This help guide explains how to manage leave requests in Tanda, including details on the leave approval process, blocking out periods of leave, managing leave notifications, and more.
How The Leave Approval Process Works
Employees have several options for submitting a leave request: they can navigate directly to the Leave tab in the Tanda Mobile app, navigate to Time & Attendance > Leave on a desktop device, or select 'Create Leave' on a rostered shift.
Managers can then approve or decline the leave request at their discretion by navigating to the Leave tab on mobile or desktop. From here, managers can view pending, approved, and declined leave requests.
When an employee submits a leave request, it has a pending status by default until a manager approves or declines it. When a manager approves a leave request, timesheets for the leave dates are automatically created containing the leave hours.
To learn more about who can approve leave requests, visit our help guide on assigning permissions to staff.
Creating a Leave Request
Submitting a leave request (or creating a leave request on an employee's behalf) involves filling out the following fields:
Leave Type: Shows all available leave types based on your company's leave settings.
Duration: Select between a full day, part day, or multiple leave days.
Dates: The date(s) for which you're requesting leave.
Assign a Single Team (optional): Allocates the leave costs to a specific team.
Reason for Leave (optional): Employees can provide more details of their leave request.
Attachment (optional): Useful for attaching documents like medical certificates.
Leave Request Summary: This shows a complete summary of your leave request.
Ensure you click submit to create your leave request. For more details, see our help guide on submitting leave and unavailability.
How To Approve Leave Requests
To approve leave requests, log in to your Tanda account, then navigate to Time & Attendance > Leave to see a list of pending leave requests. You must have either manager or admin-level permissions to do so.
Next, approve or decline the leave request using one of the below options:
Approve: To approve a leave request, click the blue approve button. Approved leave requests are automatically added to timesheets, and the employee is notified that their request has been approved.
Decline: To decline a leave request, click the red decline button. Managers are prompted to provide a reason for declining a leave request, which will be visible to employees.
If you need to decline a leave request that has already been approved, you can still do so. Navigate to the leave request and select 'view.' Then, you will see the option to 'decline request.' If you choose this option, you will be prompted to provide a reason, which will be visible to the employee.
How to Block out Periods of Leave
You can use our Custom events feature to block out periods when employees are discouraged from taking leave. Custom events show employees what important events are coming up when they apply for leave. They can also show unsuitable times to take leave and restrict leave requests for a period altogether.
To create a custom event, navigate to Time & Attendance > Rosters > Events & Comments > + Add New Event. When creating your custom event, you can select the locations and teams it applies to and can choose to discourage or prevent staff from submitting leave requests during this time.
If you select the 'Discourage staff from taking leave' option, employees will receive a 'Leave discouraged' warning as below. This warning appears on the Roster and the leave application form when any of these dates are selected.
Note: Ticking the 'Discourage staff from taking leave' option won't prevent leave requests from being submitted altogether during this period. However, employees will be warned that their request is unlikely to be approved. Managers will still need to approve or decline these requests manually.
To restrict leave requests entirely for a specific event or period of events, select the 'Prevent staff from taking leave' option. If ticked, an employee will see the following when trying to submit a leave request:
If you tick this option, you can choose which leave types to restrict and configure a 'Maximum number of requests.' If the maximum number of permitted requests for this period is exceeded, a disclaimer will appear explaining why employees cannot request leave for that date.
Note: Ticking the 'Prevent staff from taking leave' option blocks any leave requests from being submitted during the period (unless you configure a maximum number of requests). Employees will be unable to submit leave requests. Managers and Admins can submit leave on behalf of the employee and override the setting.
See Who Submitted, Approved, or Declined a Leave Request
You can easily track who submitted, approved, updated, or declined a leave request. To do so, navigate to the leave request, then select the dropdown arrow next to 'View Request' and click on History.
You will see an audit trail of all changes made to the request, including a time stamp for each change.
Managing Leave Notifications
By default, Tanda emails admins and managers daily, notifying them of new leave and unavailability requests.
Note: To reduce spam, Managers who have not logged into Tanda for one month will not receive this notification.
To control who receives these daily email alerts, navigate to Settings > All Settings > View all leave settings > Send daily update emails to. Then, select who you want these daily update emails to be sent to.
There are several other leave notification types you can choose to receive. To view or change your personal notification preferences:
Log in to your account at my.tanda.co.
Navigate to your user profile icon in the top right-hand corner.
Click on My Notification Preferences.
Select whether you want to receive email notifications, push notifications, both, or neither for each notification type.
FAQs
An employee can't apply for a particular type of leave. Why not?
An employee can't apply for a particular type of leave. Why not?
Each leave type is only visible to employees defined in that leave type's 'applies to' settings. To edit who each leave type applies to, navigate to Compliance > Leave Types > Manage. From this view, you can click 'edit' to update each leave type or click the 'applies to' tags to check which staff this leave type applies to.
If a leave type should apply to certain staff but doesn't, cross-reference that the employee has the appropriate tags. You can check this by navigating to the employee's profile, selecting Pay Conditions, and looking under Additional Tags.
Typically, when an employee can't apply for a particular leave type, it's because the tags on their employee profile don't align with the ones the leave type applies to.
How do I edit a leave request after it has been exported to payroll software?
How do I edit a leave request after it has been exported to payroll software?
Once a timesheet containing leave has been exported, the leave request can only be modified once the timesheet has been unlocked.
You need an admin permission level to unlock a timesheet. To unlock a timesheet, navigate to the respective timesheet and click unlock.
Why can't an employee submit an unavailability request?
Why can't an employee submit an unavailability request?
An employee will be blocked from submitting an unavailability request for a particular date if:
The request falls within the 'Minimum number of days notice required for unavailability', as set in your organisation settings, or;
A roster has already been published for the period the employee requests unavailability.
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