Approve a leave request

The single most common HR action. Optimised for one tap on your phone between meetings.

The scene

Priya requests two days of casual leave for next Friday and Monday. You're the manager. You want to approve quickly without checking three things in three places.

The steps

1. See the request

You get a notification:

• In-app on Home: "1 leave request waiting"
• WhatsApp (if enabled): a short message with a link
• Push notification on mobile

Tap any of them to land on the request.

2. Read what matters

The request shows:

Read in 10 seconds. The "Conflicts" and "Coverage" lines are the ones to check.

3. Approve, reject, or ask

Three buttons:

• Approve — done, Priya gets a notification, leave is locked into the calendar, payroll math is updated for the period
• Reject — requires a reason; she'll see it
• Ask a question — opens a quick chat thread: "Can you push the Friday by a week? Big customer review that day."

90% of requests are tap-approve. The other 10% are where the value of HR judgment kicks in.

4. Done

Total time: 20 seconds. You're back to whatever you were doing.

The gotchas

Approving over the balance

If Priya only has 1 day of casual leave left and requests 2, the agent flags it. You can:

• Reject — standard
• Approve as LOP (Loss of Pay) — the second day is taken as unpaid leave, deducted from payroll
• Approve and adjust quota — give her an extra day (one-off override, audit-logged)

The flag is the agent doing its job. Don't ignore it — payroll comes back to bite.

Blackout periods

If your workspace has blackouts (e.g. "no leave during Diwali week, retail business"), a request landing in a blackout shows it clearly. You can still approve (your call) but the conflict is named.

Set blackouts under Settings → HR → Leave policy → Blackout periods.

Coverage isn't enforced

If Priya hasn't named a coverage person, the request still goes through. We don't block it. We just flag the missing coverage so you can think about it.

Some workspaces add a custom rule: "Coverage required for sales reps on weekdays." That's a workspace-specific override under Settings → HR → Leave policy → Coverage rules.

Multi-level approvals

For larger orgs where leave needs manager + HR approval, set this under Settings → HR → Leave policy → Approval chain. The request goes to manager first, then HR. Each step is a tap.

Sick leave is treated differently

Most workspaces don't require sick-leave approval — it's an after-the-fact notification. "Karthik called in sick today." You just acknowledge.

For workspaces in regulated industries (factories, food handling), sick leave can require a doctor's note for stretches > 2 days. The Playbook handles the request.

The reverse — submitting leave for yourself

If you're a manager or founder, you can submit your own leave from anywhere:

In chat:

Apply 3 days of earned leave for next Wednesday through Friday — going to my brother's wedding.

The Planner creates the request. It routes to whoever approves you (often the CFO/co-founder, or HR). You get a notification when approved.

If you're the Owner with nobody to approve you, the leave is auto-approved with an audit-log entry. (The Founder dashboard quietly notices Owner-leave patterns over time — if you haven't taken a day off in 60 days, you'll see a soft nudge.)

What you'll feel after a month

Two things settle:

1. Approvals are no longer a queue you dread. They're 20-second taps. You do them at red lights.
2. Payroll-vs-leave reconciliation stops. The math is integrated. The day Priya was on leave is the day she has 1 fewer working day on her payslip. You don't compute it.

What's next

• Run payroll — leave directly affects each month's payroll
• Reference → Leave policy — how to set quotas, carry-over, encashment
• Spot burnout early — the inverse signal (people who don't take leave)