This help guide explains how to create and manage leave requests in Tanda, including details on the leave approval process, blocking out periods of leave, managing leave notifications, and more.
For details on unavailability requests, see our help guide.
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:
Dates: The date(s) for which you're requesting leave.
Duration: Select between a full day, part day, or multiple leave days.
Leave Type: Shows all available leave types based on your company's leave settings.
Assign a Single Team: Allocates the leave costs to a specific team.
Requested Hours (optional): Total number of hours you want to take.
Reason for Leave (optional): Employees can provide more details of their leave request.
Attachment (optional): Useful for attaching documents like medical certificates.
Ensure you click submit to create your leave request. For more details, see our help guide on submitting leave and unavailability.
Viewing Leave Requests
You can see an overview of current leave requests on the Leave Page, as well as in the Leave Calendar.
Leave Page
Navigating to Time & Attendance > Leave will bring you to the following page:
This shows you how many leave requests are on each day for the chosen time period. Approved requests will appear in green, and pending requests will appear in orange. Declined requests will not appear in the graph. Select a day on the graph to view the individual leave requests that fall on that date:
You can also Edit, Decline or Approve the request from here.
View the requests in a more condensed view by clicking Leave Tools > Switch to table view.
You can further refine the requests you see by editing the filters on the page (Employee Name, Leave Type, Team, Status).
Leave Calendar
To view the Leave Calendar, navigate to Time & Attendance > Leave > Leave Tools > Leave Calendar.
By default, admins can see all leave requests, managers can see the leave requests of staff they manage, and employees can only see their own leave.
You can grant additional access to staff in the leave calendar by ticking 'Allow staff to view the full leave calendar' under All Settings > Permission Settings:
This will allow employees to see when other staff are on leave.
Interpreting the Leave Calendar
The Leave Calendar shows leave requests using a heat map to easily see days with moderate or high volume.
Similar to the Leave page, only Pending or Approved leave requests will appear here.
Use the Team and Leave types filters to narrow down your view.
You can see the leave calendar on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. By default, the report will load the monthly view. Switch between different views using the selector in the top right:
Subscribing to the Leave Calendar
To bring the Tanda Leave Calendar into your personal calendar, click the calendar icon in the top right:
From there, configure the teams you want to subscribe to and copy the link to your personal calendar. You will see calendar entries for all staff that have any of the selected teams in their profile.
Monthly View
Easily see at a glance what types of requests make up the total number for that day. The image below breaks down what the icons on each day mean:
Days will be marked with a red calendar symbol if there is either a public holiday or roster event set for that day. Hover over this symbol to see more information.
Side Bar
Select a single day and use the Side Bar to view more details about the leave requests that day. Click on requests in the sidebar to review, edit, approve or decline them.
Daily View
Switch to the Daily View using the selector in the top right, or by clicking View Day in the sidebar:
The daily view gives you the most detailed breakdown per day.
Today's Events
This is where you can view any roster events or public holidays that apply to the selected locations, including any time off restrictions.
All Day
Leave and Unavailability requests that span 'All Day' are listed at the top of the page. Click into these to open the leave request modal and see more details about the request.
Scheduled
This is where Leave and Unavailability requests that span 'Part Day' are listed. These are displayed on the schedule across their start/end times, giving you a visual indicator as to when requests overlap.
How To Approve Leave Requests
To approve leave requests, navigate to Time & Attendance > Leave, where you'll see a list of leave requests below the graph. 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 approved leave request and select 'decline'. 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.
To delete an existing Custom event, open up the event from the side menu in the roster and select 'Archive Event' at the bottom:
This will permanently delete the event. Archived events cannot be reactivated.
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:
Navigate to your user profile icon in the top right-hand corner.
Select 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 my payroll software?
How do I edit a leave request after it has been exported to my 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.
I want to leave a comment on an employee's leave request that only a certain person can see (e.g. their rosterer). Can I?
I want to leave a comment on an employee's leave request that only a certain person can see (e.g. their rosterer). Can I?
While you can't specifically restrict who can see comments on a leave request, you can use the 'Chat About It Feature' on the leave page to message a specific person about that leave request, effectively acting as a private 'comment'.
An employee worked a part-day shift and also has a part-day of leave. However, I'm receiving a "shift is clashing with leave" error message. Why?
An employee worked a part-day shift and also has a part-day of leave. However, I'm receiving a "shift is clashing with leave" error message. Why?
If you are seeing this error message, please check that the leave request was submitted as a 'Part Day' request under the 'Duration' field. If instead you nominated the duration as 'Full Day' and then manually edited the hours field to reflect the amount of leave, you will see this shift clash error. This is because the system identifies that the employee both worked a part-day but also has a full day of leave approved and recognises this is a clash.
Can I delete my own leave request before it has been approved?
Can I delete my own leave request before it has been approved?
Yes, you can delete your own leave request while it is still pending. However, please note that this feature is only available in the Tanda Mobile app and not on desktop.
To do so, sign in to the Tanda Mobile app, then navigate to the leave tab, locate your leave request, and select delete, as shown below.
After a leave request has been approved, you will need a manager to delete it on your behalf.
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