How-to guide

Decide leave requests

Approve or reject a leave request with the employee's balance in view, and answer an ask to cancel leave you already approved.

Employees ask for leave from Employee AZ. Their requests wait for you in Management AZ, one card per request, with the employee's balance beside the dates. This guide covers deciding a request and answering an employee who asks to cancel leave you already approved.

Before you start

  • A request reaches you as soon as the employee sends it. What employees see and do is described in Request leave.
  • A balance is shown only where the employee has leave days set for that leave type and that leave year. You set them on the Leave balances tab, next to Leave approvals. A leave year runs from 1 January to 31 December.
  • Your decision and your comment are shown to the employee on their request in Employee AZ. Write the comment for them to read.

Open the leave requests

  1. In the menu, under People, select Time & leave.

  2. Select the Leave approvals tab. The number on the tab is how many requests wait for a decision, plus the asks to cancel waiting for your answer.

You can also start from Approvals, under Overview: its Leave requests card counts the same requests and opens this page. See Work through the Approvals inbox.

The four tiles at the top count every leave request of your organisation by state: Pending, Approved, Rejected and Cancelled.

Read a request

The requests are listed under Awaiting your decision, the oldest first. Each card shows:

  • the employee's name, the day they sent the request and the leave type;
  • Dates: the first and last day. When only half of the first or last day is asked for, the card says so, for example morning only or afternoon only;
  • Days: how many days the request takes;
  • Balance: the days left out of the days the employee has for the year, and how many would be left if you approve;
  • Reason, when the employee wrote one, and Supporting document, when they attached a document. The document opens in a new tab.

How the balance is counted

A request counts against the leave year it starts in. When that is not the current year, the card names the year under the balance. The balance is the same one the employee sees in Employee AZ and you see on Leave balances:

  • the days the employee has for the year, including days carried over, less any carried-over days that lapsed unused;
  • less the leave already approved in that year, whether it is taken or still ahead.

Requests that still wait for a decision do not reduce the balance, and neither do rejected or cancelled ones.

When the request takes more days than are left, the card is marked and shows Exceeds balance. This is a warning, not a block: you can still approve the request. When the card has no Balance line, no leave days are set for that employee, leave type and year.

Approve or reject a request

  1. In Comment, needed if you reject, write what the employee should know. A comment is optional when you approve. When you reject, it is required: say what the employee should change. The box takes up to 500 characters.

  2. Select Approve or Reject.

The page reloads and confirms Leave request approved. After a rejection it reads Leave request rejected. The request moves to Decision history. If you select Reject with no comment, nothing is recorded and the page says: Say why the request is being rejected, so the employee knows what to change.

The employee sees the decision on their Leave page in Employee AZ, with your words under Manager's comment. Approved leave counts against their balance at once.

Note

Management AZ has no button to undo a decision. An employee whose request you rejected can send a new one. Approved leave is cancelled only when the employee asks for it, as described below.

Answer an ask to cancel approved leave

In Employee AZ, an employee can select Ask to cancel on approved leave that has not started yet. They can ask once for each leave. Until you answer, the leave stays booked and keeps counting against their balance.

These asks are listed under Asked to cancel, below the requests, the oldest first. The panel appears only while at least one ask is waiting. Each card shows the day the employee asked, the leave type, the dates and the days, and their words under Why they ask when they gave a reason.

  1. In Comment, needed if the leave stays, write your answer to the employee. It is optional when you cancel the leave and required when you keep it. The box takes up to 500 characters.

  2. Select Cancel the leave to cancel it, or Keep the leave to keep it booked.

  • Cancel the leave: the page confirms The leave was cancelled. Its days count towards the employee's balance again. In Decision history, the leave reads Cancelled at the employee's request.
  • Keep the leave: the page confirms The leave stays. The employee can read why on their request. In Decision history, the leave stays Approved, marked Kept when asked to cancel with the date. Without a comment nothing is recorded and the page says: Say why the leave stays, so the employee knows. Nothing was changed.

An ask is answered once. The employee reads your answer on their request in Employee AZ.

Read the decision history

Decision history lists the requests that were approved, rejected or cancelled, the most recent first: the Employee and leave type, the Dates, the Days, the Status with its date, who decided under Reviewed by, and what they wrote under Comment. A request the employee cancelled themselves reads Cancelled, with no reviewer.

The table shows the 100 most recent decisions. Each person's full history is on their profile, under Time & leave.

Days your organisation gives no leave on

On the Organisation days tab you can mark a closure or a company day with No leave on these days. Employee AZ warns an employee whose dates include such a day, but it does not stop the request, and the day still counts as leave. The card in Management AZ does not repeat that warning, so check the dates against those days before you approve.

If something goes wrong

  • No leave requests are awaiting a decision. Nothing is waiting. Past decisions are still listed under Decision history.
  • Some employee, leave-type, or balance details are temporarily unavailable. Decisions are disabled until the required details can be verified. Each card then reads This request cannot be decided until the missing details can be read. Refresh the page to try again. The names, leave types or balances could not be read, so no decision is offered rather than one without the balance. Refresh the page after a moment.
  • Leave requests are temporarily unavailable. Counts may be incomplete; refresh this page before making a decision. The requests could not be read. The queue and the history are not shown, and the counts may be incomplete.
  • A decision is taken on the request as it stands when you press the button. If the employee cancelled it, or a colleague decided it, after you opened the page, the page says what happened and changes nothing:
    • This leave request has been cancelled, so there is nothing left to decide. Nothing was changed.
    • This leave request has already been approved. Nothing was changed.
    • This leave request has already been rejected. Nothing was changed.
  • Could not record the decision. Please try again. The page could not confirm that your decision was saved. Your comment is put back in the box, so you can select the button again. If the decision was saved in the meantime, the page tells you so and records nothing twice. An answer to an ask to cancel works the same way, with Could not record the answer. Please try again.

To approve the time employees record, see Approve timesheets and close a month for payroll.