Leave request lifecycle

The statuses a leave request goes through, from submission to approval, rejection, withdrawal or cancellation, and who can move it.

A Leave Request has a status that shows where it is between submission and its final result, and each change of status has rules for who can make it and what happens to the Leave Balance.

How it works

Statuses

Status	Meaning	Uses days from the Leave Balance
Pending	The request waits for approval.	No
Approved	The leave is confirmed.	Yes
Rejected	An approver refused the request. Final.	No
Withdrawn	The employee took back the pending request. Final.	No
Cancelled	An approver took back the approved leave before it started. Final.	No, the days go back

A request uses days only when its Leave Type deducts from an Allowance Type. See Allowances and entitlement.

An approver is an Owner, an Admin, or the Department Manager of the employee. Rejected, Withdrawn and Cancelled are final.

Who can do what

A Department Manager acts only on the requests of the members of their Department. Nobody can approve or reject their own request.

Action	Employee	Department Manager	Admin	Owner
Request leave for yourself	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Book leave for another employee	No	Department members	Yes	Yes
Approve or reject a pending request	No	Department members	Yes, not their own	Yes, not their own
Withdraw a pending request	Their own	Their own	Their own	Their own
Cancel an approved request	No	Department members, not their own	Yes, not their own	Yes, and their own

To learn how approval authority works, see Roles and approval authority. Approvers approve and reject in Approvals.

Requests that are approved at once

A new request is Approved at once, with no Pending step, when one of these is true:

Its Leave Type does not have Requires Approval turned on.
An Owner or Admin requests leave for themselves.
An Owner, an Admin, or a Department Manager books leave for another employee. See Request leave.

All other requests start as Pending. A Department Manager who is not an Owner or Admin sends their own requests as Pending. An Owner, an Admin, or the manager of the Department they belong to can approve them. Nobody can approve their own request. A Department Manager who is also an Owner or Admin gets their own requests approved at once.

Approve and reject

When an approver approves a request, Leavely checks the Leave Balance again and then deducts the days. If the balance no longer has enough days, the approver sees "Couldn't approve this request.", and the request stays Pending.

To reject a request, the approver must give a reason of 10 to 500 characters.

Withdraw and cancel are different

Withdraw and Cancel both stop leave. The employee withdraws, and an approver cancels.

	Withdraw	Cancel
Who	Only the employee the request is for	An Owner, an Admin, or the Department Manager of the employee
Status before	Pending	Approved
When	While the request is Pending, until its last day (UTC date)	Until the start date of the leave, including that day
Leave Balance	No change, because a pending request uses no days	The deducted days go back to the Leave Balance
Reason	None	Optional, up to 500 characters
Email	Leavely sends nothing	Leavely emails the employee
Where	Summary > Upcoming Leave > Withdraw	Wall Chart: select the leave, then Cancel leave

An employee cannot cancel their own approved leave. The only exception is the Owner, who can cancel their own. Other employees ask an approver to cancel it.

After the last day of a pending request, the employee cannot withdraw it. An approver can still approve or reject it in Approvals.

A withdrawn request leaves Approvals at once. A cancelled request leaves My Year and the Wall Chart, and its days are free to book again.

To learn which emails Leavely sends about leave requests, see Notifications.

Worked example

An employee has 20 available days of Annual Leave. The numbers are examples.

Step	What happens	Status	Available days
1	The employee requests 5 days in June.	Pending	20
2	Their Department Manager approves it.	Approved	15
3	The employee requests 3 days in August.	Pending	15
4	The employee withdraws the August request.	Withdrawn	15
5	Before June, an Admin cancels the June leave.	Cancelled	20

In step 3, the pending request does not change the available days. In step 5, the 5 days go back to the balance, and Leavely emails the employee.

What happens when

A request crosses two Leave Calendars

Leavely rejects it when it is submitted. Each request stays inside one Leave Calendar. See Leave year and leave calendars.

The balance is not enough at approval

Available days do not include pending requests, so two pending requests can together need more days than the balance has. An approval that needs more days than are available fails with "Couldn't approve this request.", and the request stays Pending. The approver can reject it, or the employee can withdraw it.

The Leave Calendar of a pending request is archived

The request cannot be approved. The approver sees "Couldn't approve this request." An approver can still reject it. The employee can withdraw it only until its last day. See Leave Calendars.

The leave has already started

An approver cannot cancel it. The Wall Chart does not offer Cancel leave for leave that has started. If the approver loaded the page before the leave started, Leavely shows "This leave has already started and can't be cancelled." Leavely uses the date in UTC as today.

Two approvers act on the same request

The first action counts, and the request keeps the status that it gave. When two approvers approve or reject at the same moment, the second sees "This leave request has already been processed." When two approvers cancel at the same moment, the second sees "This leave has already been updated. Refresh the page to see its latest status."

Leave request lifecycle

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