WhosOff.com General Blog

Orange National Business Awards 2012

16.Nov.2012

Having made the shortlist for Small Online Business of the Year in the Orange 2012 UK National Business Awards, the WhosOff Team enjoyed a great evening at the Grosvenor Hotel, London on the 13th November.

Although we were not lucky enough to make the 'podium' the event was superb, with the added excitement of Olympic champion Jessica Ennis arriving on stage to be interviewd by Sky News presenter Jeff Randall.

Prime Minister David Cameron opened proceedings with a video message and the keynote speaker, Chief Secretary to the Treasure, Danny Alexander welcomed over 1200 of the UK's most influential business leaders.

Although not winning outright the WhosOff Team enjoyed dinner and dancing and networking with other finalists and even meeting one or two WhosOff customers!

A big congratulations to all the Winners ! To see the winners and photos from the evening Click here .

SSA2012 WINNERS HR and HCM (SME) Category

12.Oct.2012

The team at WhosOff are pleased to announce that we were WINNERS at the UK Business Software Satisfaction Awards 2012 held at Harrods ,London 11th October 2012

We won the prestigious Software Satisfaction Award in the HR (SME) software category. Some of the big name winners on the night were Salesforce, AVG and PostcodeAnywhere amongst others.

Phil Cross (left), Co-Founder of WhosOff recieving the award with Gyles Brandreth (right)

After Dinner Speaker - Gyles Brandreth

The evening was served up with a treat as after dinner speaker Gyles Brandreth was in top form and delighted us all with his wit, charm and hilarious stories. After the awards presentations he visited the WhosOff table and chatted with the crew.

A special thank you to you, our customers...

As these awards are judged by the users of the software, we would like to make a personal thank you to all of our customers. You took the time to vote for our service and we can only promise to keep the level of satisfaction within WhosOff and push forward to making your working duties that little bit easier.

Looking forward

Whilst we are looking forward to more awards evenings, with the chance of bringing home more silverware, we are always focused on maintaining our customer relationships and pushing WhosOff forward to aid those responsible for HR roles within companies.

WhosOff Shortlisted for Business of the Year - Smarta 100

9.Oct.2012

Whosoff has been shortlisted in the Smarta 100 2012 and is therefore running for Business of the Year.

As judged by Dragons Dens' Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden, among other industry professionals, the Smarta 100 Awards recognise the UK's most dynamic and innovative small businesses.

The award organisers said: "We're not just looking for those who bring in the most cash, but the businesses that have the most original ideas and make a true difference. We want to find the beacons of enterprising Britain, the small firms that thrive during the gloomy economy, be it a brilliant social enterprise, an inspiring young tech start up or a small manufacturer."

All of the team at WhosOff are delighted to be recognised for our achievements in servicing an important role in businesses around the world. The recognition received is down to the hard work of the entire team of professional, friendly (and always willing to help) staff at our offices in Canterbury, Kent.

Please take a moment to vote for us to win the accolade of Business of the Year. You can place your vote here: http://www.smarta.com/smarta100/2012/whosoffcom

The Judges

DEBORAH MEADEN, Dragons' Den investor and Smarta board member, said: "This year's Smarta 100 showcase the fantastic breadth of small businesses making waves in the UK business scene. Some demonstrate managerial magnificence, overseeing teams of dozens to grow their businesses quickly and creatively. Other Smarta 100 winners are sole traders, or just individuals - and how impressive that, even single-handedly, they have proven that being innovative and dedicated can give you the edge. And it's not just all about cutting-edge tech companies either - this year's Smarta 100 go to show that any sector, however traditional, can be given an exciting injection of innovation when a great entrepreneurial mind takes it on."

THEO PAPHITIS, Dragons' Den investor and Ryman chairman, said: "The Smarta 100 has proven yet again how many exciting, innovative and successful small businesses and start-ups there are in the UK today, and I really find them inspiring. Some of the 100 are disrupting established industries, some are creating completely new markets, and others are simply doing an exceptional job in age-old marketplaces but knocking the socks off their competition. It just goes to show that in the face of challenging economic conditions, a credit crunch and reduced customer spending, entrepreneurs and business owners who work hard and think outside the box can still thrive in today's world. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners."

