Manage and approve leave / Time off

Using the Time Off > Leave page, you can easily view your employee's upcoming leave applications and manage them throughout your workday. From this page, you can:

• View, approve, edit, or decline pending leave applications
• View and manage employee leave in a weekly or monthly calendar view
• See upcoming public holidays in line with leave applications 
• View and manage employee leave documents
• Filter and Export leave applications to CSV

To enhance your experience on the Leave page, we will take you through its key features below.
 

Calendar vs Table view

You can view your leave applications in Table view or Calendar view (by month or week), each offering unique benefits. 

• Table view
  • This view defaults to upcoming, pending applications.
  • Easily switch between Upcoming, In progress or Completed applications.
  • Ability to Bulk approve, decline or Export using the tick boxes on the left and the bulk actions bar.
• Calendar view
  • See all employee leave for the entire week or month on one screen.
  • View the placement of public holidays against leave applications.
  • Edit, approve or decline applications from the Calendar view.
  • Enjoy a prefiltered date range when using the Calendar view and filters in combination.
  • Bulk actions and Export options are not available in the calendar view.

  The GIF below illustrates how to navigate from the table view to the monthly calendar view, highlighting public holidays and edit options.

Quick filters & Pending/ Approved/ Declined badges

There are a variety of useful filters and badges available on the Time Off page to assist you in locating an application or refining your view, including:

• Quick filters for Upcoming, In progress, or Completed are available in Table view.
• Quick filters for Week and Month in the Calendar view allow you to see upcoming leave for that period.

• Leave applications are divided into Pending, Approved, or Declined states. Use the coloured badges on the right-hand side to refine your search.

  

• The search bar to the left of the quick filters to quickly find a specific employee. Search by name or their employee ID. 
• The Filter button, once selected, opens to reveal additional options for filtering your employees. From those options, you can narrow your view down by:
  • Date from and to - If in table view, add specific dates to view leave applications that fall within that period. 
  • Employees - Select individual or multiple employees to view just their leave applications. 
  • Entitlement types - Select to view leave applications submitted for a specific leave type. For example, only Annual Leave applications. 
  • Employment types - Select to view leave applications submitted by employees of a specific employment basis. For example, only applications from part-time employees.
  • Office codes - If your platform houses multiple paying entities, select to view leave applications associated with a specific entity. 

  • Operations - Select to view leave applications made by employees associated with the selected Operation.

    

  Hot tip: Once you have filtered your leave applications, you can also export them to a CSV file for external viewing. Check out our section below to learn more about how to do this. 
 

View and manage leave documents

If you require your employees to upload documents when submitting leave requests, such as medical certificates for sick leave, these can be accessed and viewed directly from the Time Off page. 

From this page, you can also add or remove documents for your employees. 

  Check out our guide on the multiple ways to Upload a medical certificate to learn more about how to enable and use this feature. 
 

View your leave applications in your calendar

It can be helpful to have pending and approved leave applications visible on external calendars, allowing for easy visibility in the business. The external calendar function will work with common calendar types like Gmail, Apple and Outlook.

The platform's approvals and pending applications are instantly updated in the external calendar integration. This is one of our most popular leave features for our customers. If you haven't set it up yet, it's worth considering!

  For information on how to set up your calendar, please refer to the guide.  

Once employees apply for leave through the Employee App, their assigned manager will receive an email notification about a pending leave request, and the application becomes immediately visible in your admin portal.

Admins should manage employee leave applications in Time & Attendance > Time Off before the application date arrives. Below, we will discuss how to:

• View, approve, or edit pending leave applications
• Manage leave applications in bulk
• Decline the leave application and send a decline reason to the employee

  Hot tip: Approving, editing and declining applications can all be performed in either table view or calendar view, depending on your preference. Bulk options cannot be performed from the calendar view of the Time Off page.
 

Approving leave applications

1. Navigate to Time & Attendance > Time Off. 
2. To locate the required leave applications. When opening this page, it will default to 'Upcoming' and 'Pending' applications. 
   • Use the search bar to the left of the quick filters to find a specific employee. Search for their name or their employee ID. 
   • Filter leave applications by Upcoming, In progress, or Completed. 

   • Each application state can be selected via the coloured badges on the right. They are broken down into Pending, Approved, or Declined states.

