Requesting and approving time off

Once time off is configured, People → Time off is where requests are made and decided.

Your balances

Each leave type shows three figures, and the one that leads is the one that matters:

• Remaining — what is genuinely left to spend.
• Accrued — what you have earned so far today.
• Booked — approved leave you have not taken yet.

Remaining is accrued minus booked. A balance that ignored booked leave would let the same hours be spent twice, which is why remaining is the headline.

If every balance reads zero and nothing has ever been credited, you may not be on a leave policy — ask an HR admin to check.

Making a request

1. Choose the leave type.
2. Pick the From and To dates.
3. Tick a half day at either end if you are only away for part of the first or last day.
4. Add a note if it helps whoever approves it.

Before you submit, the form tells you what the request will cost — for example costs 24h (3 days), at 8h per day, excluding 1 public holiday. Weekends and public holidays on your calendar are not charged.

A request is refused if:

• it exceeds your remaining balance and your policy does not allow a negative balance;
• the range contains no working days at all, for example a weekend on its own; or
• it overlaps time off you already have, whether approved or still pending. You cannot be off twice over the same dates — the refusal names the clash, so cancel that request first or pick dates that do not overlap. Cancelled and declined requests do not block anything.

When the leave type is marked automatic, the request is approved immediately and the hours come off straight away. Otherwise it goes to your approver and shows as pending.

Approving

Requests waiting on you appear under Waiting on you. Approve or decline each one; you can add a note explaining the decision.

Approving posts the deduction to the person's ledger. A request that has already been decided cannot be decided again.

Deciding your own request. Nobody can approve their own time off except an owner. That exception is deliberate rather than an oversight: there is nobody above an owner to ask, so blocking them would leave a sole owner with a request that could never be decided. The audit log records who approved what either way, so an owner approving their own leave is visible rather than prevented — the list says so on the row itself.

Everyone else, including HR admins who are not owners, sees a refusal naming who can approve it: their manager if one is set, otherwise the workspace's owners and admins.

Cancelling

Withdraw a pending request at any time. Cancelling leave that has already been approved asks you to confirm first, because it posts a compensating entry and returns the hours — it cannot be undone from here, and whoever approved it may have planned around it.

Nothing is ever deleted from the ledger. A balance can always be explained by replaying the entries that produced it.

Notifications

Submitting a request emails your approver, and messages them on Slack if your workspace is connected. Approving or declining emails the requester. You can opt out under your notification preferences.

Asking the assistant

The assistant can answer questions about your own time off — "how much holiday do I have left?", "what is waiting on me to approve?", or "how many hours would next Monday to Friday cost?". It can estimate a request but deliberately cannot book one for you.