Leave Management App Overview

Leave Management

1. What it is

Leave Management runs the time-off lifecycle for your organization — from defining leave types and accrual policies through to employee requests, manager approvals, and balance tracking. Employees request full days, half days, or partial-day blocks; managers approve or deny from the app, from email, or in bulk; and balances update automatically as leave accrues and is used.

• Enablement: Licensed and opt-in. An administrator enables it from Admin → Apps Marketplace, and it requires a licence.
• What it is not: Leave Management does not handle shift scheduling or timesheets — those are the Shifts Scheduling and Timesheets apps. Company holidays are maintained per location and excluded from leave-hour math automatically, but they are configured under Locations, not here.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace, find Leave Management, and enable it.
2. Go to Admin → Leave Configurations → Manage. Create at least one leave type (e.g. Vacation, Sick Leave). Each type needs a name, a colour, and an icon. You can load industry-standard defaults from the Load Defaults menu instead of building from scratch.
3. For each leave type that tracks balances, create an accrual policy and set the accrual frequency (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, per pay period, per hours worked, or custom), the per-period amount in hours, and optionally a maximum balance cap and carryover rules.
4. Assign employees to accrual policies — individually, by department or location filter, or with Assign All. A policy marked Default for leave type also covers every employee who has no explicit assignment.
5. If your organisation operates in multiple jurisdictions, open the Availability matrix under Leave Configurations and restrict specific leave types to the jurisdictions where they apply. Employees see only the types available in their work location.
6. Optionally configure blackout periods (Admin → Leave Configurations → Blackout Periods) and coverage limits (Admin → Leave Configurations → Coverage Limits) before the first requests come in.
7. Go to Admin → Leave Configurations → Notifications to review approval authority, notification channels, request options (partial-day leave, team availability), and AI Agent settings.

Employees can now submit leave requests from the Leave Management app page, the mobile app, or Ask AI. Managers see pending requests in their manager dashboard and can approve from the app or directly from the approval email.

Silent-until-configured pairing: an accrual policy with a blank accrual amount saves successfully but never accrues hours for anyone. Always set the per-period accrual amount when creating a policy.

3. How it fits together

Leave types are the categories of time off your organisation offers — Vacation, Sick Leave, Personal Leave, Bereavement, and so on. Each type carries its own rules: whether it requires approval, whether it deducts from a balance, whether it allows a negative balance, the advance-notice window, the backdating window, and whether supporting documentation is required (and after how many days). New leave types default to active, approval required, balance-deducting, and accrual-enabled.

Accrual policies govern how leave hours accumulate. A policy belongs to one leave type and accrues a fixed amount of hours on a schedule you choose. Policies support a waiting period for new hires, proration for mid-year starters, a maximum balance cap, and carryover rules (with an optional grace period and expiry). Accrual rules let you adjust the rate by tenure, role, location, or employment type — for example, adding hours for employees with more than five years of service. A leave type can have multiple policies; each employee is assigned to one (or falls back to the type’s default policy).

Balances track each employee’s accrued, used, and available hours per leave type per year. All values are stored and displayed in hours (8 hours = 1 day). The balance is derived — it equals accrued minus used — and updates automatically when leave accrues, when requests are approved or cancelled, and when an admin adjusts hours manually.

Requests and approvals — employees submit requests for full days, half days (morning or afternoon), or partial days (a specific time window in 30-minute increments, when enabled). Requests that fall within a blackout period, inside the advance-notice window, or at a coverage limit are routed to special approval rather than being rejected outright, so a manager can make the call. Statuses are: Pending, Special Approval, Approved, Denied, and Cancelled. Approvals follow the reporting hierarchy. Managers can delegate their approval authority to another manager or leave administrator while out of the office.

Blackout periods vs coverage limits — these are easy to confuse. A blackout period is a date range during which new requests of specified leave types are either blocked entirely or routed to special approval. A coverage limit sets the maximum number (or percentage) of people who may be off at the same time, optionally scoped to a location, with separate weekday and weekend thresholds. Blackouts prevent leave during a specific window (e.g. year-end freeze). Coverage limits prevent too many people from being off at once. Both can coexist.

4. Running it

Reviewing and approving requests

1. Go to Manager → Leave Management → Requests to see pending requests for your reports.
2. Select a request to see the employee’s balance, pending hours, and any coverage or blackout flags.
3. Approve or deny individually, or select multiple requests and use Bulk Approve / Bulk Deny. Managers can also approve or deny directly from the approval email without logging in.

Adjusting an employee’s balance

1. Go to Admin → Leave Balances, find the employee, and open their balance for a leave type.
2. Use Adjust Accrued Hours or Add Manual Usage to correct the balance. Each adjustment is logged as a transaction in the accrual history.
3. To recalculate all balances from the ledger (approved requests + accrual transactions), use Recalculate All — this runs as a background task.

Managing blackout periods

1. Go to Admin → Leave Configurations → Blackout Periods and create a period with a name, date range, and whether it should block requests or route them to special approval.
2. Optionally scope the blackout to specific leave types and/or locations.

Importing and exporting

• Leave types can be exported to CSV and imported from CSV under Admin → Leave Configurations → Manage.
• Leave balances can be imported and exported (CSV or SFTP) under Admin → Leave Balances → Import/Export.
• Leave requests can be imported under Admin → Leave Requests → Import for historical backfill — imported requests skip blackout, coverage, and backdating validations.

Running accruals manually

Go to Admin → Leave Configurations → Manage → Accrual Policies and click Run Accruals. This processes accruals for all active employees as a background task and notifies you when complete.

5. Settings

Settings are configured at Admin → Leave Configurations → Notifications unless noted otherwise.

Setting	Default	What it changes
AI Agent Enabled	On	Whether the Ask AI agent can answer leave questions and take actions for employees and managers.
Auto-approve leave requests up to this many days	3	When autonomous actions are enabled, the AI agent can auto-approve requests of this length or shorter.
Allow partial-day leave requests	Off	Whether employees can request a specific time window (e.g. 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM) instead of a full or half day.
Show “who’s out” while picking dates	On	Whether the leave request form shows teammates who are already off on the selected dates.
Who can approve leave	Managers (reporting hierarchy)	Switches between manager-based approval and a designated approver group.

Per-leave-type settings are configured on each leave type under Admin → Leave Configurations → Manage:

Setting	Default	What it changes
Requires Approval	On	Whether requests of this type need manager sign-off.
Deduct From Balance	On	Whether approved leave reduces the employee’s accrued balance.
Allow Negative Balance	Off	Whether a request can be approved when the employee’s balance is insufficient (the shortfall is recorded as unpaid hours).
Accrual Enabled	On	Whether a balance is tracked and accrued for this type.
Advance Notice (days)	7	Requests submitted with less notice are routed to special approval instead of rejected.
Backdating Window (days)	14	How far into the past an employee can file a request (e.g. logging a sick day after the fact).
Documentation Required	Off	Whether supporting documents (e.g. a medical certificate) are required.
Documentation Threshold (days)	3	Documentation is required only for requests of this many days or longer.

6. More help

• Leave Management FAQ — specific setup, operating, and troubleshooting questions.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers leave balance, policy, and request questions from these articles.