     

3. Leave applications in a Pending state will require action. You have the following options:
   • Approve - Select the green tick to Approve the Application.
   • Decline - Select the red cross to Decline the Application.
   • Edit- Select the start or end time and then Edit Application. 
4. Once approved, the application will be visible on the roster and will automatically flow through to payroll. It can then be located by filtering for the approved badge.

  The GIF below follows an example of a straightforward approval of an employee's annual leave application. We then navigate to Approved applications to see that it has been successfully managed.

Editing leave applications

On some occasions, you or an employee may need to make changes to a pending or approved leave application. The following conditions must be met to make an edit successfully.

• Admins can make edits to Approved or Pending applications, provided a portion of the application has not yet been paid.
  • ie. If an employee has leave for a 2-week period, an admin can make edits up until the point that the first week of the leave application is paid.
• Employees can make edits to Approved or Pending applications, 
  • When an employee edits an approved application, the application reverts to a pending state for admin reapproval.
  • ie. An employee can edit a March 26-31 application until March 25th.

  Please note: If an employee edits a leave request that has already been approved, this will revert to a Pending state and will need to be approved again by the appropriate admin. Approved requests that have been edited will be highlighted by the orange symbol shown below.

To edit a leave application:

1. Locate the required leave application, select the start or end date from Table view or the edit pencil in Calendar view.
   
   

2. The leave application details will display; you can hover over the leave amount to see where the daily leave hours originate from. This menu only displays the origin of the leave; no action is required here. Select 'Edit Application' to continue.
   
     To understand more about where leave hours come from on an application, refer to our Understanding Leave guide.

   

3. Follow the steps to make the relevant changes to the application. The information below can be edited:
   • The start or end date of the application
   • The leave type used
   • The daily hours of leave per day
   • Attaching a supporting document, such as a medical certificate (this can also be done in the Employee profile or via Approve shifts)
4. Once your changes have been made, select Confirm and approve leave to update.

The leave application will be successfully updated and flow through to the Approved section of Time Off. The employee will receive a notification that their leave application has been adjusted.
 

Managing leave applications in bulk

If you have reviewed multiple applications and would like to make approvals in bulk to save time, this can be done from the table view version of Time Off.

To approve or decline applications in bulk:

1. Select the relevant leave applications by marking the checkboxes on the left.
2. From the action bar at the bottom of your screen, choose Accept or Decline.
   
     Hot tip: When only a single application is selected, you can also choose to edit it from the action bar.

    The GIF below follows an example of bulk approving leave applications from the table view of Time Off. You'll note that we did not include the leave application for the employee with insufficient hours, as we may want to review it in more detail first.


 

Declining a leave application

If you decline an employee's leave application, you can optionally add a reason that will be sent to the employee.

  Please note: If you decline leave applications in bulk, you will only be able to provide one reason, which will be sent to all employees. 

    The GIF below follows an example of a leave application being declined by an admin. 

After approving or declining leave applications

• The employee will receive an email notification of the leave application status (declined or approved).
• Approved leave will be visible on your rosters. Ensure to turn on the 'Leave and unavailability' toggle on your roster display settings.
• Approved leave will flow through to payroll.  

As the Time Off page is a central source of truth for all employee leave in your platform, when approving leave, if there is a published shift for the same day, you can resolve the conflicting rostered shifts from the leave menu.

To resolve shift conflicts within the leave menu:

1. If an employee submits a leave application that conflicts with a published shift, at the time of approval, you can resolve the conflicting rostered shift.
2. The resolve rostered shift modal will appear when you try to approve leave with conflicting shifts. It will present three options to resolve the conflict. The available options are:
   • Cancel shift - The shift will be cancelled, only the leave application will remain.
   • Keep rostered shift - The shift will remain, if approved, the rostered shift & the leave application will be paid. 
   • Remove employee - The shift will remain, but the employee will be removed from it. This option should be chosen when you'd like to fill the shift as the shift will remain on the roster in an unassigned state and can be reassigned to another employee. 

  Hot tip: These shift resolutions can be actioned individually or in bulk!

There may be times when you need to submit a leave application for an employee. Common reasons for this include:

• The employee has called in with an emergency, and you need to record their sick or personal leave on their behalf. 
• Manually entering existing leave for employees when transitioning to foundU.
• Employees are having trouble inputting leave for themselves.

To submit leave for an employee:

1. Navigate to Time & Attendance > Time Off, and select + Leave.

   

2. Complete the leave application with the employee's details and select Confirm and approve leave.
3. The application will be automatically approved and can be viewed by filtering on the Approved badge and searching for the employee.