SHAA WASMUND, Smarta founder, said: "This year we had more entries for the Smarta 100 than ever before. There were hundreds of fantastic businesses in the running, but the final 100 are truly game-changing start-ups and small businesses, and I'm enormously proud of all of them. We've got everyone from entrepreneurs in their early 20s through to knitting grannies; people who started with only a few hundred pounds through to companies that received millions in VC funding. All of which proves that if you have a brilliant idea or a truly imaginative new approach, you can succeed against any odds."

BEN DOWD, business director, Telefonica UK at O2, said: "I'm delighted to join Smarta in celebrating such dynamic, varied, innovative and resilient small businesses. The Smarta 100 prove that even in tough times, talented entrepreneurs are able to seek out opportunity, exploit available resources, and most importantly make their customers feel valued. At O2 we work with many small businesses, and recognise that the right tools are an essential cog in the journey from start-up to fast-growth business. I'm proud to say that O2 offers flexible communications packages to help facilitate the growth that companies like these are capable of. I can't wait to find out which company will become the ‘Smarta 100 Together With O2' Business of the Year, and to see what they will go on to achieve as a result."

Voting is now under way to find the overall O2 Smarta 100 Business of the Year, winning £10,000 courtesy of O2

The winner will be presented with their £10,000 prize - courtesy of O2 - at The Smarta 100 Awards final on Thursday 8 November at London's Proud2, The O2, in Greenwich.
The evening will also see six special awards presented for the Smarta 100 companies deemed by the judges to be the best, in the categories of:
Innovation
Technology
Social Impact
Resources
Marketing
People
Social Impact
The shortlisted companies can be viewed at www.smarta.com/smarta100

About WhosOff

WhosOff helps businesses reduce the time and money spent on paper chasing leave requests around the office. We love it as it means business can forget about managing the mundane tasks of finding out how much holiday people have left and when they're off and when they're not, Whosoff does it all for you. It offers a monthly-based subscription service for any business in any sector, quite the broad target audience!

WhosOff has over 40,000 users across 800 companies in over 40 countries, a great achievement for a business that only has 6 employees. The success of the business has come through grown through offering a two-month free trial period, that's al it takes for a business to fall in love. Whosoff also has a handy mobile app for the iphone, Android and Blackberry.

Leave Type 'In Year' limits

4.Sep.2012

Super users can now restrict the number of days allowed for a Leave Type per staff member 'in Year'. For Example, you may have a Leave Type called "Dependant Emergency" - for which you only allow staff to have 4 days off per year. You can set the limit for this leave type as 4 and users will not be able to book more than the limit.

A super user may set the whole company to restrict the number of days allowed per leave type via the Manage Leave Types area but also has the extra optional feature to set individual staff member(s) to a personal limit (IMPORTANT! the personal limit supersedes any limit set in the company leave types area).

When a staff member reaches their personal limit on a certain leave type, the system will then reject the request and inform the staff member. Here's a link to to the knowledge base about this feature.

National Business Awards UK Finalists

14.Aug.2012

WhosOff's parent company (X:drive Computing Ltd) have made the shortlist for the National Business Awards UK 2012. Announced on Tuesday 14th August 2012 this is our second nomination in the past month.

Congratulations to all the finalists in the National Business Awards 2012, here are the businesses we are up against in our category:

• Bike Dock Solutions Ltd, London, EC2A 3QF
• Bunches.co.uk Ltd, Nottinghamshire, NG15 0DQ
• Citrus Lounge Ltd, Manchester, M40 5BP
• Crowdcube Ltd, Exeter, EX4 4RN
• Handpicked Companies Ltd, London, SW8 4LP
• Lovestruck Ltd, London, SE1 0BE
• Luxury for Less Limited Ltd, Coventry, CV7 9ND
• MadBid.com Ltd, Bournemouth, BH11 9NL
• Serenata Flowers Ltd, Burgess Hill, RH15 0BG
• X:drive Computing Limited Ltd, Kent, CT12UD

For more information about the National Business Awards, please visit http://www.nationalbusinessawards.co.uk

WhosOff - Double Nominations at SSA2012

13.Aug.2012

The team at WhosOff are pleased to announce that we have been nominated in two categories for the UK Business Software Satisfaction Awards 2012. We have been shortlisted for two awards with the winners being announced in mid October 2012, and whilst we would love to win the awards themselves, just getting through the process to be shortlisted has given us some reward for the tireless efforts the team puts in to support our global customer base.

