where it needs reporting tools. By this point it feels too hard to back out and that's where they've hooked you.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
The reports are genuinely useful though and that's why Book Time Off adopted its own reporting suite but, as ever, chose to bundle it in without the need for upgrades.
Pricing
By this point, you'll have noticed a theme. Timetastic is an excellent product but its entry standard level is 20% higher than Book Time Off and with the range of pro-features all pushing you to the £2 per user per month price point, you'll almost inevitably end up at double the price of Book Time Off before too long.
It's the only thing letting them down really. Most of the layout and features are well delivered, efficient and easy to use. So if you don't mind being upsold at every turn and you're prepared to stump up the extra when you need a pro feature then it's definitely one of the best products out there.
Timetastic
Book Time Off
£1 per user per month, flat, with everything in this review included. No Business tier, no Pro tier, no feature you have to pay more to unlock. 30 days free, no card required, same as Timetastic. If your team is on Timetastic's Business plan today, moving to Book Time Off means paying less per person for a flat calendar, real approvals, and integrations Timetastic charges more to unlock.
The bottom line
Honestly, you can't fault Timetastic as a product. It works, it's simple and it's trusted by thousands. That said, it's punchy about selling itself to you and that felt noisy and out of touch to us. Sign up for a trial with them and take it for a spin but do the same with Book Time Off. The difference is subtle but Book Time Off won't shout at you to pay more and you'll get everything included at a lower price.
Give It A Go
You've got nothing to lose from a free trial and we're confident you'll be impressed without being sold to!
Full feature comparison
Timetastic plan features below are taken from their published pricing on 5 June 2026; Book Time Off features are verified in the live product. Book Time Off is the highlighted column.
Everything most UK teams use from Timetastic's £2 Pro plan · SSO, Slack, Teams, Outlook, reporting · for £1.
Being straight about the gaps: burnout alerts, a public API and per-leave-type balance pots are not in Book Time Off today. If you need those, Timetastic Pro has the edge. For everything else, you pay half.
Swipe to see all columns →
| Feature | Book Time Off · £1 / user / mo | Timetastic Basic · £1.20 / user / mo | Timetastic Pro · £2 / user / mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everyday leave management | |||
| Shared calendar & team view (wallchart) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| One-click email approvals | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Custom leave types | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Half-day bookings | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Departments with capacity limits | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| UK bank holidays (GOV.UK feed) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Carry-forward of unused leave | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Group bookings & cancellation | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Blocked / locked dates | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Bulk admin edits | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Integrations, SSO & reporting | |||
| Microsoft 365 single sign-on | ✓ Yes | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Outlook calendar sync | ✓ Yes | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Microsoft Teams notifications | ✓ Yes | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Daily who's-off digest | ✓ Yes · Teams | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| iCal feeds (Google & Apple Calendar) | ✓ Yes | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Slack integration | ✓ Yes · DMs, in-Slack booking, digest, statuses | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Admin reports with CSV export | ✓ Yes | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Absence trend charts & insights | ✓ Yes · month, type & department | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| One-click import from Timetastic | ✓ Yes · XLSX | ✕ No | ✕ No |
| Where Timetastic goes further | |||
| Burnout / leave-not-taken alerts | ✕ No | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Public API | ✕ No | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Separate balance per leave type | ✕ No · one shared allowance | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Day-by-day accrual | ✕ No · fixed allowances | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Per-person work patterns | ✕ No · company-wide week | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| International public holidays | UK & Europe | 3,000+ regions | 3,000+ regions |
| Native iOS / Android apps | Web app (PWA) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Price | |||
| Per user / month | £1 flat | £1.20 | £2 |
Give It A Go
You've got nothing to lose from a free trial and we're confident you'll be impressed without being sold to!