It’s an important thing if you’re an employer. Having a computer around certainly helps, but where do you turn when it’s time to set things up? Employees expect the boss to be able to keep track of the business AND the employees’ perks. Woe be unto you if you miss handing out so much as an hour of expected free time!

That’s where this item will come in handy. Small shops don’t have anything that qualifies as an IT budget, much less the funds to hire a programmer. So here comes Old Uncle Microsoft with a freebie- this template keeps track of employee time off in Excel 97 or newer. It’s got nice formatting, so that when you tell one of them ‘Sorry, but you used that day last month!’, you can hand them a pretty printed report to back it up J.

In fact, that part of the Microsoft Office site has a whole has an amazing number of downloadable templates. For instance, I did a simple search on the word ‘employee’ and got this list of “the Top 100″ templates(!).

Microsoft may be better known for other things, but there are tons of little-known freebies floating around Redmond. I really recommend that you check it all out.