We will inform you when we know of how we got on but at this stage we would like to thank all of the WhosOff customers that took part in the satisfaction survey, we can't thank individuals because the surveys are conducted anonymously.

The two categories are:

- HR and HCM (Corporate)
- HR and HCM (SME)

For more information about the UK Business Software Industry Awards 2012, please visit http://www.softwaresatisfaction.co.uk/.

Essential Tips for the First Time Employer

27.Jul.2012

Author: Carlo Pandian

For small business owners, taking on an employee (or more than one) for the first time is a daunting but exciting prospect. It's a good sign that business is thriving but making the right choice and ensuring that you comply with relevant legislation can be a fulltime job in itself. There are a number of crucial steps to the process none of which you should overlook. Here are some of the key factors to take into consideration.

How Much to Pay?

The rate of pay for employees will depend on a number of factors, including what you can afford to pay them. Paying the highest rate you can afford to is usually advisable - especially if you're employing professional workers. To access the best talent the best salaries will be necessary. Whatever the salary you set you'll need to be sure that you are paying at least the Minimum Wage. The level of the minimum wage is affected by the age of the employee and the type of work. If you don't pay minimum wage you may be prosecuted and be forced to pay the difference as well as a hefty fine.

I can't make it in today - I've been deported

You've found that perfect employee with all the right skills, the perfect attitude, ability and talent by the bucket load. Then they go and get themselves deported. Before you actually offer the job you need to be sure that they have a legal right to work in the UK. If your star employee is from overseas and they have all the correct documents you'll need to keep copies. The fine for unknowingly employing an illegal worker is only (!) 10,000, while doing so knowingly will get you an invite to stay at one of Her Majesty's delightfully appointed prisons; possibly for quite some time.

Appropriate Insurance

Employer's Liability Insurance is also essential - before the contract starts. Unless you are employing a relative, or a worker based overseas, you will need cover for 5 million and you must also display your insurance certificate at your premises. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforces the regulations around Liability Insurance and if you don't have it they'll charge you 2,500 per day until you do. Your insurance must also be provided by an 'authorised' insurer and to check that an insurer is authorised, contact the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Employee Registration

If it's your first time as an employer you'll need to register with HMRC. This helps to ensure that you are taking the right amounts in deductions for PAYE tax for your new employee. It's a legal requirement to register and failure to do so has a range of fines attached; the actual amount will depend on how late you register but the minimum fine is 50.

Statements of Intent

Within the first two months of your new employee's starting date you'll need to provide them with a statement of employment; this must be a written statement and it applies if you are employing someone for more than a month. An employee can take you to tribunal if you don't provide this within the first two months and fines, if the tribunal finds against you, can be anything from two to four weeks' salary.

Basic Equipment

All of these steps are essential to ensuring that both you and your employee are protected and complying with relevant legislation. Failure to comply with any or all of these requirements can lead to hefty fines, prison sentences and, for the smallest firms, will lead almost certainly to closure. For information and advice contact Business Link - or visit their website which features a range of tools and calculators to work out everything from minimum wage rates to creating your statements of employment. Also ensure that you have adequate, functional payroll software in place before your employee starts; this is not a legal requirement but will help to make the process of calculating tax, national insurance and rates of pay far quicker and more efficiently.

About the Author

Carlo Pandian is a business graduate at Birkbeck College (London) and blogs about accountancy, technology and human resources covering everything from payroll software to personnel management apps. Aside from his daily job, Carlo loves helping his local community center with his communication and marketing skills.

