Leave Management
Submit, approve, and track employee leave requests in one place.
Overview
Leave Management is the central hub for all employee time-off requests. HR managers and team leads can see every pending, approved, and rejected request in one table, filter by employee or leave type, and approve or reject with a single click.
The day count between start and end date is calculated automatically — no manual counting of calendar days. All leave data feeds directly into the HR Reports AI, so you can ask questions like "which department used the most leave this quarter" without any extra work.
Requires Employees
Leave requests must be linked to an existing employee. Make sure you have at least one employee in Employees before submitting your first request.
Leave Types
TotalApp supports six built-in leave types, each colour-coded for easy scanning in the leave table:
Annual Leave
Standard paid vacation days. Drawn from the employee's annual entitlement. Most common leave type for planned time off.
Sick Leave
Medical absence. May require documentation for extended periods depending on your company policy.
Unpaid Leave
Time off without pay. Used when paid leave balances are exhausted or for personal circumstances.
Maternity Leave
Extended leave for new mothers. Duration and pay entitlement vary by jurisdiction and company policy.
Paternity Leave
Leave for new fathers or co-parents. Typically shorter in duration than maternity leave.
Emergency Leave
Urgent short-notice leave for personal emergencies. Usually approved immediately without the normal lead time.
Submitting a Request
- Click Add Leave in the screen header.
- Select the Employee from the dropdown — this list pulls from Employees.
- Choose the Leave Type (Annual, Sick, Unpaid, Maternity, Paternity, Emergency).
- Set the Start Date and End Date. The Day Count field updates automatically based on the date range.
- Enter an optional Reason — for most leave types this is advisory; for some types it may be required by your company policy.
- Click Save. The request is created with a Pending status and appears at the top of the leave table.
Day Count Calculation
The auto-calculated day count is a calendar day count (end date minus start date plus one). It does not exclude weekends or public holidays. If your company excludes non-working days, note the actual working days in the Reason field until a working-day calculator is added.
Approval Workflow
Every leave request follows a simple three-state lifecycle:
Approving a Request
Click any Pending request row to open the detail view. Click the Approve button. The status changes to Approved immediately and a green badge appears in the leave table row.
Rejecting a Request
Open the Pending request detail view and click Reject. An optional rejection reason field appears — fill it in to give the employee context (e.g. "Insufficient notice" or "Critical project deadline"). Click Confirm Rejection to finalise.
Pending Tab First
The filter bar defaults to showing all leave requests. Switch to the Pending filter pill to see only requests awaiting your decision. This is the most efficient starting point for a daily approval review.
Leave Balances
Remaining leave balances per employee are tracked and displayed in two places:
- Employee detail in Employees — open any employee record to see their remaining annual leave days alongside their personal information.
- HR Reports AI — ask "What is the remaining annual leave balance for the Engineering team?" and get a summary table instantly.
Balances are calculated as: Annual Entitlement − Approved Leave Days Taken for the current leave year. Pending requests are not deducted until approved.
Annual Entitlement Setup
The system uses a default annual entitlement of 20 working days unless you set a custom value in the employee record. If your company uses a different entitlement (e.g. 25 days for senior staff), update the Annual Leave Days field on the employee record in Employees before approving leaves.
Export
Click Export in the screen header to download a leave report as an Excel spreadsheet. The export respects any active filter — if you have the Status filter set to "Approved" and the month set to June, only those rows appear in the download.
The exported file includes all leave fields: employee name, leave type, start date, end date, day count, status, and reason. This is useful for feeding into external payroll systems or for annual leave reports to management.