Paid Time Off Tracking

One of the most common requests and frustrations we experience is from people in our company who want to track vacation time in Netsuite.  

It is our understanding that some of this functionality exists in Netsuite but you are required to use Netsuite's payroll service in order to use this.   We don't and sort of feel like we are held hostage to be able to track vacation time if we don't use NS payroll.

Reading of other posts on this subject seem to imply some problems with this aspect of Netsuite that the Netsuite Product Management Team is looking to improve in the future.    Will future enhancements continue to require one to use Netsuite payroll or will it be possible to track vacation outside of the NS payroll module?  Any estimates regarding release date?