Everyone on your team gets a holiday allowance, and Mucka keeps the running total. Your lads can see what they have left without ringing the office, and booking a week off puts it straight on the diary — so the slot is held, the receptionist won't offer that hour, and nobody books work over it by accident.
What everyone sees
Settings → You → Holiday. Days left is the first thing on the screen, because that is the only reason anybody opens it. Underneath is the sum it came from: the allowance, anything carried over, what has been taken and anything still waiting to be signed off.
Book holiday opens the ordinary appointment form with Holiday already picked. Book the whole stretch as one appointment — Monday to Friday, not five separate days.
There is no separate holiday record anywhere. A booked holiday is a diary appointment, which is what makes the rest of it work: the diary shades it, the phone receptionist stops offering those hours, and booking a job over it warns you first.
Setting it up
Settings → Team → Holiday has three decisions, and they are worth getting right before people start booking, because changing them moves every balance at once.
When your holiday year starts. Everyone's allowance resets on the same day. Most firms use 1 January or 1 April. You can pick any day from the 1st to the 28th of any month.
The default allowance. What everyone gets unless you set a different number on their own card. The legal minimum for a five-day week is 28 days including bank holidays — which is 20 days if you give bank holidays on top. Half days are fine.
Bank holidays. Leave the tick off if your contracts say "plus bank holidays": then a bank holiday inside somebody's week off costs them nothing. Tick it if they say "including bank holidays", and set the allowance to the bigger number. England and Wales dates.
Underneath is the whole team — allowance, taken, waiting, left — which is the bit you actually open this screen for in June.
One person's numbers
Settings → Team → People, then their card. Three fields under Holiday:
- Allowance — leave it blank and they get the account default. Type a number only when this person is different.
- Carried over — days brought forward from last year. It can be a negative number for somebody who overran.
- Already taken — days off from earlier this holiday year that never went on the diary here.
That last one matters more than it looks. If you switch this on in September, Mucka has no idea about the fortnight somebody had in June, and without a number here it will tell them they have their whole allowance left. Put the days in once and the total is right from then on.
How days are counted
Settings → Team → Holiday → Days that come off an allowance is where you say which days of the week cost somebody a day. It opens on the days you are open, so if that is already right you can leave it alone.
Untick a day nobody is contracted for and a day off on it costs nothing. This is not the same as your opening hours, and the difference is the one that catches firms out: plenty of businesses trade on a Saturday morning without putting anybody on a compulsory Saturday rota. If that is you, leave Saturday unticked here and still show it as open under Settings → Business → Details — otherwise a Christmas shutdown across two weekends charges everybody two days they never agreed to.
A firm where Saturday genuinely is a shift should leave it ticked: a Saturday off has to cost a day, or it is a free day nobody is counting.
Days you are closed never count, whatever is ticked.
Bank holidays are free unless you have ticked the box above.
Half days are worked out from how much of the day the booking covers. Nine till one against an eight-to-five day is half a day. Nine till five is a whole day. Blocking out an evening costs nothing, because you weren't working anyway.
When time off needs signing off
If you have switched on "appointments need signing off" (see Diary appointments and reminders), a holiday request comes to you as a card — and it carries the two things you actually need to decide:
- how many days it leaves them, and
- who else is already off over the same stretch, including anyone whose own request you haven't answered yet.
It warns. It never blocks. Two engineers off the same week is normal in January and impossible in June, and only you know which this is.
While it is waiting, the holiday is pencilled into the diary and holding the slot — so nothing gets booked over a week you might still say yes to. Days waiting on sign-off are held back from "days left" rather than counted as taken, so nobody plans around a week nobody has agreed to.
Just ask
You can ask Mucka instead of opening any of it:
- "How many days have I got left?"
- "How much holiday has Dave got?"
- "Who's off in October?"
- "Book me the last week of July off"
Anyone can ask about their own. Asking about somebody else needs permission to manage the team — an engineer asking about Dave gets told to ask you.