Leave and time off

Leave is where time off is requested, approved and counted. It lives under Timesheets › Leave in the office and Me › Leave on the phone, and appears when your workspace has the Leave feature switched on.

Requesting leave

Your balances sit at the top — on the phone each type shows what is left (18d left) with its Total · taken · pending underneath; in the office they are under My balances. When your workspace counts public holidays inside the allowance, the office figure has of 20d bookable under it; hover for the breakdown, including "Less 8 public holidays on your working days."

Tap Request leave and fill in:

• Leave type — the types your workspace uses, such as Holiday, Sick leave or Time off in lieu.
• Pick dates — one day or a span. Leave can be booked from the start of the previous leave year up to about thirteen months ahead. A request draws on the leave year it starts in.
• The part of the day. A single day has one Day choice: Full day, Morning or Afternoon. A span has First day and Last day, so you can start after lunch or finish at midday.
• Note (optional).

As you choose, Maliru shows an Estimated amount — working days only, measured on your own work pattern, with public holidays left out — and your Balance after pending. If a type comes off your balance and you don't have enough, it says so before you send: "This asks for 2 days more than you have left. It will be refused." If your work pattern or the public holidays change before the leave starts, it is counted again at the new hours.

Types that need approval wait for a manager. The request goes to your own manager (Reports to on your record) when they can approve leave, and otherwise to everyone who manages leave. Other types, such as Sick leave in a new workspace, are recorded straight away. A request that overlaps leave you already have is refused.

If you are a contractor, your leave is recorded as unpaid and comes off no allowance — the request says "Your leave is recorded as unpaid."

Your absences

My absences lists what you have booked, each as Requested, Approved, Declined or Cancelled. Cancel absence withdraws a request, or approved leave that hasn't started yet. Once leave has started, it has been taken; ask a manager if something needs correcting.

Approving leave

With the Manage leave permission you see the whole team's leave:

• Requests awaiting review (Pending requests on a phone) — approve with the tick or decline with the cross. The person is notified either way. If approved leave falls on shifts they are already published on, the people who run the schedule for that work are told too. See Clashes, leave and who cannot go.
• The Team calendar — everyone's leave and the public holidays, a month at a time, with This month to jump back. Click a day to see who is off. From there, approved leave that hasn't started can be cancelled, and leave that has started can be removed with a reason.
• Log for worker — record leave for someone directly, for example a sick day they phoned in. It is approved as it is logged.

Balances, setting one person's entitlement, logging leave and cancelling someone's booking are covered in Leave balances: what's left, setting an entitlement, and changing someone's leave.

Setting leave up

The rules live under Timesheets › Policies, which needs the Manage time clock permission. The people, holidays and types live on the Leave tab, which needs Manage leave.

The leave year and full-time entitlement

Under Policies › Leave, choose when Leave year starts: 1 January, 1 April, 1 July, 1 September or 1 October. Everything else is measured over that twelve months — balances, entitlements, carry-over and the year stepper on the Leave tab, which names the span (1 Apr 2026 – 31 Mar 2027) rather than a bare number.

Set Full-time entitlement (days) to what somebody on your default work pattern gets for a whole year. Nobody has to be full time: each person's own figure is worked out from the work pattern they are on. Leave display unit shows leave in days or hours everywhere.

Then decide whether Public holidays come out of the entitlement. On means your full-time figure includes them — "28 days including public holidays" — and each person can book what is left after the ones that fall on their own working days. Off means public holidays are on top of everybody's allowance — "20 days plus public holidays".

Extra days for length of service

Under Policies › Extra days for length of service, build the ladder: after 1 year → 1 extra day, after 2 years → 2, after 3 years → 3. A day a year… fills those rows for you; edit any of them afterwards, because real policies are rarely that even.

Each rung is the total extra at that seniority, not an increment. There is no separate cap: the cap is the last rung, so a ladder that stops at three years gives nobody a fourth day.

• Service is measured at the start of the leave year. Somebody who reaches three years in August gets their third day from the next leave year, so nobody's balance moves under them mid-year.
• The extra days are pro-rated with the rest of a part-timer's entitlement.

What would this change? shows who moves, and by how much, before you save.

This only works if people have a start date. Somebody with ten years' service and no start date on their record gets no service days. Leave setup names those people so you can fill the date in.

Public holidays

On the Leave tab, Public holidays › Add holiday is the one way in. On a year with no holidays yet, it suggests the ones your country and region observe for the whole leave year — including substitute days when a holiday falls at a weekend. Each date is checked against the rule it comes from before you see it; anything that doesn't check out arrives unticked, with a warning.

Nothing reaches the calendar until you tick it and add it. The same dialog takes a date and a name for a local holiday or a shutdown day. Suggestions need a country on your workspace profile; without one, the date and name still work.

Working out entitlements

Work out entitlements (on the Leave tab) does the arithmetic for everybody at once from your full-time figure, each person's work pattern and their start date. Each row shows its working — for example:

Workspace full-time entitlement: 28 days. Works 24h of the 40h full-time week (60%) → 16.8 days. Starts 12 Jun 2026: 126 of the leave year's 157 working days (80%) → 13.5 days. 2 public holidays fall on their working days and are inside this figure, so 11.5 days are bookable.

Edit any figure before saving. Contractors are left out — they never draw paid leave.

When the year is under way and people are missing a figure, a banner reads "1 Jan 2026 – 31 Dec 2026 is 42% through." with Work them out. It also names anyone with no start date, and anyone with no worker type — they are being worked out as employees until someone sets it.

Keep in step beside each person means their figure is recalculated when their work pattern or dates change, and a new leave year sets itself up. Turn it off and the number is yours. Carry-over and adjustments are always yours — the engine never touches them.

Leave already taken, before Maliru

If you start part-way through a leave year, setup asks one more question for anybody Maliru knows nothing about: how much have they already Taken? Answer with a number (recorded as an opening adjustment with a note) or with the dates (recorded as approved leave, so the calendar is right too). Leave it blank for anyone who has taken none. Running setup twice won't double an opening balance.

Leave types

Leave types › Add type names a type, gives it a colour and sets Paid, Requires approval, Deducts balance and Active. A new workspace starts with Holiday, Sick leave, Unpaid leave, Time off in lieu and Other. Set these first — they decide how every request behaves afterwards.

For somebody on a salary, approved unpaid leave comes off their pay at the day value, as an Unpaid absence line in the pay run that covers it. See setting up pay.

Time off in lieu is an ordinary leave type; nothing banks overtime into it automatically. See Time off in lieu (TOIL).