Approving & declining leave
Review leave requests, check the balance and roster impact, and approve, decline, or add leave on behalf of staff.
Staff leave requests land in one place for you to review and action. This guide covers the requests list, the approval panel, and adding leave on someone's behalf.
Who this is for
Owners and managers using the Shiftly web platform.
Before you start
- Open Time → Leave. The Leave requests tab lists every request.
What a leave request is
A leave request is an employee's ask for time off — a leave type, the dates, and how much of their working time it covers. Requests come from two places: staff submit their own in the Shiftly Me app, or a manager adds one on their behalf (covered below). Either way it lands in the same list for you to action.
Each request carries:
- Leave type — annual, personal/carer's, long service, compassionate, unpaid, and so on.
- Dates — a start and end date for full-day leave, or a single date with a start and end time for part-day leave (see Specific time below).
- A per-day breakdown — the hours deducted on each day. This is the key thing to understand: leave is measured in the employee's working hours, not calendar days. Weekends, non-working days, and public holidays are excluded, so a Monday–Friday week off for a full-timer is counted as their rostered hours (not 7 days), and a public holiday in the middle deducts nothing.
- Duration — the total of that per-day breakdown, shown as working hours and the equivalent days.
- A note — optional context from whoever submitted it.
Request statuses
Every request moves through a simple lifecycle, shown as the status on each row:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Submitted and waiting for you to review. Only pending requests can be approved or declined. |
| Approved | You've signed it off. The hours are deducted from the balance and any clashing shifts are handled (see below). |
| Declined | You've turned it down, with an optional reason the employee sees. Nothing is deducted. |
| Cancelled | Withdrawn — either by the employee before it was actioned, or by you cancelling an approved request later. The hours return to the balance. |
When your business is connected to Xero, an approved request also tracks a sync status (synced, syncing, or failed with a retry), so you can see whether the leave has reached payroll.
The requests list
The Leave requests tab lists every request with its employee, leave type, dates, status, duration, and when it was submitted. Use Apply filter to set a date range and Export for a detail or summary CSV.
Review a request
Select Review request on a pending row to open the approval panel. It shows the employee's available balance and the requested amount (with the balance left after this leave), the leave dates, and an editable per-day hours table (public holidays are excluded; it's read-only once actioned). Below that it surfaces conflicting shifts (with the total hours, and Find cover or Delete shift on each), other employees on leave in the same period, and the employee's recent leave.
Approve or decline
- Approve the request from the footer. If it overlaps the employee's own rostered shifts, Shiftly asks you to confirm — approving then unassigns those shifts (unless someone's already clocked in) so they return to the roster.
- Decline with an optional reason the employee sees.
You can cancel an approved request later from its panel.
If the employee's leave balance hasn't been set up, Approve is disabled until you configure it. If the leave falls inside a hard-blocked period, approving asks for a business reason to override — see Restricted leave blocks. When your business is connected to Xero, the panel also shows sync status with a retry, and the action reads Approve · sync to Xero.
Add leave on behalf of an employee
Select Add leave request to record leave yourself. Choose the employee and leave type, then pick how much of the day the leave covers with the Full days / Specific time control.
Full days
Leave Full days selected to book one or more whole days. Set the start and end dates and add an optional note. The per-day hours table shows what each day deducts (public holidays are excluded).
Specific time (part of a day)
Switch to Specific time to book part of a single day — for example a few hours off for an appointment. You set one date, a start time, and an end time, and Shiftly shows the leave duration it works out from that range. That duration is what's deducted from the balance.
A time slot is single-day only. If the start and end date differ, Shiftly stops the save with "Time slots are only available for single-day leave." You must set both a start and end time — leaving one blank is rejected with "Both a start and end time are required for a time slot." Part-day leave shows on the scheduler as a slot inside the day; see Availability & weather.
Related
Give an employee a different leave rate
Give one employee a different accrual rate from the standard policy — forward-dated — and understand exactly what it changes, with examples and edge cases.
Restricted leave blocks
Block or warn on leave during busy periods, and choose how strictly each block is enforced.