A sick leave tracker that keeps the right records separate

Start with the employee's sick-time record, not an attendance score. The useful questions are what they have earned, what they have used, and how to record the absence without broadcasting personal medical information.

Track sick days separately from PTO used for vacation¶

Give sick time its own leave type when its rules differ from vacation. Keep the earning rule, available balance, carryover, and permitted usage together. A distinct ledger lets the person handling payroll explain a sick-time movement without reconstructing which entries in a combined vacation bank were actually taken for a protected purpose.

A combined PTO plan can satisfy a sick-leave law when it meets that law's conditions; separation isn't universally mandatory. New Jersey's labor department explains both approaches and the additional conditions that apply to a combined plan.

For everyday recordkeeping, collect employee, leave type, dates or hours, status, and balance movement. Keep diagnoses out of a general request note and out of the team availability channel.

State paid sick-leave accrual baselines¶

Use the state source to identify the standard accrual rate and the kind of limit involved before configuring a ledger. An annual earning limit, annual use limit, and total bank limit are different controls. The table separates them so a carryover balance doesn't accidentally stop earnings that the law still requires.

Checked October 27, 2026. Hours are used throughout. These are statewide baseline accrual routes for covered workers; eligibility exclusions, local ordinances, and alternative front-loading arrangements can change application.

Keep broader any-reason paid-leave programs distinct from sick-leave-specific laws:

This is general US information, not legal advice. The table isn't a complete eligibility, local-law, or payroll-administration guide.

Keep the statutory hourly ledger exact¶

Use actual hours worked when the earning rule is tied to work, and keep sick hours earned and used in the same unit. For example, 120 worked hours at a one-for-30 rate earns four sick hours. That equals half an eight-hour day, but the underlying record is still four hours.

Keep the authoritative statutory-hours ledger in payroll or timekeeping. Cabana uses day-based balances; its period-based accrual isn't an actual-hours-worked feed.

Give sick day tracking a private, practical workflow¶

Make reporting an unexpected absence easy and keep its medical explanation separate from shared availability. Employees need a way to notify the right person even when they cannot complete a detailed form immediately. The team needs to know who is unavailable; it doesn't need a public diagnosis or an absence-pattern score.

In Cabana, create a distinct category in Settings → Leave types. The policy control Hide this leave type from coworkers masks the category as Private leave in shared views. Use Private approver note on the web form for context intended for approvers and admins rather than coworkers.

Use Cabana for the request and availability record¶

Choose Cabana to keep sick requests separate from vacation and connected to manager messages and the team calendar. Employees can request from Slack or Microsoft Teams. Configure the approval process to reflect the applicable sick-leave rules rather than assuming ordinary vacation restrictions belong on every category.

Set up the sick leave type so it can't be refused for scheduling reasons: in its policy rule, leave Advance notice required, Maximum teammates away and the new-hire waiting period empty unless your state allows them, and consider Automatically approve requests. Blocked dates apply to every leave type, so keep them narrow.

Start with leave types, PTO tracking in Slack, PTO tracking in Microsoft Teams, and PTO tracking software for small teams. Use the PTO policy guide for small business and Free PTO policy generator for the written process.

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