Imagine using WhosOff.com

19.Jun.2012

Imagine, you’re at home, in the evening and the missus (or the mister) is asking about your summer holiday. They’ve found a deal and what to know if you can take time off.

What do you do? Easy, you go online, see Who’s off and put in a request. Your approver gets notified straight away, and, if they’re connected, they can approve your holiday online or via our Whosoff mobile App in minutes, or at the very least you’ve got your holiday request in, and, because the Staff leave is transparent, you know it won’t be a problem.

Imagine you’re the person managing the business staff leave and holidays. More than likely you are in spreadsheet hell or Wall planner pain. Who’s off today?, tomorrow?, next week?, next year? It’s basically a form filling, time consuming, hassle fest, very often causing stress and upset all round.

Then you find WhosOff.com – there’s a free 2 month trial so you can try the system without obligation. You upload your staff, allocate leave entitlements and bingo...everybody’s dealing with holiday themselves.They request, it gets approved or declined, it gets logged. Boom! – no hassle, no arguments. The ‘Staff Holiday’ Spreadsheet forever consigned to the lesser reaches of your directory system.

WhosOff.com is a leading online Staff leave planner – it’s a great low cost tool for business – we’re helping SME’s across the UK (and the World) manage staff leave and holiday via the web and mobile Apps. Nearly 40,000 active users use the service from smaller business with less than 10 employees to blue chips with over 1000 staff members.

And why do businesses use WhosOff.com ? Because it’s easy, efficient, cost effective and takes the hassle out of staff leave.

We are not like most web services. We like to think our service and support is second to none – more often than not we telephone people to help rather than exchanging emails. Whosoff.com is that sort of customer focused business.

We ‘re not from Silicon Valley, or Silicon Roundabout – we are a self financed tech company from Canterbury, England – making a success of B2B.

Easily Website of the Month

16.Mar.2012

We are pleased to annouce that Easily (one of the UK's largest Domain Name and Web Hosting companies) have nominated us as their Website of the Month for February 2012

Here's a link to their announcement and here's what they had to say...

"We like how WhosOff came up with the concept of providing a service to help businesses manage staff leave.Easily navigate your way through the website to find out about its features, how the service works and the pricing involved.The clean, attractive website design creates a professional feel. Congratulations to Philip and the team from everyone here at Easily.co.uk."

New features - Dashboard and Approvers

16.Jan.2012

At WhosOff we continue to use customer feedback to improve the WhosOff leave management service and the last few weeks have seen some further updates to the system to give users even more visibility and functionality on Staff leave and absence.

On the Dashboard

In the 'Who's Off Today' area we have added the option to select any day and quickly see who's off on that day.

There is also a new tab here which list those people for whom it is a 'Non' working day.

Approvers

You can now set approvers to be able to Add/Edit leave for their own staff. Adminsitrators can set Approvers to be able to Add leave in the future ( but not the past) or Add/Edit/Delete leave in the past and future. (The default setting is not being able to add leave for anyone)

Public API (Beta) Now Available

29.Nov.2011

Good news for all of you developers who have a company account on WhosOff. We now have an Public API available to enable you to integrate WhosOff into your companies existing infrastructure.

Whether you have a company intranet or you would like to customise the calendar feeds that are available in WhosOff, using the API make this possible.

If you are interested in the BETA version of the API, drop us an email at support@whosoff.com and we will get you started.

Single sign-on with Google or Yahoo

29.Sep.2011

Logging in to WhosOff.com has just got a whole lot easier.

If you have an account with Google or Yahoo, you can easily link these accounts to your WhosOff account and, if you are already logged in to either Google or Yahoo, you can log directly into Whosoff.

Please read our knowledge Base article for full details

WhosOff apps for iPhone and Android released.

5.May.2011

We are pleased to announce that our mobile apps for iPhone and Android are available to download from the Apple App Store and Android Market

Both Apps are Free to download and make managing your staff leave and out-of-office times on the move very simple and easy.

Looks like BlackBerry app and mobile web version is not far behind !