  You can see an example of the 'submit on behalf' feature in the editing daily hours section below.
 

Editing the daily leave hours

Both admins and employees can update the daily hours of leave in a leave application. This can be done during the application process or later by editing the leave application. 

Watch our example below as an admin submits leave on behalf of the employee. You will observe:

• Editing the hours of leave to 4 hours on two days.
• The application, once saved, automatically moves to 'Approved' as it was updated by an admin. 

If you want your employees to be able to edit the number of hours on their leave applications, there are two Time & Attendance Settings you should consider adjusting. Those settings are:

• Allow editing of daily hours on leave applications - If your employees work irregular hours each week that do not follow a fixed pattern, this setting lets them update the hours used on their leave applications. Employees cannot exceed the maximum hours per week specified in their position's work pattern. 
• Allow leave applications to exceed the weekly maximum hours - Used alongside the above setting, if enabled, this option allows your employees to update the hours in their leave applications to go beyond the maximum hours per week specified in their position's work pattern. 

When employees unexpectedly call in sick on the day or leave work due to illness, it can disrupt operations. How the situation is managed will depend on:

• Whether or not the employee has submitted a leave application via their App. 
• Whether or not they worked any time before going home sick.
• Whether or not the employee is salaried (leave cannot be applied in Approve Shifts for these employees).

There are three methods for dealing with this scenario:

• Add in the personal leave via Approve Shifts while adjusting the hours that were worked.
• Request that the employee submit a leave application via their App for their sick leave. 
• The admin can submit a leave on behalf of an employee via Time off.

Once your method is chosen, all Time Off will flow back into the Time Off menu as your central source of truth. Only one of the above methods should be used for an individual sick day. 

  To apply leave directly to a shift in Approve Shifts, please refer to our guide on Applying Leave in Approve Shifts. This guide covers applying for a full day and a partial day of leave.

When managing employee leave applications, admins may need to check current or future leave balances for various reasons. Below, we will discuss the best ways that:

• Admins can view the estimated leave balances of their employees
• Admins can view the current leave balances of employees
• Admins can export employee leave balances in bulk
• Employees can view their current and forecasted leave balances in the Employee App

Estimated leave balances

When reviewing employee leave applications on the Time Off page, it is important to know or note the employee's estimated balance for the period they are requesting off.

The approved leave amount and the estimated balance at the start of the leave application are displayed in the field Hours/ Est. balance. The estimated balance shown is calculated from the employee's current leave balance plus an estimate of what they would accrue each pay period, based on the Work Pattern set for their position. 

If an employee has any existing leave applications, whether pending or approved, the hours from those applications will be deducted from the estimated balance. 

The colour of the text indicates different conditions of the leave balance.

• Green - The employee has enough leave to cover the requested leave in the application.
• Red - The employee does not have enough leave to cover the requested leave in the application. Entitlements with negative accruals will also be displayed in red if the value is negative
  • For example, in the below image, Kennith has requested 4 hours of leave, but as of the date of the request will only have 1.04 hours accrued. Leave without pay (LWOP) will be used to fill the remaining amount if approved.

  Please note: Once a leave application has been paid in full, the estimated balance will no longer be displayed in the column. 

Viewing current employee leave balances as an admin

You can view Employee leave balances from a variety of places as an admin. Where you view the particular balance will depend on what your particular permissions are and what part of the platform you are working in. You can view Employee balances from:

• The Employee Profile - Employee Card > Employment Type > Entitlements.
• The Approve Shifts page - Edit shift > add leave type > add leave amount.
• Time Off page - Via + Leave (submit leave on behalf of the employee). This instruction is provided above.

The most accurate up-to-date leave balance will always be in the Employee's profile > Employment Type > Entitlements. 

  Hot tip: An employee's leave balance is updated each time a draft payslip (that contains either a leave redemption or leave accrual) is generated.

Leave balances in the employee profile

Admins with permissions to access Employee profiles can view and edit balances (if needed) from the Employee Profile.

To view leave balances in the Employee Profile:

1. Navigate to People > Approved People and find the employee. Select their name to go to their profile.
2. Select the Employee Card tab and open the Employment Type section. 
3. Scroll down to the entitlements section. Here you can view, add, or edit leave entitlements and balances.

