Request a vacation

Personas: Employee (books their own leave in the Personal shell), Manager (approves or rejects in the Inbox) · Modules: Vacations, Employees You ask for days off; the system first checks you actually have that many days left, and only then your manager decides. Once approved, the days are charged against your yearly vacation accounts — oldest year first.

Before you start: an Employee record whose Username equals your login must exist (that is how the Personal shell knows who you are), and HR / the back office must have created your Vacation Entitlements — the per-year day accounts (see Maintain vacation entitlements). No entitlements means no balance, and every request will be auto-rejected as INSUFFICIENT.

1. Employee — create the request (Personal shell)

1. Open the Personal shell (/services/web/personal/) — the Inbox is the home page — and click My Vacation Requests in the sidebar. You see a plain list of your own requests. (The back office's shared surface renders these as a leave calendar — colored all-day bars per request; your personal page today is the simple list + form.) Next to it, My Vacation Entitlements shows your own year-accounts — entitled, consumed and remaining days — read-only (no New button); check your remaining balance here before you book.
2. Click New and fill the form: From date and To date (both required), the leave type (Paid annual leave by default; Sick, Unpaid or Parental), optionally a note. You never pick the employee — the request is always yours.
3. Days is computed server-side from the range: the working days in the span with weekends and official public holidays excluded (so a week containing a holiday charges one day less). For a single-day request you can tick Half day — Days becomes 0.5.
4. Save. A VAC number is stamped immediately (the "Vacation Request" series) and becomes the request's title. Status: DRAFT.

2. Employee — submit (Inbox)

1. A Submit task appears in your Inbox. Its form shows number, Employee, from date, to date, days, note and status — review and click Submit. Status: SUBMITTED.

3. Automatic — the capacity gate

1. Only Paid annual leave consumes your entitlement. A sick, unpaid or parental request skips the balance check entirely and goes straight to approval — it is calendared but charges no days.
2. For a paid request the system sums your remaining balance across the entitlement years still within the carry-over window (lapsed years — older than the policy's carry-over, default two years — are not counted) and compares it with the requested days. If the policy uses monthly accrual, the current year is capped at what has accrued so far (this month counts), so early in the year less is available.
3. Not enough days left? The request is auto-rejected as INSUFFICIENT — no manager task is ever created. Enough? It moves on to approval.

4. Manager — approve or reject (Inbox)

1. An Approve task lands in the Inbox of anyone in the Manager group (plus administrators). The form shows the same fields (number, Employee, from date, to date, days, note, status) with Approve and Reject buttons.
2. Approve sets APPROVED; for a paid request it creates the day records on the actual working dates (weekends/holidays skipped), charging them oldest entitlement year first — a day taken in 2026 may still draw on the 2024 account if that year is still within the carry-over window. A non-consuming type creates no day records. Reject sets REJECTED and nothing is consumed.

What happened behind the scenes

• Numbering: the shared "Vacation Request" (VAC) series, stamped at create.
• Status path: DRAFT → SUBMITTED → APPROVED / REJECTED / INSUFFICIENT (automatic).
• On approval, one day record per working day is created; each entitlement account's consumed days and balance update on their own, and its badge follows: AVAILABLE → PARTIAL → EXHAUSTED.

Variations and refusals

• Not enough balance — a paid request over the (non-lapsed) balance is auto-rejected as INSUFFICIENT before the manager is bothered; sick/unpaid/parental never hit this.
• Balance consumed in between — if other approvals ate the balance between the gate and your manager's approval, a second check at the approval step refuses the consumption as a backstop.
• Reject — the manager's Reject sets REJECTED; no days are charged, balances untouched.

See also

• Vacations module · Maintain vacation entitlements