Ready to set up Time-Off Approval Policies? If you haven’t yet, start with our Time-Off Approval Policies guide to learn how to create them.
Once your policies are in place, this guide will help you assign them to employees for smoother time-off management.
Setting up time-off approval policies is available on the Ultimate subscription plan.
Assigning an Approval Policy
Follow these steps to assign or edit a Time-Off Approval Policy for an employee:
Navigate to Resourcing > Employees and select the user.
Go to the employee’s Time Off tab.
Check the banner for the current policy status:
Policy Assigned: Displays the policy name.
No Policy Assigned: Allows you to select and assign a policy.
Click Edit to open the Edit Approval Policy window.
Select the desired policy. This will automatically apply the approvers and subscribers defined in the policy to the user’s time-off allocations.
What If the Employee Doesn’t Have a Manager Assigned?
If the dynamic "Manager" role is set as an approver or subscriber in the policy settings, but the employee doesn’t have a manager assigned, you’ll be notified during policy assignment.
You can resolve this by assigning a manager to the employee. Learn more about adding managers to employees here.
Bulk Assigning or Changing Approval Policies
You can quickly assign or update approval policies for multiple employees using inline editing in the Resourcing > Employees screen. Here's how:
Click the Fields menu and select the Approval Policy field.
Use the dropdown to choose a policy from the list and assign it to the selected employees.
You can also assign a policy to multiple employees at once.
To do so, tick the box next to the employees' names and select the "Assign approval policy" option in the toolbar above.
Assigning Approvers Without a Policy
To skip assigning a policy and manually set custom approvers for each time-off allocation:
Select "No policy" in the Edit Approval Policy window.
Manually assign approvers for each time-off category in the employee's profile.
This approach provides flexibility for individual setups while functioning similarly to approval policies.
Good to Know: Default Approval Policy
When setting up your approval policies, you can designate one as the default.
This ensures every new employee is automatically assigned the default policy, saving you time and reducing manual assignments!
Checking Approvers and Subscribers
To view the details of approvers and subscribers for a specific time-off allocation:
Hover over the Approvals and Notifications section in the employee’s Time Off tab.
Visibility of Approvers in Profiles
Employees with only the "View your own time off allocations" permission enabled can see their own approvers and subscribers but cannot view those of other employees.
System permission sets: Staff, Coordinator.
Employees with the "View all users' time off allocations" permission can see approvers and subscribers for all employees.
System permission sets: Manager, Profitability Manager, Admin.
Learn more about building custom permission sets here.
How Time-Off Approval Works
When Approval is Required
Requests are automatically sent to approvers specified in the policy.
Subscribers defined in the policy receive notifications upon approval.
When Approval is Not Required
If no policy or approvers are assigned, requests are automatically approved.
Subscribers still receive notifications, even without approval being needed.
Rejecting Requests
For policies requiring "One of the approvers" or "All approvers", a single rejection cancels the entire request.