Leave balances in Approve shifts 

This method will be particularly useful for admins who don't have access to Employee profiles such as roster managers. Admins with permission to Approve Shifts can view leave balances here.

For example, when a permanent employee calls in sick and you add personal leave to their shift, the available balance can be seen below the input field. 

Export leave balances

If you'd like to view or export multiple employees' leave balances at one time, you can do this from the Bulk actions of Approved people. This export will pull current data from Employee profiles.

To export leave balances:

1. Navigate to People > Approved People.
2. Identify the employees you'd like to export the leave balances.
   • Use filters to search for employees matching specific criteria
   • Select individual employees by marking the checkbox next to them
   • or use a combination of both
3. From Bulk Actions select either Export all filtered or Export selected (whichever is most appropriate).
4. Select/deselect the fields you're interested in. Towards the bottom of the fields, there is a group titled Leave Detail. This section contains all the leave types available on your platform.
5. Export to CSV.

  Hot tip: Leave can also be exported from the CSV Import menu. This export will provide all entitlements for all non-casual employees. You can also use this export if you want to update entitlements.

Employees viewing and forecasting leave balances

Employees can access this information via Time Off > Leave on their Employee App. This will show all types of balances available in the employee's profile, with the applicable balance under the Leave type.

If your business has selected to not show the balance for a certain leave type to employees, this will display as 'Balance not visible' (see image below). Employees can still apply for these leave types but must consult an admin to check their balance.

For more information on the configuration of viewable leave balances on the Employee app and a payslip, please see our Leave Entitlements guide.

Employees forecasting a future leave balance  

It will be helpful for an employee to see their estimated leave balance for a future date if they are planning for a holiday and need to know their leave balance.

To see an estimated future leave balance:

1. In their Employee App, the employee can select their future leave dates.
2. The leave balance will display an estimated balance at the time of the leave application. This is based on the employee's current work pattern (as set in their profile).

  Please note: The future estimated balance would change if the employee's work pattern is altered in their profile or the employee takes any leave or cancels any leave between now and that day.

Once an employee's leave application has been approved, their leave will be paid out and highlighted on their payslip for the relevant pay period. However, in some cases, the employees' leave may be paid out over multiple payslips, depending on whether their application spans multiple pay periods. 

You can view the status of these leave payments on the Time Off page. 

Hovering over the Approved icon to the right of the application displays the relevant pay cycle information along with the details of who approved the application. 

The payment status of the approved leave application will be indicated by the colour of the icon; the colours visible are:

• Grey - The payment for the leave application is pending. This most likely means that payroll for the application's pay period has not yet been processed.
• Green - The payment for the leave application has been completed. This indicates that payroll has been processed for the pay period; however, it does not confirm whether the payment has been received into the employee's bank account. 
• Orange - The payment for the leave application has been partially paid and is awaiting the remaining payment. This will occur if a leave application spans more than one pay cycle.

  Hot tip: Select the payslip ID in the paycycle breakdown, and it will take you to the editable payslip for that employee, provided you have the appropriate admin permissions.

Numerous communications can be sent through the leave application process to both employees and admin. These communications can be sent via email and/or SMS. They can be enabled, disabled, or edited to suit your needs. You can also add more admin users as recipients of any communications that are marked as dynamic. 

Below you will find the actions that trigger the communication as well as the communication content ID and an overview of the default purpose of the communication. 

The communications can be edited by navigating to Communication > Communication Content. You can read more about customising communications here. 

• Employee submits a leave application

• Employee submits a leave application for a previous pay period

• Employee edits a submitted leave application

• Employee cancels a submitted leave application

• Admin approves a submitted leave application

• Admin declines a submitted leave application

Allow Leave communications to go to multiple admins

Depending on the circumstances and duration, the approach to managing this will vary. You may want to do this in the below scenarios:

• Scenario: A manager is on extended leave and we need leave comms to go to another manager so they can manage leave applications.
  • Solution: This can be managed by changing the manager (in bulk) on the employee profiles for the selected list of employees. You'll also need to ensure the manager has the relevant permissions to 'manage leave applications'.
• Scenario: We would always like certain leave comms to go to multiple admins in our business so there is more clarity.
  • Solution: This can be managed by setting up the relevant comms in your business to be configured as dynamic. This way each comm can go to multiple different admins. If the additional person is not an admin, they can be set up as a contact for communication purposes.

Exporting leave applications can serve various purposes such as record-keeping, auditing, and analysis. On the Time Off page, you can use the filters to locate past and future leave requests. From there, you can export them from the Table view.