Statistics and Auto Report Scheduling

14.Apr.2011

Some great new features in WhosOff (currently in BETA) to help you manage your staff leave effectively:

On the 'My Staff' link you can see an overview of the your staff members' leave balances. You can also see some useful statistic analysis including a breakdown by leave type and the number of occurences by leave type.

Click on 'Report Scheduling' and you can schedule WhosOff to automatically send you reports for yesterday,today, this week or this month.

Switch off Overtime Area

21.Mar.2011

If you manage your staff overtime outside of WhosOff, you now have the ability to switch off this area from your account. Simply follow these instructions to do this:

Login to your WhosOff account
Click on "Adminsitration", "Company Details"
Under the heading WhosOff Setup, you can now specify whether the Overtime area/tools are available to the users on your account.
Don't forget to save any changes you make.

Hours launched!

1.Nov.2010

Keeping to our ethos of reacting to our customers requirements , we enhanced the system to incorporate staff whose holiday/vacation is taken in hours into the ever growing WhosOff.com system enabling staff and administors alike to have more control over the time taken from work .

Whether staff book an hour or a day , the WhosOff.com system will apply the time taken from the annual leave allowance .

Staff administrators can choose between staff who work in hours or those who work days , giving greater flexibility within the WhosOff system.

Whilst developing the hours feature to the system, we had suggestions from present users requesting minor changes to help them use their WhosOff.com system.

The development and support team working together, applied some of the changes to the hours update , the changes include....

Calendar Feeds: Will now include the leave as a category so you can assign category colouring in Outlook (for those who wish to integrate with Outlook)
Leave Requests: On the pending requests screen, the system will show you when the leave request has been submitted allowing the super user to prioritise leave requests. Column sorting has also been introduced into this screen.
Staff Leave: On the administration staff leave screen , the system will show you when a leave request was approved and by who.

So , if you are looking to manage your staff in hours , WhosOff.com is ready and waiting . With the ability to add up to 20 leave types , set bank holidays by department for those companies who have overseas departments .

Managing staff leave in hours has never been easier.

Thank you to those companies who have suggested ,supported and assisted us in preparing the leave planner to incorporate vacation , staff holiday in hours , which is now clear to see in a visual wall planner type display via the web.

Hours are on their way...as well as a few more changes

12.Oct.2010

Coming Very Soon...

For some time now, the team at WhosOff have been asked about the availability of managing time in hours instead of days (and half days), we can now say that it is coming, and fast.

We are in the final stages of testing this new feature to WhosOff, and over the next couple of weeks users will notice some subtle, and some major changes to the WhosOff system. For those team members who are assigned allowances in hours you will soon be able to set balances in hours, set the hours a staff member works per day, and even let them book the odd hour off.

This does not change the way in which leave requests are processed, you still have the opportunity to specify whether leave needs to be approved or not, and you can still accept

Historical Data: A small point to note is if you switch someone from being a "DAYS" person to an "HOURS" person, you will be asked to print off historical data for that staff member, this is because their record is wiped clean of any leave and allowances to date. A small price to pay for a big change.

Other changes on their way

We have been making some other minor changes (that will be published with the above updates), these include:

Calendar Feeds: Will now include the leave type as a category so you can assign category colouring in Outlook.
Leave Requests: On the pending leave requests screen, we will show you when a leave request has been put into the system, allowing you to work your way through requests in the order they were requested
Staff Leave: On the administration staff leave screen, we will show you when a leave request was approved and who by.

Calendar Feeds

13.Aug.2010

Outlook integration – No fuss. Since offering MS Outlook integration in December 2009 WhosOff.com has delivered of 4.5 million feeds – Does WhosOff.com Leave planner do Outlook integration? = yes many millions of times.

Welcome Back to WhosOff.com

19.Mar.2010

Returning to the fold...

The last two weeks have seen no less than 6 companies who had decided WhosOff.com was perhaps not really what they wanted, or possibly - what they wanted to pay for... only to return to the services of WhosOff.com.

