Requesting & Approving Leave

This guide covers submitting a leave request, how it gets approved, and what happens if it's rejected or withdrawn.

Purpose

This answers: "How does a day off actually get requested, and who has to sign off before it's official?"

Requesting Leave

An employee — or their manager, on their behalf — chooses a leave type and a date range, with support for half-days. Before it can be submitted, the system checks that:

• The employee actually has that leave type assigned.
• The dates don't overlap another pending or approved request.
• There's enough balance to cover it — including days expected to accrue by the request's end date, if it spans a future reset.
• The dates don't fall inside a company-configured blackout period for that department or leave type.

If the leave type doesn't require approval, the request is granted immediately and the balance is deducted on the spot. Otherwise, it's sent for review.

Approving a Request

A manager or administrator reviews a pending request and approves or rejects it. Approving deducts the requested days from the employee's balance — pulling from carried-forward days first, then the current period's allotment — and notifies the employee.

Multi-Level Approval

For longer requests, a company can require a request to pass through a sequence of approvers rather than just one — for example, a direct manager first, then a department head for anything over five days. Each approver in the chain signs off in order; the request only moves to the next step once the current one approves.

Rejecting a Request

Rejecting a request requires a reason, which is recorded as a comment on the request. Any days already deducted are restored to the employee's balance.

Withdrawing an Approved Request

An employee can withdraw their own already-approved leave, as long as it hasn't started yet.

Seeing Who Else Is Off

Before approving, a manager can check whether the requested dates clash with other approved leave in the same department, job position, or company — a quick way to spot coverage gaps before signing off.

What Each User Sees

Action	Employee	Reporting Manager	HR Administrator
Request their own leave	✅	✅	✅
Request on behalf of their team	—	✅	✅
View their own requests	✅	✅	✅
View their team's requests	—	✅	✅
Approve or reject	—	✅ (their team)	✅
Withdraw their own approved leave	✅	✅	✅

How Visibility Is Decided

1. Ownership. Everyone can request and view their own leave.
2. The reporting line. A reporting manager can request on behalf of, view, and approve or reject requests for their team — or, for a multi-level chain, whoever is registered as an approver at the current step.
3. Permissions. Company-wide visibility and approval rights require the relevant permission.

Customization Options

• Approval requirement is set per leave type — some can be configured to skip approval entirely.
• Multi-level approval chains are configured per department, based on how many days are being requested.
• Blackout periods can restrict specific departments, job positions, or leave types from being requested during a chosen date range.

Good to Know

• Rejecting always restores the balance. Whatever was deducted when the request was made is given back the moment it's rejected.
• A leave-clash check is a heads-up, not a hard block. Managers see who else is off during the same window, but nothing stops an approval from going through anyway if the coverage gap is acceptable.

Ask for the time, know where it stands.