Approving leave

When someone who reports to you asks for leave, you decide it. Cadre tells you when a request is waiting, and the home screen shows how many are waiting under Needs your attention.

Who can decide leave requests: Owner, HR admin, Manager.

Open the menu and select Work → Leave. As a manager you have four tabs: My leave, Requests, Balances and Calendar.

Whose requests you decide

Your direct reports’ requests.
The requests of people who report to them, but only while their own manager is away: they have left, are on approved leave today, or can’t sign in. Otherwise those requests wait for their own manager.
Never your own. Your leave goes to your own manager.

HR can decide anyone’s request.

Approve or decline a request

Open the Requests tab. To decide shows the requests waiting, oldest first.
Read the row: the dates, the working days, the Balance after (below zero carries a minus sign), the Relief officer and their answer, and Worth knowing, such as how many others in the department are off on the busiest day.
Click the person’s name to see the request at the side, with their note and who else in the department is away that week.
Click Approve. The days are taken from their balance.
To decline, click the cross (Decline), say Why is it declined?, then click Decline. The employee sees your reason.

To decide several at once, tick them and click Approve or Decline… in the bar above the list. Each one is decided by the same rules as deciding it alone; any that can’t be are listed with the reason, and the rest still go through.

When the request names a relief officer

The Relief officer column shows the colleague who will cover and where their answer stands: Accepted, Waiting for answer, Declined with their reason, or No answer. Not asked means nobody was named, for example for sick leave, where a relief officer is optional.

For some leave types (annual and maternity leave, to start with) the relief officer must accept before you can approve:

While they haven’t answered, Approve is off. The row says when you can approve anyway.
If they don’t answer within the working days the leave type allows (2 for annual leave, to start with), Approve anyway appears. It approves the request without their answer, and the request records that it was approved without it. Use it one request at a time.
If they decline, the request waits until the employee chooses someone else. You can still decline the request.

When you tick several requests, the bar says how many are ready and how many will be skipped because their relief officer hasn’t accepted, for example Approve 2, skip 2. Approving several at once never approves anyway.

You are told when a relief officer accepts or declines. Declining or cancelling a request tells the relief officer they are no longer needed.

The employee is told of your decision.

Only HR can cancel leave that has already been approved.

Check balances

The Balances tab shows your team’s balances for each leave type, against the year’s entitlement, and says in words when one is below zero or has nothing in it yet. Tick Below zero or expiring to see only those that need a look. Open a figure to see how it was built up.

See who is away

The Calendar tab shows your team’s leave a week, a month or a quarter at a time, grouped by department, with how many people are off each day and the public holidays that apply to them. Approved leave whose relief officer accepted says who covers it. Use it to check that not everyone is away at once before you approve. List shows the same leave as a table.

If your organisation uses leave reminders, Cadre also tells you at 17:00 on a working day who in your team is off the next working day, and nudges you about a request that has waited 3 working days. After 5 working days, HR is told too, so a request never waits unseen. See Holiday and leave reminders.