Some with stories to tell of complexity and high costs or the frustration of returning to a paper based system and finding themselves longing to return to the trusted simplicity of WhosOff.com - So… welcome back

WhosOff Lorry Hits the Road!

18.Dec.2009

A new advertising campaign from WhosOff has hit the road on the 18th December 2009.

On it's maiden run the 40ft refrigerated lorry is on it's way to Belgium for christmas supplies to retailers.

Keep an eye out for the lorry around Europe over the next 12 months, if you spot it, take a photo and send it to us at info@whosoff.com

Calendar updates for MS Outlook, Google, iCal

1.Dec.2009

You can now create a calendar feed from your WhosOff account and subscribe to that feed from other calendar programs such as MS Outlook and Google Calendar.

This is a great way to see whats going on in Whosoff without you having to log in each time.

You can create calendar feeds for individuals, departments or the whole company.

500,000th Leave request completed

27.Aug.2009

WhosOff continues to help companies and organisations around the world manage their staff leave, holiday and vacations.

Passing the 1/2 million milestone is a significant achievement and proof of the enduring success of WhosOff.

BT Business Insight

25.Feb.2009

Thanks to Ian Betteridge for his blog entry on BT's Insight blog about WhosOff
Its nice to know the word is getting out into the business community !

Read Ian's article here

WhosOff - Ranked 6th - Top Dates & Calendar web applications

16.Feb.2009

With 9,258 votes so far WhosOff has grown to the #6 spot on CEO World Magazine poll for the Top Dates and Calendar Web Applications list. Cast your votes today at http://ceoworld.biz/ceo/2008/12/22/top-dates-calendar-web-applications-list/

The websites were evaluated by majority of votes based on ten main criteria:
- Content
- Authority
- Navigation
- Design
- Accessibility
- Innovation
- Business sense and growth expectations
- Degree of competition mix in their market
- Team
- Traffic type: blog, wiki, Services using tags, Mash up based on Google / Yahoo / Live.com maps, Feeds and social networking sites etc.

Branding not compulsory, but those companies who are trying it – just love it.

6.Feb.2009

It so easy, just give the o.k. and we will do the rest. One of our web designers will carefully match your company colours and then strategically place your company logo in the top left and your corporate image is carried through into WhosOff.com Premium. Branding is free for the first three months.

WhosOff Hits ¼ Million Holiday Requests

8.Oct.2008

WhosOff.com, the Free online staff holiday/vacation planner, recently 'processed' its 250,000th leave request.

Since its launch, less than 2 years ago, thousands of businesses and organisations have taken the opportunity to use WhosOff.com to manage their staff holiday/vacation and out of office times. Based in the quiet city of Canterbury, England - a world away from Silicon Valley - WhosOff.com is attracting users from over 75 countries around the world – an impressive start for an online service aimed at business users.

WhosOff.com allows staff to request holiday/vacation whilst applying simple initial controls, for example, checking the number of days a staff member has remaining or staff clashes, and can pass the logged request on by email for final approval by an appointed approver.

Project manager, Philip Cross said “Many companies have difficulty tracking staff holiday and WhosOff.com delivers an answer to this enduring problem for free. We have spent the last couple of years gathering feedback from our users helping us to keep the service simple yet providing great functionality”. In development from Whosoff.com is a paid-for ‘Premium’ service which is due to be launched in November 2008 . The premium version will provide users with added features and tools including integration with some desktop applications.

WhosOff Today On Screen Report - Optimised for Speed!

25.Jun.2008

Everyone's favourite report has been rewritten today to enable users with large staffing numbers to retrieve monthly views more quickly.

Try it for yourself, login to your account and click on the WhosOff Today? link.

WhosOff Facelift Underway

19.Jan.2008

An new enhanced look and feel are being worked on at the WhosOff offices that will incorporate the new versions available to users of WhosOff.

The new site will be ready and launched early February and will provide users with an insight to new features and services coming soon as well as providing a central discussion area for users to share their knowledge of WhosOff.

WhosOff in Development!

