The SimplyPTO blog

Time off, done right.

Guides, templates, and playbooks on PTO accruals, policies, approvals, and the rest of small-business HR — written to be genuinely useful.

Managing Time Off

Stay Interviews: Questions to Ask Before Someone Quits

Stay interview questions that surface a flight risk while there's still time to act, how they differ from exit interviews, and how often to run them.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·5 min read
Small Business HR

Succession Planning for a Small Business: What Happens If a Key Person Leaves

A practical succession plan for small businesses that can't afford a formal executive pipeline, focused on the specific risks of losing one critical person.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·5 min read
Policies & Compliance

Time Tracking Policy: When to Require It and When Not To

Which employees legally must track hours, when tracking salaried staff makes sense anyway, and how to introduce it without it reading as distrust.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·5 min read
Small Business HR

Timetastic Alternative With a Real Free Plan

Timetastic has no free tier — it's per-user pricing from day one after a 30-day trial. What a free-forever alternative looks like for a team under ten people.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·4 min read
Small Business HR

How to Calculate the True Cost of an Employee

The fully loaded cost formula beyond salary — taxes, benefits, and overhead — with a worked example most hiring budgets get wrong by underestimating.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·5 min read
Managing Time Off

The Two-Pizza Rule: How Big Should a Team Actually Be?

Amazon's famous team-size heuristic, what it's really protecting against, and how to tell when a team on your org chart has already grown past it.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·5 min read
Culture & Wellbeing

What Your Team's Unused PTO Is Actually Costing You (Calculator)

A live calculator for the payout liability sitting in unused vacation balances — a real number where earned PTO must be paid out, a warning sign everywhere else.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·4 min read
Small Business HR

Vesting Schedule Visualizer: See Exactly What's Vested and When

A live timeline turning a grant size, cliff, and vesting period into an actual vested amount at any point in time — clearer than doing the fractions in your head.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·4 min read
Small Business HR

The 5-Minute Weekly Business Health Check

A short, specific scorecard — filled out with a real example, not left blank — for catching a drifting business metric while it's still a five-minute fix.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·4 min read
Managing Time Off

What Kind of Manager Are You? A Real Diagnostic

An 8-question interactive diagnostic sorting real management patterns — not personality flattery — into four honest archetypes, each with one thing to try.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·4 min read
Policies & Compliance

Workplace Investigation Basics: How to Handle a Complaint Fairly

The steps a small business without HR staff should follow after a complaint, the mistakes that turn a fair process unfair, and when to bring in outside help.

The SimplyPTO Team·Sep 4, 2026·4 min read
Templates & Tools

Free Annual Leave Planner Template (Excel, Year View)

Plan a whole year of team leave in one grid, with automatic balances and company holidays alongside. Free Excel download for small teams.

The SimplyPTO Team·Aug 10, 2026·5 min read

Stop tracking PTO in a spreadsheet

SimplyPTO handles balances, requests, and approvals automatically. Free for up to 10 people.

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Blog — PTO Guides, Templates & Best Practices | SimplyPTO