Common use cases include:

• Export pending leave applications to provide to higher-level managers for written approval.
• Export a list of employees currently on leave to provide to rostering managers.
• Export a list of personal leave used by a particular employee.

This report can be accessed by admin users with 'Manage Leave Applications' permission. They can only access the leave applications of employees under their search restrictions. More leave reports are available to managers with access to Financial Reports

To export your leave applications

1. Navigate to the Table view button on your Time Off page.
2. Use the quick filters (located toward the top) with the Filters to locate the leave applications you're looking for.
3. Select the leave applications you'd like to export by selecting the tickboxes either
   • Individually or in bulk 
   • or, Select the top tickbox to 'select all on page ' or 'select everything'.

4. From the action bar at the bottom of the page, select Export.

   

In addition to the Leave export from the Time Off page, admin users with the permission 'View Financial Report Centre' can access more Leave reports that contain financial data. These reports will provide more detailed data that can be used to:

• Perform financial reporting & management
• Provide insight into budgeting and forecasting
• Do strategic planning

With these reports, you can accurately report on:

• Processed leave balances at a particular date.
• Predicted leave balances (based on work pattern & approved leave applications).  
• Leave movement over a period of time. 
• Breaking down leave accrued, redeemed, or edited on a per-payslip basis. 

Leave Activity & Balance Reports

Leave liability and leave movement can be reported on through Leave Activity & Balance Reports.

• The leave liability report can be used to determine the amount of leave owed to employees on a specific date. It can accurately show past and present leave owed, as well as predict future leave owed.
• The leave movement report can be used to highlight any movement or changes to entitlement balances.

   Please note: These reports can pull data from 1 January 2024. If you require data from before this time, please use the previous existing leave reports. 

Other Leave Reports 

If you need to see data before January 1, 2024, or your platform does not yet have access to the Leave Activity & Balance Reports, you'll find the existing Leave Reports helpful.

• Report for Leave Movement before Jan 1 2024
• Leave Liability & Leave Paid before Jan 1 2024

How do I decline an approved leave application?

If you find you need to decline a leave application after it has been approved, you can do so by selecting the tick box on the left, then decline from the Bulk actions bar at the bottom of the screen.

This will move the application to declined.

My employee cannot submit their leave as they are too sick or in hospital, can I do it for them?

Yes, you sure can! In all the instances mentioned below, you would typically use the Time Off > + Leave button to request leave on behalf of an employee. Typical uses cases are:

• An employee has forgotten to submit their own application and the leave has passed.
• Your business has moved over to foundU and admins need to get the existing leave applications into foundU.
• An employee is to unwell or unavailable to submit their own leave.
• Cancelling an employee's leave (due to a submission error) and then resubmitting on their behalf.

When is my employee's leave balance (accrual or redemption) updated on their profile and in their Employee App? Does this occur at the time the leave is approved, or when the pay period ends?

Actually not its not either of the above.

An employee's balance (either from the result of an accrual or redemption) will be updated at the time the draft payslip that contains the leave is generated.

Can my employees see their personal (sick) leave balances? If not, how will they know their balances?

Each business chooses whether or not they would like their employees to see their personal leave balances. This is configured for the specific leave entitlement via Payroll settings > Leave rules.

If you have chosen to hide balances from your employees, employees can still apply for it without knowing their exact balance. Should their balance be insufficient in an application, the system will provide an orange notification letting them know that some hours may be unpaid as they might not have enough hours for the request.

Employees with hidden balances can reach out to their managers to check their personal leave balance.

If an employee edits a leave application after I have approved it, how will I know it has been edited?

An employee can edit any leave application until the leave application has been paid or partially paid. However please note:

• Any changes made to an application whether it is approved or still pending, will push the application back into pending for manager reapproval.
• A communication will be sent to inform you that the employee has edited their previously submitted leave application. This includes the dates and the total hours of the amended application.

I have paid an employee for annual leave, but it turns out they were sick and want it changed to sick leave. How can I do this if they have already been paid?

In the case that the employee has been paid for the incorrect leave type, you'll need to correct this by adjusting the employee's leave entitlements. This can be actioned on the specific payslip by using the 'Adjust Entitlements' option. 

Please see the full instructions for this process here.

Depending on the initial leave type, this may or may not have accounted for leave loading, and require adjustments made there as well.