Looking for inexpensive company vacation/absence planning software - help!?

VacuumJockey

I'm stuck doing vacation and absence planning at work -- a smallish specialist weekly paper with just over 90 employees. And it sucks.

Yes, trying to decipher scrawled post-it notes, incomplete spreadsheets and wrongly adressed emails, and then funelling these fractured data into a coherent whole, well, it's really getting to me. O_o

Is there some sort of software, preferably free or very inexpensive, that can aid me in this herculean task?

Please help me if you can. (insert emoticon meaning "I'm going stark raving insane ovah heah!")

Thanatos

Here's how I would do it:

Create a locked form, with fillable blanks, that reads as follows:

"I _________________________________________ will be absent from work ____________, returning __________ due to ________________________________________________.

Supervisor's Name: _____________________________
Date: ____________________________"

Tell everyone that if they're going to be taking vacation/sick time, they need to fill one of those out, print it out/attach it, and send it to you. You can then turn around and either use a calendar template in Word or Excel, or use something like Google Calendar in order to track who's going to be gone on what days.

If it were a smaller company, you could get away with "oh, just e-mail me and let me know," but that's not going to cover it any place with more than about 20 people.