Book Time Off is a highly effective annual leave tracker. You can request and approve leave, track it on a calendar, see who's off, and set allowances and other rules. It works with Outlook, Slack and Google Calendar, and it gets you off the broken spreadsheet with 15 versions saved in a folder. Buddy is a whole payroll platform, with a leave tracker alongside payslips, filings and timesheets. If you want to move on from a spreadsheet to something simple and effective, Book Time Off is the one. If you're a larger company with demanding payroll, Buddy might be the better choice.
What Book Time Off does
Book Time Off handles annual leave and nothing else, which is what makes it simple. Staff request time off and managers approve it in a click. Everyone sees the same calendar and wallchart, so two people don't book the same week by accident. You set each person's allowance and the rules around it, and the balance updates itself. Malta's 14 public holidays load in automatically and never come off anyone's allowance. It works with Outlook, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Calendar, and it's a flat €1 per user a month with a 30-day free trial and no card.
What Buddy does
Buddy is a Malta payroll platform. It runs FSS payroll, produces payslips and government filings, tracks timesheets, works entitlement out in hours, and includes leave management alongside all of that. It does far more than track leave, and it's priced and set up for that bigger job. Buddy doesn't publish a price on its pricing page, so you ask for a quote.
Set the allowance in days
In Malta the statutory minimum works out to about 27 days a year for a full-timer, and day to day that is how most teams plan and talk about leave. Book Time Off tracks it in days and half-days, so you set each person's allowance in days and book against it. Holding the balance in hours and running payroll is Buddy's job, not a leave tracker's; our Malta leave calculator converts between days and hours if you ever need the exact figure. (General guidance, not legal advice.)
Side by side
Book Time Off is the highlighted column. Its features are verified in the live product; Buddy's are from its own site, checked on 21 July 2026.
| Feature | Book Time Off €1 / user / mo | Buddy Malta payroll |
|---|---|---|
| Booking and seeing leave | ||
| See who's off (wallchart) | Yes | Leave view in payroll |
| Request & approve | Yes · one-click from email | Yes |
| Half-day bookings | Yes | Yes |
| Record other leave types | Yes · one shared allowance | Yes |
| Malta public holidays loaded automatically | Yes · 14 days, non-deducting | Yes |
| Where the team already works | ||
| Slack (DMs, in-Slack booking, digest) | Yes | No |
| Microsoft Teams & Outlook | Yes | No |
| iCal feeds (Google & Apple) | Yes | No |
| Payroll & statutory (Buddy's job) | ||
| Malta FSS payroll & payslips | No | Yes |
| Entitlement in hours & holiday-in-lieu | No · days & half-days | Yes |
| Timesheets / attendance | No | Yes |
| Price & getting started | ||
| Published price | €1 flat / user / mo | Per employee · not listed |
| Start it yourself | Yes · 30 days free, no card | Sales / onboarding |
Which one to choose
If you want a simple, effective way to handle annual leave and get off a spreadsheet, choose Book Time Off. It's €1 per user a month with a 30-day free trial, so you can try it with your team first. If you're a larger company that needs Malta payroll, payslips, filings and hours-based entitlement, choose Buddy. Some businesses run both: Book Time Off for leave, Buddy for pay. For the wider field, see the Malta leave software guide.
Questions people ask
No, they're different tools. Buddy runs your payroll; Book Time Off tracks your leave. If you only use Buddy to book and approve time off, Book Time Off does that more simply and cheaply. If you rely on Buddy for payroll, keep it, and you can still use Book Time Off for leave alongside it.
It tracks leave in days and half-days, which is how most Maltese teams plan holidays. A full-timer's statutory minimum is about 27 days a year, so you set the allowance in days and book against it. Anything that has to be reconciled in hours, like payroll, stays with Buddy. This is general guidance, not legal advice.
Yes. It loads Malta's 14 public holidays automatically and marks them as days off, so they never come off anyone's allowance. It doesn't do the payroll side of public holidays (adding hours back when one falls on a weekend); that's Buddy's job.
Yes. Keep payroll in Buddy, or with your accountant or bureau, and use Book Time Off for the day-to-day leave: requests, approvals, the calendar and who's off. When payroll needs the figures, you export them as a CSV. There's no automatic sync between the two; you share the record.
Sources, checked 21 July 2026: Book Time Off from the live product; Buddy from buddy.hr; Malta leave from DIER and S.L. 452.87 under the Employment and Industrial Relations Act (Cap. 452). Not legal or payroll advice.