Vacations and holiday scheduling method and system having a bidding object which enables employees to bid and prevent from bidding if higher priority employees have not bid

A method for scheduling employee vacations while meeting staffing requirements of a business, comprising the steps of:

• determining staffing requirements for each day of a vacation year;
• determining maximum allowable number of vacation days for each day of a vacation year;
• determining earned vacation days for each employee of the business;
• bidding on desired vacation days by the employees in the order of the employee's priority, the bidding preventing entry of an employee's bid until the bids of all higher priority employees have been entered;
• and
• assigning vacation days in response to employee seniority, allowable number of vacation days and earned vacation days.

A computer program having data structures included on a computer readable medium which enables an interactive vacation and holiday scheduling system comprising:

• management controlled means for entering staffing requests for a business;
• means for determining a number of vacation days earned by employees of the business and for determining the number of vacation days allowable to the employees for each day of a vacation year based upon the staffing requirements of the business;
• and
• bidding means enabling an employee to bid upon desired vacation days based upon the employee's earned vacation days, the allowable vacation days for each day of the vacation year and seniority of the employee, the bidding means preventing entry of an employee's bid until the bids of all higher priority employees have been entered.