🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator

🌐 Subscription plan: Plus, Pro, Enterprise

ℹ️ Important read: Get to know Planday's leave management to find out which leave set-up fits your needs.

✅ Required steps:How to create a fixed leave policy ; How to create an accrued leave policy ; How to create leave accounts.

Are you an employee? See How to apply for leave.

Looking for other leave FAQs?

Note:

You can’t book leave from an expired account as this account has become inactive. So make sure you process all leave requests before the accounts expire.
Make sure you approve all shifts that count towards accrual and you approve all requests before the accounts expires, otherwise if you're using carry-over accounts, they would be created with the wrong balance.

Requesting leave

Why can’t one of my employees request leave?

It could be due to one of these reasons:

Check if the employee has an active leave account by going to Schedule > Leave accounts (or Absence accounts), entering the employee's name in the search bar, and selecting the "Active" filter in Account status for the account's current period. If no account appears, you must assign one to the employee first, as no leave request can be submitted without a leave account.
If the employee already has an active leave account assigned, another reason could be overlapping requests. To verify this, navigate to Schedule > Leave requests (or Absence requests). If there is another request, you must reject it before a new one can be submitted.
Another reason could be that the leave policy the employee's account was created from doesn't allow negative balance. To check this, go to Settings > Leave & Overtime > Policies. Select the checkbox "Allow" under "Negative balance" if the employees should be able to request more days/hours than their existing balance.

How do I add leave requests to an expired holiday account?

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to book leave from an expired account. You would need to make sure you process all leave requests before the holiday year expires.

Alternatively, you can make a manual adjustment to the expired account by deducting some days or hours. To make a manual adjustment, go to How to make adjustments to leave balance.

Is it possible to book a holiday even if you have not accrued the hours?

Yes, it's possible if you have enabled the option Allow negative balance in the leave policy's settings under Settings > Leave & Overtime > Policies.

Editing and deleting leave requests

How can I edit a leave (time off or holiday) request?

To edit a leave request, go to Schedule > Leave requests (or Absence requests) > Adjust the period > Choose the approved or pending status in the Filter > Find the request and open it.
You can then edit a day’s impact.

Note: You can’t extend or reduce the date range of the leave request. You would need to deny it and re-book it.

When an employee requests holiday or I request on their behalf, the amount of days or hours is 0. Why is it so?

The number of days or hours deducted depends on the leave policy settings and on other background settings that a support consultant can enable.

Background settings that only Planday Support can change:

It could be that you have the option enabled that requires that you have shifts scheduled on the days when the employees request leave. If you don’t have any shifts scheduled on the days requested, Planday won’t deduct any days or hours. So it means that you would need to schedule way ahead. In the leave policy, you can choose the shift type “Holiday” to be applied automatically to the scheduled shift. Then when you approve the request, you’ll have the “Holiday” shift type automatically selected.

Or it could be that you have the option “business days” enabled. In that case, Planday will only deduct holiday if the day requested is a business day. In your Planday, the business days are set up in the background. To check what business days are set up for your account, you can reach out to a Support consultant.

If you wish to change the option "Business days" or "Timesheet hours", you can reach out to a Support consultant.

Leave policy's settings that you can adjust:

If the number of days or hours to be deducted is 0, it could be that the day requested is a bank holiday. To check this, you can see what holiday calendar is linked to the employee’s holiday account by going to Schedule > Leave accounts (or Absence accounts) and edit the employee’s account. To view the bank holidays in the calendar, go to Settings > Your organisation > General > Bank holiday calendar.
If your leave account is in hours, the number of hours to be deducted for a day’s holiday depends on the settings described above, but also on the leave policy’s settings, enabled under “Work hours per day”:
- Employee settings: The deduction is calculated by dividing the Hours per month (set in the employee’s profile) by the number of business days in the month if the "Business days" option is enabled, or by the shift duration if the "Timesheet hours" option is enabled.
- Previous X weeks: Planday will take the average of hours worked per day over the previous X weeks.
- A fixed rate: Insert it yourself in the leave policy a fixed number of hours to be deducted.

