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Leave management: pools, approvals and the deduction ledger

Leave is hardest to manage at the balance: who has how many days left, how a rejected or cancelled request is refunded, and who approves first. This article describes how BossKin manages leave pools, approvals and a ledger of every deduction and refund so that figures can be reconciled.

Leave types and leave pools

The company creates leave types: annual leave, sick leave, personal leave, unpaid leave and so on. Each type has a unit (days or hours), whether it is paid, and whether it deducts from a leave pool (turned off for types such as unpaid leave).

Days of leave are stored in pools. A pool can be a general pool used by every type that deducts, or a dedicated pool for one leave type. When a request is created, BossKin deducts from the dedicated pool of that type first, then from the general pool. A pool can have an effective period, and once it expires it can no longer be used.

Automatic accrual and manual grants

• Automatic accrual: set rules to add leave monthly or yearly by length of service; the system runs every night.
• Manual grants: use them for opening balances, bonus leave or make-up leave; choose the employee, the pool, the amount, the effective period and a note.
• Opening balances from Excel: when switching systems, import the days still available (not the full-year entitlement). See moving data from Excel.

Employees create requests

Employees choose the leave type, the request kind (by day, one or several days, or by hour), the period and a reason, right on their phone. BossKin calculates the amount by the company's rules:

• Only days on which the employee has a shift are counted; public holidays and days off by the work calendar are skipped.
• Hourly leave does not count the mid-shift break.
• A type that deducts from a pool needs enough balance before the request can be created.
• A request for a public holiday or a day without a shift is rejected at creation.

The employee sees the remaining balance, which is the total of the pools still in effect.

Approval: one step or two

There are two approval modes, chosen in Company settings:

• By permission and scope: someone with leave approval permission in their department scope approves directly.
• Direct manager first, then HR: the request shows “Waiting for manager” until the employee's direct manager approves step 1; HR approves at the end. Managers get a push notification when a request arrives and have a dedicated screen for their team's requests.

Approving keeps the leave that was already deducted; rejecting (with a reason) or cancelling returns it.

The deduction / refund ledger: trace every day of leave

Each time leave is deducted, BossKin records how much came from each pool, against the original request. When a request is rejected or cancelled (including one that was already approved), the leave is returned to exactly the pools it was taken from (the pool deducted last is refunded first). An employee's leave history has a “Deduction/refund ledger” tab showing, for each request, how much was deducted or refunded and from which pool, so any question about a balance can be traced straight to its cause.

How it connects to attendance and payroll

• Approved leave days are not treated as absences in the alerts sent to managers.
• Paid and unpaid leave days flow into payroll as system variables; see payroll.
• Holidays and the work calendar decide which days count as days off; see also scheduling shifts.

Frequently asked questions