Free Sick Leave Tracker (Fillable PDF, Word, Excel)

What is on the sick leave tracker

Accrual rate, cap, carryover

How leave is earned (hours per hours worked, or front-loaded), the most that can be banked, and what carries into next year. These come from your policy or your state law, whichever is more generous.

Date, type, reason

Each accrual or absence with a type code. Reason stays general ("flu", "appointment"); diagnoses do not belong on a tracker.

Accrued, used, balance

Hours earned, hours taken, hours left after each line. Several state laws require this balance to be shown to the employee on request or on every pay stub.

Documentation tick

Whether a note is on file. Many laws only allow employers to ask for documentation after three or more consecutive days.

Monthly roster columns

Hours used by each employee per month, so patterns and low balances are visible across the team.

Absence record: notice and return

When and how the employee told you, when they were expected back and when they returned. This is what a dispute about "unreported absence" turns on.

Signatures

Employee, manager and the person who entered it in payroll. The record is only as good as the fact that someone checked it.

Why tracking is required, not optional

There's no federal paid sick leave law for private employers in the US, but by 2026 well over a dozen states (California, New York, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, Vermont, Nevada, New Mexico, Maine, Rhode Island, Missouri, Alaska, Nebraska among them) and many cities require paid sick leave, and nearly all of them require the employer to keep records of hours worked, leave accrued and leave used, usually for three years or more. Several require the current balance to appear on the pay stub or be available on request. Penalties for missing records are real, and in a dispute the absence of records is usually held against the employer.

Unpaid leave under the federal FMLA (50+ employees) has its own record-keeping rules. In the UK, statutory sick pay needs records of sickness periods of four or more days; in Canada most provinces now mandate paid sick days and the record-keeping that goes with them. The sheets here are generic enough to serve any of these; the policy boxes are where your specific rule goes.

Which sheet to use

• Employee log: the legal record for each person. One per employee per year, running balance, type codes.
• Team roster: the manager's overview. Who has used what, who is running low, who may need a conversation.
• Absence record: filled once per absence, filed behind the employee log. Captures notice, documentation and return which the log does not.

How to run it

1. Write the policy on each employee log: accrual rate, cap, carryover, documentation threshold. If state law is more generous than your policy, the law applies.
2. Post accruals at the end of each pay period or month (or front-load on 1 January).
3. When an employee is absent, complete an absence record, then post the hours used to the log. The Excel log keeps the balance.
4. Update the team roster monthly from the logs.
5. Show employees their balance on request, and on the pay stub where required.
6. Keep the logs for at least three years after the year they cover.

Mistakes that create legal exposure

• Recording diagnoses or medical details on the tracker. Keep medical documents in a separate confidential file; the tracker says "sick", not what with.
• Asking for a doctor's note for a one-day absence in a state that forbids it below three days.
• Counting sick leave as an attendance "occurrence" under a points policy where the law protects it.
• Letting accruals lapse in payroll but not on the tracker, so balances disagree.
• Discarding records after a year.

Sick leave, PTO and attendance

If you run a combined PTO bank, use the same log with the type codes to show which hours were sick leave, since some laws protect sick use differently from vacation use. The vacation request form handles planned leave; the attendance tracker shows the day-by-day pattern; the timesheet has the Sick/PTO column that these balances draw down. Together they give you the three documents an auditor or a lawyer asks for.

Editing the Word and Excel versions

The Excel employee log calculates the current balance from the opening balance, accruals and use; the team roster totals each employee's months, shows hours left against entitlement, and totals the team. Change the type codes and the policy line to match yours. The roster is landscape in all formats. In Word the sheets are plain tables for anyone who prefers a printed file in the personnel folder.

Questions

How long must sick leave records be kept?

Most state paid-sick-leave laws require three years; some require longer (California five years under its wage records rules). Keep them for at least three years after the year they cover, longer if your state says so.

Can I ask for a doctor's note?

Only within the limits of your state or city law. Most allow a request for absences of three or more consecutive days and prohibit asking for the diagnosis. Check the law where the employee works, not where the company is based.

Should I record why the employee was sick?

No. Record the type (own illness, family care, appointment) and the hours. Medical details, if you receive them, go in a separate confidential medical file, not on the tracker.

What is the difference between accrual and front-loading?

Accrual earns leave gradually, typically one hour per 30 hours worked. Front-loading gives the full annual amount on day one. Most laws allow either; the log handles both with the A and C type codes.

Does the PDF calculate the balance?

No. The fillable PDF is for recording and printing. The Excel employee log keeps the running balance and the roster totals the year.