Overview
The Time-off area lists all of the time-off requests your staff have made via their logged in area, as well as the ones you have created. Time-off requests have been built for flexibility. From simple requests like ‘Jane can’t work next Friday’ to more complex situations such as ‘Barry has university every Tuesday morning for the next two months’.
By default, the time-off page lists all of the pending time-off request made by your staff. You can expand this to include rejected and approved time-off requests by using the advanced search. It is important that you review any pending requests as soon as possible.
All approved time-off requests will be reflected on future rosters as you build them. A red warning notice will show if a shift clashes with a staff’s approved request.
Creating a new time-off request
To create a new time-off record, click the Create New button. Here is a description of the fields:
| Field name | Description |
|---|---|
| Staff | This is the staff that the time-off request applies to. |
| Start date | The first day the time-off request effects. This date should be further in advance than the ‘minimum days notice’ for time-off requests, set on your company settings page, (or over-written at the per-staff level). |
| How long | This refers to the duration of the time-off period. If only part of the day is needed, select ‘A few hours’. Shifts starting outside these hours on the same day will not trigger an alert. If the time-off request is more of a holiday request, select ‘multiple days’; then an end date input field will appear. |
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This is the actual time on the day when the ‘a few hours’ time-off request starts. |
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This is the time on the day that the ‘a few hours’ time-off request ends. |
| End date | This is the last day, the time-off request effects, in relation to the start date. If the time-off request is recurring (see below), the same amount of days between the start and end date will be used. |
| How often | Here the frequency, of which the time-off request should reoccur, is found. If ‘every month’ is selected, the system will base the start date on the day of the week rather than the date. This allows requests for ‘every second Sunday of the month’ instead of ‘the 17th of each month’. |
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If the time-off is recurring, you have the ability to set the last date the request should effect. If the request will carry on indefinitely, leave the setting as ‘Further notice’. |
| Description | This field deals with additional details about the time-off request. This might include why it was request or rejected. |
| Approval status | Here the current status of the request can be found. Depending on your company setting, time-off requests made by staff, start as pending approval. From pending you have the option to approve or reject the request. An approved request can be retracted by a staff or manager at any time. This will stop it showing on future rosters. |
| Notify staff of status | Used if you want to let the effected staff know about any changes you have made to the request before you save it. We recommend leaving this as ‘yes’ if you are changing a time-off from pending to approved or rejected. |
Once you have completed the above fields, click the Save button. If Notify staff of status was set to ‘yes’, the staff will be messaged.
Approving a time-off
The fasted way to approve a time-off request is by clicking on the time-off row and selecting ‘Approve & notify staff’ from the popup menu. If you do not want to notify the staff, follow the instructions on editing below and change the Approval status to ‘approved’.
Editing a time-off
To edit a time-off, click on the time-off row and select ‘Edit time-off’ from the popup menu.
Deleting a time-off
To delete a time-off, click on the time-off row and select ‘Delete time-off’ from the popup menu. A better way is to edit the time-off, select ‘retracted’ or ‘rejected’ from the Approval status drop-down, and have the system contact the staff to let them know about the change.