Leave approval

The Leave Approvals page is where managers and other approvers decide on leave applications. It lists the applications waiting for your decision, shows your team’s leave on a calendar, and lets you hand your approvals over to someone else while you are away.

To open it, select HR > Leaves > Approval.

Employees apply for leave on the My Leaves page. For how leave types, policies and balances work, see Leave.

The approval queue

The list at the top shows the applications waiting for your decision, oldest first:

the applications of the employees you approve for, at the level where you are the approver;
applications that were escalated to you;
applications waiting for someone who has delegated their approvals to you.

Column	Shows
Employee	The employee who applied. Escalated (in red) if the application was escalated; Delegated to you if you see it because of a delegation.
Type	The leave type.
Dates	The first and last day of the leave.
Days	The days the leave counts. Weekends and public holidays are not counted (see How the days are counted).
Reason	The reason the employee gave, if any.
Approve, Reject	Open the decision dialog. See Approve or reject an application.

When nothing is waiting, the page says No leave applications are awaiting your decision.

The queue doesn’t show the documents or notes the employee added to the application.

When an application reaches you as its approver, TrakIT sends you an email. From the second approval level on, you also receive a chat message (see Chat).

Approve or reject an application

Select Approve or Reject on the application’s row.
In Approve Leave or Reject Leave, check the employee, leave type, dates and number of days.
Enter your Comments (optional) to approve, or the Reason for Rejection (required) to reject.
Select Confirm.

Your decision, with your comments or reason, is added to the application’s notes, where the employee sees it.

When you reject, the application is Rejected (Decision recorded) and the employee receives an email with your reason.

When you approve:

If another approval level applies, the application goes on to that level’s approver: TrakIT says Approved - forwarded to level n for further approval, and the application stays Pending for the employee.
Otherwise the application is Approved (Decision recorded). TrakIT takes the days off the employee’s balance, marks the days on the employee’s attendance as On Leave or Half Day Leave, and sends the employee an email.

Approval levels

The policy rule of the leave type says whether its applications need approval and how many levels, from 1 to 3.

Level 1 is always the employee’s Manager, as set on their employee record when they submitted the application. If HR changes the employee’s manager, the applications still waiting at level 1 move to the new manager.
Levels 2 and 3 come from the Approval Matrix of the employee’s company, on Leave configuration. A row for the employee’s department is used before a row for the whole company. The approver is a fixed user, the employee’s manager’s manager, or a user of the company with the Configure Leave Policy permission, depending on the row.

After each approval, TrakIT looks for the next level. It skips a level when the matrix has no row for it, when the application has fewer days than the row’s Min. Days, or when no approver can be found. When no level is left, the application is approved.

Escalation

An application waiting at level 2 or 3 can be escalated, if the matrix row sets Escalate After. When the approver has not decided within that many hours of the application reaching them, TrakIT escalates it to the approver’s own manager, or, if they have none, to a user of the company with the Configure Leave Policy permission. TrakIT checks for this every 30 minutes, and escalates an application only once.

Both the approver and the person it was escalated to receive a chat message and an email, and a note is added to the application. The application then shows Escalated in both their queues, and either of them can decide. The person it was escalated to needs the Approve/Reject Leave permission to open this page.

Level 1 is never escalated.

Team calendar

Under the queue, Team Calendar shows a month, Monday to Sunday, with the leave of the employees whose Manager is you. Each day lists the employee, the leave type and (Half day) for a half day. Both pending and approved leave are shown; weekends and holidays inside a leave are not.

A day with two or more people away shows overlap in red, so you can see before you decide whether too many of your team would be away at the same time.

The calendar opens on the current month. Select the arrows (Previous month, Next month) on either side of the month name to move. It is refreshed after each decision.

The calendar shows only your direct reports, not the other employees whose applications reach you at a higher level or through a delegation.

Delegations

A delegation hands your leave approvals over to another user for a period, for example while you are on leave yourself. During that period, the applications waiting for you, including those escalated to you, also appear in your delegate’s queue, marked Delegated to you. Either of you can decide; the decision is recorded under the name of whoever made it.

Select Delegations at the top right to open the Delegations dialog. It lists the delegations you have created, with the Delegate, the dates (From, To) and the Scope. Select Close to close it.

Add a delegation

Select Delegations.
Under Add a Delegation, fill in the fields below.
Select Add Delegation.

Field	What to enter
Delegate To	The user who takes over. The list holds the active users of your company and those with access to it, except you.
From	The first day of the delegation.
To	The last day of the delegation. It can’t be before From.
Scope	Approvals or Both to hand over your leave approvals. Tasks alone does not hand over leave approvals.

TrakIT says Delegation saved successfully, and sends the delegate a chat message and an email.

The delegate needs the Approve/Reject Leave permission to open this page and decide. A delegation is active from From to To, both included, by the date in UTC.

End a delegation

Select Delegations.
Select the bin (End) on the delegation’s row.
In End Delegation, select Yes to confirm.

The delegation is removed from the list (Delegation ended), and the delegate no longer sees your applications. A delegation also stops on its own after its To date, but stays in the list until you end it.

Messages

Message	What to do
A reason is required to reject	Enter a Reason for Rejection.
This application is no longer pending	The employee cancelled it, or it was decided in the meantime. Reload the page.
This application is not awaiting your decision or Unable to record the decision - it may already have been actioned	Someone else decided first, for example your delegate or the person it was escalated to. Reload the page.
Approved, but the balance could not be updated: Insufficient leave balance	The employee no longer has enough days, for example because another of their applications was approved in the meantime. The application stays in your queue. Reject it, or ask HR to check the employee’s balance and the leave type’s policy rule.
This application falls inside a closed payroll period. An HR administrator must re-open that period before it can be changed.	HR has closed the payroll period of this leave. Ask HR to re-open it on Leave configuration.
Select who to delegate to or Start date and end date are required	Fill in Delegate To, From and To.
You cannot delegate to yourself	Choose another user.
End date cannot be before start date	Correct the dates.

Who can use this page

Your role needs the Approve/Reject Leave permission in the Leave Management section of the HR group. It allows you to:

open the page and see your queue and your team calendar;
approve and reject the applications waiting for you;
add and end your own delegations.

Everyone who approves leave needs it: managers, the approvers of levels 2 and 3, delegates, and the people applications are escalated to.