Leave shows no monetary cost when it’s booked, although I expect there’s a cost other than 0. Why is it so?

There could be several reasons to this:

The employee doesn’t have an hourly wage. To check this, go to People > Employees > Click on the employee’s name and add an hourly wage to the relevant employee group. For more details, go to How to set and update your employees’ hourly wages.
The option Do not use is selected in the leave policy the employee’s leave account has been created from. To enable monetary payout on the leave policy, go to Settings > Leave & Overtime > Polices and edit the relevant policy. Under the “Monetary payout” section, choose “Previous 12 weeks”, “Previous 13 weeks”, “Previous 52 weeks” or “Set fixed rate” to determine how the monetary payout is calculated.

How can I delete an approved leave request?

You can’t delete an approved leave request. You would need to deny it by going to Schedule > Leave requests (or Absence requests) > Adjust the period > Choose the approved status in the Filter > Find the request and open it > Click on Deny.

I get an error message when I try to deny a leave request. Why?

It could be because the leave account you’re trying to deny the request for is inactive. To check this, go to Schedule > Leave accounts (or Absence accounts), enter the employee's name in the search bar, and select the "Inactive" filter in Account status for the account's current period.

Why do I get an error when I try to deny a leave request for a deactivated employee?

It is not possible to deny a leave request for an already deactivated employee. Log in and contact our support team via the blue icon at the bottom to get help with this.

Viewing and exporting leave requests

How can I export my employees' leave requests?

Export your employees’ overall leave requests for a selected period by going to Schedule > Leave requests (or Absence requests) and clicking Export.

You'll then be able to choose the date range you want to look at, the type of account (untick “Time off in lieu” if you don’t want to include these requests, the status of the requests and the departments you want the report for.

Why can’t I see all of an employee’s leave requests in the Leave Overview tab in the employee’s profile?

It’s probably because the wrong time frame is selected.

Note: The start of the period is set by default to the first day of the current month.

To see all of an employee’s leave requests change the start date of the period to the date the account is valid.

Miscellaneous

Can I restrict managers from approving their own holidays?

Yes, it's possible to prevent managers from approving their own leave requests. You would need to reach out to our Support team so they can enable a setting for you.

How do I make sure the leave requests go to the right manager?

Let's assume an admin has access to a specific department and should only be notified when an employee in the same department requests leave. You can achieve this by using the supervisor feature.

I cannot have too many employees on holiday at the same time. Can I set a limit on how many employees can be on holiday simultaneously?

As of now, you can't set such a limit. However, you can check the calendar view to get an overview of all the approved and pending absence requests within a specific time frame. To do this, follow these steps:

Go to Schedule > Leave requests (or Absence requests).
On the top right, switch from the List to the Calendar view by clicking the icon. Edit the filters so that the right time frame, Departments and Leave requests are shown.

You will be able to see all the approved requests (in green) and pending requests (in orange) within the selected time period.

Do you have to enter holidays taken on the schedule as well as having them as leave requests? What is the impact on the payroll export?

You would need to apply a holiday shift type on top of the leave request if you're in at least one of the following situations:

You want the holiday hours to count towards the contracted hours
You're using the Xero integration and you're transferring the holiday date ranges to your Xero organisation. You can find more information about this in Map your Planday leave shift types to your Xero Leave types.
You would like to apply a holiday cost to your payroll costs in the schedule.

If none of the situations above applies, then you only need the leave requests, without the shift type on top.
If you're also using the shift type on top, leave will show twice in the payroll report, once for the shift type and another time for the leave request. To avoid this, you should do the following:

Apply a salary code to the holiday shift type
Go to Settings > Payroll > Prints > Ignore salary codes and insert the shift type's salary code that you'd like to ignore.

Note: This would only work for the csv and Excel formats of the payroll report.

Is there a way to include holiday hours on the schedule for each employee when looking at contract rules?

Yes, there is. For this, you'll need to apply shift types to the days the employee is on holiday and make the hours count towards contracted hours by going to Settings > People > Contract rules.

Select the contract rule
Click on Shift types and select the holiday shift type that should count towards the contracted hours.

See related articles:

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Leave requests — FAQs and troubleshooting for admins