18.Jan.2008

WhosOff has entered a new major development chapter. From early January 2008 developers of WhosOff will be embarking on a new major release that will incorporate SOAP API technology as its base and will also see WhosOff located on a new hosting platform. The hosting of WhosOff will see loads balanced across its newly commissioned servers and will provide a faster and more robust service to WhosOff premium users.

In future months we will be investigating the demand and possibilities of releasing the API for developers to integrate their own tools into the staff holiday management.

If you would like to be notified when WhosOff Premium becomes available, visit our "Premium Edition" overview.

Red Hot Site of the Day!

20.Nov.2007

Over the weekend WhosOff was the 'Red Hot Site of the Day' on Redorbit.com

RedOrbit.com, based in Texas,USA has become the premier internet destination for space, science, health, and technology enthusiasts around the globe.

New reviews of WhosOff (Free)

19.Sep.2007

A couple of reviews have been posted recently which I think really capture the essence of the Whosoff service.

Steve Anderson's 'Keep track of who's off' and John Reardon's 'Tracking Time off the easy way'

Thanks to both of them for taking the time to mention Whosoff on their blogs.

WhosOff currently manages the holiday and vacations of tens of thousands of users worldwide -across thousands of companies and organisations both large and small.

WhosOff - Our 1st Birthday!

4.Jul.2007

# Happy Birthday to us...#

On 1st July 2007 WhosOff celebrated its first year as the internet's first and only free to use Online staff holiday and vacation planner...

Back in July 2006 we really had no idea how popular a service like this could be and have been surprised at the take up, not only amongst SMEs but also departments of some 'very' large businesses around the world.

Our aim is to make WhosOff the first choice for business and other organisations to manage staff holiday and vacation.We aim to keep the site friendly, easy to use and give first class support.

After favourable reviews on sites such as Techcrunch.com, Webware.com, Killerstartups.com and recently downloadsquad.com we can see the word is spreading.We can now boast a considerable and continously growing user base !

Thanks for all those who came on board and who support the site.

Who's blogging WhosOff?

Being second is no longer 'second best'

28.Jun.2007

Hi my name is 2 - You've probably heard of me, but not so long ago I used to be just another single digit, the second best, just number two, you would n't even have looked at me twice, am I right?

In the old days everybody just knew about number 1, wanted to be number one, the first, the one and only, the 'numero uno' and for me and the rest of the guys..well, we never got a look in...

How things have changed! - now its my turn - everybody's talking about me ! Number 2 ...ok...I've got 'point zero' tagging along but wow! its great ! Number 3 is soooo jealous - anyway I expect his turn will come.

But for now, its me in the spot-light 2.0 , I'm the belle of the ball 2.0, in fact anything 2.0 is the biggest, bestest thing...ever...

Just add me after any noun, yes any noun, and it'll be appearing all over the web 2.0 in a jumping-jack-flash 2.0 second... how about Pizza 2.0 ? or Drawing Pin 2.0 ? or even Teapot 2.0 ?...Sounds great doesn't it ?

Is it just a 2.0 buzzword or am I really going to be on top of the World 2.0 ? How long will it last and is number 3 coming over hill 2.0 ?

Watch this space 2.0

A smart solution for one office problem - Free

11.Jun.2007

Business, particularly SMEs, are being inundated with promises from the likes of Google and Microsoft, of online delivered web applications.The current buzz words being 'Web 2.0' and 'Saas' (Software as a Service) and 'On demand'.

There are, of course, the many spreadsheet,word processing, personal calendar,Networking offerings but what real advantage do these online services have over our traditional desktop applications and how many business are really buying into this type of on-demand software?

I'm sure people running day to day businesses would n't mind getting a handle on what this whole 'Web 2.0' really means and how it can help their business in particular.One answer lies, for a lot of SMEs, in having one of their daily problems solved by one of these web 2.0 offerings.

www.WhosOff.com is an online workplace leave management service that makes organising time off easy. It is simple to use and solves an enduring office problem that every SME has.."who's off ?" And what's more the service is Free!

WhosOff.com is also a story of modest entrepreneurship - proving that you do not need to be in Silicon Valley or backed by millions in venture captial to get a project off the ground.