This guide details how to manage leave requests.

  • Staff apply for leave through the Tanda Mobile App or online at my.tanda.co

  • Leave is approved by managers online at my.tanda.co. Managers see leave requests for the teams that they manage. To learn more about who can approve leave, see Assign permissions to staff

How the leave approval process works

When an employee submits a leave request, it will be in a pending status until a manager approves or declines the request. When a manager approves a leave request, timesheets for the leave dates are automatically created containing the leave hours.

How to approve leave requests

To approve leave requests, access Tanda in a web browser at my.tanda.co.

Navigate to Leave > Requests to see your list of pending leave requests.

Next, approve or decline the leave request using one the below options:

  1. Approve: approved leave requests are added to timesheets. The employee will be notified that their request has been approved.

  2. Decline: managers are prompted to give a reason for declining. The reason entered will be visible to employees.

  3. Delete: deleted leave requests are also moved to the declined tab, ensuring an audit trail is available, however no notifications are sent to the employee.

Tip: To decline a leave request that has already been approved, see 'Tools' in the top right of the approved leave request.

How to block out periods of leave

Custom events show employees what important events are on when applying for leave, and can be used to show unsuitable times to take leave.

  • To create a custom event, navigate to Rosters > Events & Comments > + Add New Event.

  • To display a 'Leave discouraged' warning, select 'Discourage staff from taking leave'. This warning appears on both the roster, and on the leave application form for employees when any of these dates are selected.

Note: the 'Discourage staff from taking leave' option shown above won't prevent leave requests from being submitted during this period, but employees will be warned that it's unlikely to be approved. All leave requests ultimately require approval.

Allow employees to view when other employees are on leave

To allow employees to see when other employees are on leave, navigate to Settings > Permissions and select Allow staff to view the full leave calendar. When this setting is enabled, employees can see approved leave requests of other employees on both the roster and the leave calendar.

Note: The leave reason is not shown, but the leave type will be visible. Pending and declined leave requests are not show - only approved leave requests are visible.

See who submitted, approved or declined a leave request

An audit trail of all leave changes, and the times that each change was made can be found by navigating to the respective leave request and clicking Tools > View History.

Notifications when employees submit new leave requests

Once a day Tanda sends an email to admins and/or managers, notifying of new leave and unavailability requests.

To control who receives these daily email alerts in your Tanda organisation, navigate to Settings > All Settings > View all leave settings > Send daily update emails to and select whether you want the notification emails to go to:

  • Team managers

  • Admins

  • Team managers and Admins

  • None

To view or change your personal notification preferences:

  1. Log in to my.tanda.co

  2. Navigate to your user profile icon in top right hand corner

  3. Select My Notification Preferences

  4. Toggle on/off Time off request daily update emails


Note: to reduce spam, Managers who have not logged into Tanda for 1 month will not receive this notification.

Leave requests explained

  1. Leave Type: shows available types based on your leave settings

  2. Team (optional): allocates leave cost to a team

  3. All-day: turn off to edit leave request times for part-day requests

  4. Dates

  5. Breakdown: shows the hours and days leave will apply. The breakdown is determined by your leave auto-fill settings, and can also be manually edited

  6. Total hours: the sum of the leave breakdown

  7. Reason (optional): for employees to provide more detail on the reason for requesting time off

  8. Attachment (optional): useful for attaching documents like medical certificates

Troubleshooting and FAQ's

An employee doesn't see the option to apply for leave

Each leave type will only be visible to employees that are defined in the 'applies to' settings for the leave type. To edit who each leave type applies to, navigate to Compliance > Leave Types then click the relevant leave type to edit. Check the Applies to section to see if the leave type is set to an employment type or tag that is associated to this employee.

How to edit a leave request after it has been export to payroll software (how to edit a locked leave request):

Once a timesheet containing leave has been exported, the leave request can only be modified once the timesheet is unlocked. The Admin premission level is required to unlock timesheets. To unlock a timesheet, navigate to the respective timesheet and click unlock timesheet in the top right.

Why can't an employee submit an unavailability request, even when the minimum required notice is met?

Once the roster is published for a given roster period, unavailability requests can no longer be submitted for that respective period.


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