Collect all vacation requests once a year, resolve conflicts, approve - and then enjoy a quiet calendar. How annual vacation planning in a team works in five steps, what § 7 BUrlG requires, and why Excel and wall calendars reach their limits.
With annual vacation planning a team sets the vacation for the coming year in one go, instead of request by request spread across the year. The process is similar everywhere: management opens a request window, everyone submits their vacation requests and an annual vacation overview shows where requests pile up, in a vacation meeting conflicts are resolved, and at the end everything is approved. What's in the calendar after that is approved vacation - planning certainty for both sides.
It makes sense wherever staffing counts: in hospitals and care homes, in home care, in logistics with its peak times, in cleaning with fixed sites, but also in medical practices, pharmacies and hospitality. Especially for the vacation planner 2027 it's worth setting up the process properly now in the fall: the request window usually falls between October and December so that everything is settled by January.
Most companies start with an Excel spreadsheet or a wall calendar with colored dots. Both work as long as the team is small and nobody changes anything. But that is exactly what happens all the time:
Anyone looking for an Excel alternative for vacation planning is therefore looking for three things: counters per day, a view by qualification or workplace, and an approval that directly turns into approved requests.
The basis is the German Federal Leave Act (BUrlG). The vacation entitlement under § 7 BUrlG regulates how vacation dates are set - and it is more employee-friendly than many think:
If there are company holidays, they may be set for objective reasons - with a works council, via a works agreement. Usually they only tie up part of the annual leave. They belong in the annual overview as a fixed block before the request window opens.
Define which year is being planned and by when requests must be in; two to four weeks are enough. Communicate in advance what is already fixed: company holidays, stocktaking, peak times - and how many people per day, qualification or workplace must be there at a minimum. If you name the minimum staffing during vacation periods in advance, you save yourself half the discussions afterwards.
Everyone enters their requests - ideally with a priority. High priority is the sister's wedding or the week the daycare is closed; low priority means “August preferably, but July would work too”. If you collect priorities, you know immediately in the meeting where there is room to maneuver.
Now you need the annual vacation overview: all people in rows, all days in columns, and under each day a counter - how many are present, how many absent. What matters is that the counters can be grouped per qualification and per workplace as well. Only then do you see that on August 12 eight people are there, but no skilled nurse with wound care - or that at the North site the whole early shift is missing. Days below minimum staffing should be color-coded.
With the overview, it's time for the vacation meeting. The rule: only the flagged days are discussed, everything else is done. For every bottleneck there are three levers: someone shifts their request by a few days, someone with low priority swaps into another month, or staffing on that day is solved differently (floaters, temp staff, neighboring team). Anyone who draws on the priorities and the social criteria from § 7 BUrlG when resolving vacation conflicts almost always gets by without pulling rank. The results are adjusted directly in the overview - the counters show immediately whether the bottleneck is gone.
If the overview is right, it is approved; optionally, management confirms as a second level. After that, all periods are approved vacation requests, no longer non-binding wishes - they appear in the calendar, in the schedule and in the vacation account. Anyone who wants to change something later submits a change request. That keeps the record clean, and nobody has to guess in May what was discussed in November.
Vacation planning in hospitals and care homes: Here it's not headcount that counts, but qualification. Each ward has a minimum staffing per shift, often separated into skilled and auxiliary staff - in care-sensitive areas the PpUGV applies on top. That's why the annual overview has to group by qualification. Only then does the ward manager see that the summer holidays would be manageable, but in the second week of August there is no practice instructor left in the building.
Vacation planning in home care: Home care routes need drivers and skilled staff at the same time; if you have two drivers in a team of six, you have to count them separately. In the ambulance service, qualification levels come on top - paramedics cannot be replaced by emergency medical technicians.
Vacation planning in logistics: Here the peak times decide. Pre-Christmas business, stocktaking, start of the season: in these weeks the minimum staffing is higher than usual. If you enter the peaks in advance as blocked windows or with a raised counter, you only have to negotiate the edges in the meeting.
Vacation planning in services and cleaning: In cleaning, security and facility services, what counts is staffing per site. Three people on vacation don't matter as long as not all three work at the same site. So the overview has to group by workplace - and the site manager only sees their own sites.
We built exactly this process into Presio as a dedicated feature - not a bent-into-shape request list, but annual vacation planning, which maps the five steps:
In short: the vacation planning software takes the counting off your hands and leaves the deciding to you. And because it is part of Presio, the schedule, time tracking and payroll preparation hang directly on it - the vacation is in the plan without anyone entering it twice.
Ideally in the fall of the previous year, usually between October and December. By then employees know the school holidays and family dates, and the company has time to resolve bottlenecks before the year begins. A request window of two to four weeks is enough.
Only with good reason. Under § 7 (1) BUrlG the wishes of employees must be taken into account; the employer may only deviate for urgent operational reasons or if the wishes of other employees take priority for social reasons. Falling below minimum staffing is such a reason; general convenience is not.
With a normal request, each period is requested and approved individually, spread across the year. With annual vacation planning, all requests are collected at the same time, checked together against staffing and approved in one go. After that they are approved requests; changes are handled as change requests.
With priorities and an overview that shows only the real bottlenecks. For each bottleneck there are three levers: shift, swap or secure staffing differently. If you apply the social criteria from § 7 BUrlG and rotate the following year who had priority, you almost always get by without pulling rank.
Yes, for general vacation principles, the vacation plan and company holidays, the works council has a right of co-determination under § 87 (1) No. 5 BetrVG. Granting individual vacation remains the employer's business as long as the agreed principles are followed.
Open the request window, collect requests, see bottlenecks at a glance, approve with one click - in Presio that's a feature, not a project. Free to start until 31.10.2026, no credit card.
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