How to approve a leave request

A leave request starts with the employee in Self Care and ends on their payslip. This guide follows one request the whole way: finding it, reading the balance before you decide, recommending or directly approving it, and what the approval then does to attendance and to pay.

Prerequisites

Go to Human Resources > Applications and open the Leave Application tab.

Two groups of people can open that screen: HR admins whose role grants access to the Applications screens, and anyone set as an employee's reporting manager or holding a leave or attendance approve permission. A reporting manager sees the Applications menu even with no other HR access, and sees their own requests plus their direct reports'.

The path a request takes

Staff never file from the Applications screen, and you never file on their behalf. Send them to Attendance and leave in Self Care when they ask how to apply.

The approver does not have to wait for a recommendation. Approve is active while a request is Pending or Recommended, including when you are both the employee's reporting manager and the approver. An approval made without a recommendation is recorded in the request's comments, so the trail shows it skipped that step.

Step 1: Find the request

1. Open the Leave Application tab. The card is titled Leave Applications - All Employees.
2. Click Advance Filter and narrow by employee ID, campus, department, designation, a date range, or status. On this tab the filters apply as soon as you change one.
3. Click the eye icon on the row to open the application.

Filter by employee or by date range rather than by leave type. The Type list on this tab is a fixed set of seven types rather than your school's own, so filtering by type can return nothing on a school that uses different names.

Step 2: Read the request before you decide

The decision is final, so spend the extra minute here.

• The left card shows the type, the dates, the duration in days, the current status, and the employee's reason.
• The right panel carries the employee's details and the Leave Balance table, with total, used and remaining days per leave type. Read it. Do not assume FEMS already checked.
• Check for a second request covering the same dates. Overlapping dates are not always blocked. A request of a different leave type, or a new request overlapping one that is already approved, goes through. Only a second open request of the same type is refused, so a duplicate can still sit in the queue unnoticed.

Three counting rules explain most of the arguments about duration:

• Every calendar day between the first and last date is counted, both ends included. Thursday to Sunday is 4 days.
• Weekends and school holidays are not taken out. A closed Friday inside the range still costs a day of balance. An employee who does not want that has to file separate ranges that skip the closed days.
• There is no half day. One full day is the smallest request.

Add a comment if you want your reasoning on record. Type it in the comment box and click Save Comment. On leave applications, comments lock once the request is no longer Pending.

Step 3: Recommend, approve, or both

The reporting manager can still recommend, and the approver can approve with or without that recommendation.

Approving leave needs the hr.applications_leave_approve permission, shown as Approve Leave Applications in Role Management. A Super Admin or your FEMS administrator grants it to your role. Being the employee's reporting manager does not give it to you.

• Recommending: click Recommend while the request is Pending, read the confirmation dialog, and click Confirm. The approver then sees it as Recommended.
• Approving: click Approve while the request is Pending or Recommended, then confirm in the dialog. If it was still Pending, FEMS adds a comment saying it was approved directly without a recommendation, or, when the approver is also the reporting manager, that the line manager approved it as the approver.

The status chip changes at once and the decision is recorded with your name and the time.

Approved and Rejected are final. There is no undo on this screen, and no way to edit a request on the employee's behalf. If a request is wrong, reject it and ask the employee to file again while you still can.

Reject is available to the approver while the request is Pending or Recommended. A reporting manager who is not also the approver cannot reject it once they have recommended it.

The full status ladder, the refusal messages, and the attendance and payroll queues on the same screen are on Handling leave and staff applications.

The two blocks that stop a submission

Staff hit these while filing, then ask you why. Both messages come from the Self Care side, not from your queue.

Not enough balance.

You do not have sufficient leave balance for the selected leave type.

FEMS compares the days requested against the remaining balance for that leave type in the current academic session. Two details matter when you explain it:

• Used days are counted from approved applications only, so a request still sitting in your queue has not eaten into the balance yet.
• If the school allocated nothing for that leave type, the check lets the request straight through. Nothing caps it. That is why you read the Leave Balance table before approving rather than trusting the block.

A request of the same type is already open.

You already have a pending leave application. Please contact HR before submitting another request.

An employee can have only one open request per leave type. Pending and Recommended both count as open. Once the request is Approved, Rejected or Canceled, they can file for that type again.

The message does not name the type. So a teacher who sees it while filing sick leave may have an open casual leave request instead. Filter the queue by that employee before you tell them the message is wrong.

Note what this does not block: an overlap across two different leave types, or a new request that overlaps one already approved. Both go through. Only a second open request of the same type is stopped, so check the queue yourself for the rest.

What the approval changes

On attendance

An approved leave day shows the employee as On Leave on the Attendance Dashboard for that date, and it stops them being counted absent for that day. A request that was never approved protects nobody.

On the payslip

Every leave type is either paid or unpaid, and the setting belongs to the type rather than to the individual request. You cannot change it while deciding.

A request that crosses a month boundary is counted in full in both months. Payroll charges a leave request at its whole length to every pay period its dates touch, not at the days that actually fall inside the period. So a 10-day unpaid leave running from the 27th to the 5th costs 10 days of pay in each of the two months, which is 20 days of pay for 10 days of leave. A paid leave that straddles month end has the mirror effect: it takes 10 days off the absent count in both months and hides real absence.

Ask staff to file a separate request per month, one ending on the last day of the month and one starting on the first. Before you approve anything whose dates cross a month end, tell the payroll officer, so they can check that person by hand.

Only Approved leave reaches payroll. A request still Pending or Recommended when payroll runs has no effect on that month's payslip, which cuts both ways: an unpaid request left undecided is not deducted, and a paid request left undecided does not protect the employee from being counted absent.

Decide the queue before the month is generated. If an approval lands after the payslips exist, the payroll officer has to reprocess the period for it to count. See Generating monthly payslips and Run monthly payroll.

FAQ

The Approve button is greyed out. What am I missing? Either the request is already Approved, Rejected or Canceled, or you are not an approver for leave. Being the employee's reporting manager lets you recommend, not approve. Approving leave needs the hr.applications_leave_approve permission (Approve Leave Applications), granted to your role in Role Management. You never need to wait for a recommendation first. Approve also stays unavailable on your own request, even with the approve permission or as a Super Admin, so asking for more access will not change that.

Can I approve everything in the queue at once? No. Open each request and decide it on its own page. There is no bulk approve.

A driver says FEMS will not let them apply for sick leave. They probably have another sick leave request already open. Filter the Leave Application tab by that employee and look for a Pending or Recommended row of the same type. Approve it, reject it, or ask them to cancel it.

Why does a three-day leave show as five days? Every calendar day between the first and last date counts, including the weekend and any school holiday inside the range. Ask them to file separate ranges if the closed days should not be charged.

I approved the wrong request. How do I undo it? You cannot from this screen. Approved and Rejected are both final. Raise it with your FEMS administrator.

The employee's balance shows 0 used and 0 remaining. Are they out of leave? Not necessarily. Two zeros usually mean nothing was allocated for that leave type, which is not the same as having used it all. Check the allocation before refusing the request.

Related pages

• Handling leave and staff applications
• Attendance and leave in Self Care
• Tracking staff attendance
• Generating monthly payslips
• Run monthly payroll
• HR and payroll troubleshooting