Absence approval policies define who approves requests for a specific absence category and who is notified once they’re approved. Once a policy is set up, you can assign it to all or selected employees.

If no approval policy is assigned to a user, their absence requests will be automatically approved. To ensure proper oversight, it is essential to assign an appropriate approval policy to each user.

📌 Example: Vacation Request Policy → requires approval from the employee’s manager → HR is notified after approval. This policy can then be applied to the whole team or only certain users.

Setting up absence approval policies is available on the Ultimate subscription plan.

Accessing Absence Approval Policies

Navigate to Settings > Absence and scroll to the Approval Policies section at the bottom. Click Add Approval Policy to start.

Before You Start

Make sure the Absence Approval toggle is enabled in your settings. Without it, you won’t see the Approval Policies section!

Create and Configure an Approval Policy

Start by entering the basic details:

Name: Enter a name for the policy.
Description: Provide a description so users understand the policy’s purpose.

Next, configure the following for each absence category:

1) People Who Need to Approve

No approval needed
No approval is required for requests in this category.
Any one of the listed approvers
Any listed approver can approve the request.
All approvers
Every listed approver must approve the request.

2) Notify Upon Approval

Add individuals who should receive notifications when the absence request is approved.

3) Copy to Other Categories

Quickly apply the same rules to additional categories using the Copy to Other Categories option.

📌If you want to apply the setup to all categories at once, select ‘All’ from the category dropdown.

Dynamic Approvers and Subscribers

Instead of selecting a specific person, you can assign a dynamic role as an approver or subscriber. Dynamic roles resolve automatically based on the employee's data at the time the absence request is created.

Manager: the person set as the employee's manager in their profile.

Project Manager: project managers of any project with confirmed (non-tentative) service bookings for the employee during the absence request period.

If there are multiple bookings, all project managers must approve.
If the employee is also a project manager on one of those bookings, they won't be asked to approve their own absence.

The right choice depends on how approval responsibility is structured in your organization.

Role	Best for
Manager	Teams where the direct line manager is always the right approver, regardless of project assignments.
Project Manager	Teams where approval responsibility sits with whoever is managing the project the employee is working on.
Both	When both the line manager and the project manager need to sign off on absence.
Mix	When different absence categories need different approvers — e.g. Manager for sick leave, Project Manager for vacation.
Individual approvers	Small teams or edge cases where a specific named person should always approve, regardless of org structure.

📌 You can use dynamic roles for subscribers too. For example, set Project Manager as a subscriber so PMs are notified when a team member's absence is approved, without being required to approve it themselves.

📌 If Project Manager is the only approver in the policy and the employee has no overlapping service bookings during the absence period, the request will be automatically approved.

This also applies if all bookings are on budgets or deals not linked to a project (meaning there is no Project Manager).

Saving the Policy

After configuring the approvers and subscribers for your absence categories, click Save to finalize the policy. Once saved, the policy becomes available for assignment in the employee profile or via the Employees view in Resourcing.

Default Approval Policy

Once a policy is created, you can set it as the default approval policy for new users in Productive.

Otherwise, you can select the "No default policy" option so no policy is assigned to new employees.

Visibility and Permissions

Who Can See, Create, and Edit Approval Policies?

Users must have the "Manage absence categories and approval settings" permission enabled to view or edit approval policies in Settings > Absence.
By default, these are users with Admin permissions.

Who Can Assign Approval Policies?

Only users with the "Add, edit, and delete absence allowances, manage approvers and subscribers for absence allowance" permission can assign policies to other employees.
By default, these are users with Admin permissions.

Viewing Approvers and Subscribers

Users with the "View your own absence allowances" permission can see approvers and subscribers in their profile screen.
Users with the "View all users' absence allowances" permission can see approvers and subscribers for all employees.