Leave Management
Set up leave types and entitlements, handle requests and approvals, and understand how balances are calculated.
Leave in Eleo has four moving parts: the leave types your business offers, the entitlement each type carries for a given year, the requests your team submits against them, and the balance that falls out of the two. Set the first two up once, and the rest is day to day.
Setting up leave types
Go to People → Scheduling Settings → Leave Types. A leave type is the category a request is filed under — annual leave, sick leave, unpaid leave, compassionate leave, and so on. Each one carries the rules Eleo enforces when somebody requests it:
- Code and Name — the code is the short form that appears in calendars and grids, and must be unique within the store.
- Paid leave — whether time off under this type is paid.
- Allow half day — permits first-half and second-half requests. With this off, the type is full days only.
- Enforce balance — with this on, a request is refused when the person does not have the days available. Turn it off for types you do not want to cap, such as unpaid leave.
- Require note and Require attachment — make an explanation, or a document such as a medical certificate, mandatory on the request.
- Sort order and a colour, which control how the type appears in lists and on the leave calendar.
Entitlements and adjustments
Under People → Scheduling Settings → Leave Entitlements, set Days Allocated for each leave type for a given Year. That is the store-wide default — every eligible team member gets it.
Two things can change an individual’s figure:
- An override — a different allocation for one person, for one leave type, for one year. Someone on a longer contract might get more annual leave than the store default.
- A balance adjustment — a plus or minus applied on top of their allocation, with a mandatory Reason. Use it for carry-over from last year, days bought back, or a correction.
Entitlements are set per year. Allocations for a new year need to be created before your team can request leave that falls in it — there is no automatic roll-forward, and carry-over is expressed as a balance adjustment rather than a setting on the leave type.
How a balance is worked out
For one person, one leave type, one year:
- Allocated — the entitlement (their override if they have one, otherwise the store default) plus any balance adjustments.
- Used — the total days on their approved requests that start in that year.
- Pending — the total days on their requests still awaiting a decision.
- Available — allocated − used − pending.
A request that has been submitted but not yet reviewed already reduces what is available. That stops somebody booking the same days twice over while the first request sits in the queue — and the days come straight back if it is rejected or cancelled.
Requesting leave
Team members submit their own requests from My Leave, which also shows their balance per leave type and their request history.
- 1
Click Request Leave
Pick the Leave Type. The rules attached to it decide what the rest of the form asks for.
- 2
Set the dates
Choose a Start Date and End Date. For a single day you can set Duration to the first or second half instead of a full day, if the leave type allows it.
- 3
Add a note or attachment if required
Where the leave type requires them, the request cannot be submitted without them. Otherwise both are optional, but useful context for whoever reviews it.
What Eleo checks before accepting a request
- The dates make sense — the end date cannot come before the start date.
- No overlap — the request cannot overlap another of their own requests that is approved or still pending. The one exception is two half-day requests on the same day covering opposite halves.
- No blackout clash — the dates cannot fall in an active blackout period.
- Half-day rules — a half day is accepted only if the leave type allows it, and only on a single day.
- Sufficient balance — unless the leave type has balance enforcement turned off, or an administrator overrides it.
Each check returns its own message, so a refused submission tells the requester which rule stopped it — including which blackout period it clashed with, or how many days they actually have left.
Reviewing requests
Approvers work from People → Leave → Leave Requests, which lists every request in the store. Opening one shows the dates, the type, the note and attachment, and the requester’s balance.
A request sits in one of four states:
- Pending — submitted, awaiting a decision, and already counted against the available balance.
- Approved — counted as used, and shown on the team leave calendar.
- Rejected — declined by a reviewer. The days return to the balance.
- Cancelled — withdrawn. The days return to the balance.
Approving or rejecting records who reviewed it and when, along with an optional comment back to the requester. Eleo notifies approvers when a request comes in, and notifies the requester once a decision is made.
Approved leave does not remove the person from a roster that already has them on shift for those days. Check the team leave calendar against your draft rosters and adjust the shifts yourself.
Blackout periods
Under People → Scheduling Settings → Blackout Periods, define spans when leave cannot be taken — a December trading peak, a stocktake week, a product launch. Each has a Name, start and end dates, an optional Reason, and an Enabled toggle.
While a blackout is enabled, any request whose dates touch it is refused, and the message names the period so the requester understands why. Disable a period rather than deleting it if you expect to use the same window again next year.