Abstract

If your business fluctuates strongly seasonally, you can plan the vacation of your staff accordingly and consider hiring seasonal staff:

take_vacation_simple_diagram

Note: Of course you cannot force anybody when to take a vacation and how many days are to be taken. These calculations are just meant to be suggestions of reasonable indicators.

Simple Example

If you like to take the maximum sales values (here: 24,000) as a basis, applying zero vacations to it, and scale the vacation days linearly to the other sales values:

Period Sales Vacation days (integer)
Total 230,000 83
January 20,000 6
February 24,000 -
March 23,000 1
April 20,000 6
May 19,000 7
June 15,000 13
July 14,000 14
August 17,000 10
September 21,000 4
October 20,000 6
November 19,000 7
December 18,000 9

The formula in cell C5 which spills down to B16 is =($C$2-B5:B16)/($C$2*12-$B$4)*$C$4:

take_vacation_simple

More Complex Example

If you got employees who are not present at specified months:

(formula in cell E21 reads: =IFERROR((E$5:E$16=“x”)*E$17*$D$5:$D$16/SUM((E$5:E$16=“x”)*$D$5:$D$16),0)

take_vacation_complex

Download

Please read my Disclaimer.

take_vacation_when_sales_are_low.xlsm [54 KB Excel file, open and use at your own risk]