1. Reading your balance
Your balance appears in two places: the Leave days left tile on your home page for the total, and My Leave Balance for the breakdown by type. The same breakdown is shown at the top of the application dialog, so you can check it at the moment you need it.
It has five columns, and the difference between the last two is the one that matters.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Leave Type | Casual, sick, earned and any other type your company operates. |
| Entitled | Days you are entitled to this year for that type. |
| Used | Days on applications that have been fully approved. |
| Awaiting Approval | Days on applications you have submitted that are still climbing the approval chain. Already spoken for. |
| Available | Entitled − Used − Awaiting. This is the number the system checks your application against. |
Why a balance of 5 can refuse a 5-day request. Because you already have days awaiting approval. If you applied for three days last week and it has not been signed yet, those three are in Awaiting Approval, and only the days in Available can be requested again. This is the single most common leave question, and the answer is always in that column.
Nothing is deducted when you apply, and nothing is deducted by hand at any point. Your used days are counted from your approved applications, so the moment an approver signs, the balance is already correct.
2. Making an application
Open Apply for Leave from your home page, or click a day in your leave calendar — clicking a day fills the dates in for you. The dialog is titled Leave Application.
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Leave Type
Choose from your own entitlement list. Unpaid Leave is always available at the bottom, for when you have no balance left or the absence is not covered by an entitlement.
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Paid / Unpaid — leave it alone
This field is filled in for you and cannot be edited. It follows the leave type: an entitled type is paid, and Unpaid Leave is not. To take leave without pay, choose the type rather than trying to change this box.
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Date From and Date To
For one day, put the same date in both. The To date cannot be earlier than the From date.
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Include Holiday
Yes or No — this decides how many days are deducted. It is important enough to have its own section: read section 3 before you choose.
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Check Number of Days
Calculated for you and not editable. It updates as you change the dates and the Include Holiday answer, so use it to confirm the request means what you think it means.
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Reason / Note
One honest line. Your approver sees it in the notification before they open anything, so a clear reason is genuinely faster to approve than a blank one.
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Submit
You get a confirmation naming your application number — they look like
LV-00042— the days deducted, the calendar days covered, and the Include Holiday answer used. Note the number; it identifies your request everywhere.
The TO-DO tab. The dialog has a second tab for personal tasks. It is the same task list as the To-Do board elsewhere in the system — a task added here appears there, and moving it between Todo, Doing and Done works from either place. It has nothing to do with your leave request.
3. The Include Holiday question
This one question decides how many days come off your balance, and it catches everybody exactly once.
Suppose you apply from Wednesday 3 September to Sunday 7 September, and Friday and Saturday are your weekly offs.
| Include Holiday | Days counted | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Yes default | 5 days | Every calendar day in the range is counted, weekly offs and holidays included. |
| No | 3 days | Only working days are counted. The Friday and Saturday inside the range are skipped and not deducted. |
Yes is the default, and for most companies it is also the policy — the calendar days you are away are the days you are away. Only choose No if your company's leave policy genuinely excludes non-working days, and if you are unsure, ask HR rather than guessing: the two answers deduct different amounts from your balance.
No needs a work calendar. Answering No only means something if the company's work calendar has been generated for that period — otherwise the system cannot know which days are non-working. If it has not been, the application is refused with a message naming the period, and you should either apply with Yes or ask HR to generate the calendar. It refuses rather than quietly counting every day, because a silent wrong deduction is the worse outcome.
If every single day in your range is a weekly off or holiday, the application is refused entirely — you do not need leave for days you were not working.
4. Substitute and approver
Substitute Officiate ID
The colleague covering your work while you are away. Pick them from the employee list; their mobile number fills in automatically from their employee record, so there is nothing to type twice.
Approval Superior
Filled in for you, and not editable. It names the person who will receive the first approval task — the same person the system will actually route your request to, so what you are shown and what happens cannot disagree.
If the name shown is wrong, do not work around it by asking someone else to approve informally. Ask HR to correct your supervisor on your employee record; until that is fixed, every request you make will go to the wrong person.
5. Who approves it
Leave climbs a ladder of up to four steps. Which steps apply depends on who you are and how your department is organised — but the order never changes.
An ordinary employee in a single-department team goes to their supervisor and then to the Head of HR. A department head's own leave starts higher and finishes with the MD. Whichever route applies, nobody approves their own leave — if you would be one of the approvers on your own request, that level is skipped.
You are told each time it moves. When a level signs, you get a message saying which level approved it and who is holding it now, so you never have to ask where it has got to.
6. Following your request
My Leave Applications on your home page shows every request you have made, with its number, type, dates, days and status.
Saved but not yet submitted. Still yours to edit or delete. Nothing is reserved from your balance yet.
Submitted and climbing the chain. The record is locked so it cannot change under an approver. The days sit in Awaiting Approval on your balance.
Every required level has signed. The days move to Used, and the dates are recognised as leave rather than absence.
Sent back for correction, with a note explaining why. Not a refusal — see below.
The request is dead, with a note explaining why. Permanently read-only.
7. Returned and Cancelled
Returned means "fix this and send it back"
It is not a rejection. The record unlocks so you can correct whatever the note asked about — the dates, the type, the reason — and submit it again.
Resubmitting starts the chain again from level one. Approvals given on the earlier version do not carry over, because you may have changed the very thing they approved. This is deliberate. If you are only fixing a typo in the reason, it is still worth telling your supervisor it is coming back round.
Your leave balance is not affected while a request is Returned — the days leave Awaiting Approval the moment it stops being Pending.
Cancelled is final
A cancelled application is permanently locked: no edits, no further approvals, and it cannot be resubmitted. If you still need the leave, make a new application. Your balance is untouched.
You cannot book the same days twice
If you already have a live application covering any of the dates you are requesting, the new one is refused and the message names the existing application. Cancel or amend that one first. Cancelled and Returned applications release their dates, so they never block you.
8. Messages you may see
The system refuses an application rather than saving something wrong. Each message names the reason.
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| "From and To dates are required" | Fill in both dates. For a single day, put the same date in each. |
| "To date must not be before From date" | The dates are the wrong way round. |
| Requested days exceed your available balance | The message gives your available figure, which already excludes days awaiting approval. Shorten the request, or apply as Unpaid Leave. |
| You already have an application covering these dates | The message names it. Cancel or amend that application, then apply again. |
| Every day in the range is a weekly off or holiday | You do not need leave for those days. Check your dates. |
| No work calendar has been generated for that period | Apply with Include Holiday = Yes, or ask HR to generate the work calendar for that year. |
| You cannot take this type before a given date | That leave type requires a period of continuous service. Your balance keeps building in the meantime; the date shown is when you may start using it. |
Need it on paper? A printable leave form is available from your employee record — either blank, to fill in by hand, or filled out from an existing application. Your identity details, balances and this year's history are printed for you.