Your New Company Policies

Alongside our latest Wall Chart update, it's worth remembering: Leave Dates works around your company's policies, not the other way round.

Everything below is bespoke to your account, so the software fits how your business actually runs. 

You can find these settings in Settings > Policies. Depending on your plan, you can apply a default policy across all leave types or create tailored rules for individual types.

To discover the different options on each plan, click here.

Here’s what’s new and how you can use it inside your business: 

Set how much notice your team needs to give before booking any type of leave. 

For example, a seven-day notice period means requests must be submitted at least seven days before the start date. Requests inside that period are blocked automatically.

You can also choose whether leave can be requested for dates in the past.

Why it matters

You’re no longer going to be chasing last-minute requests or having to explain your own notice policy in a separate email every time someone forgets. 

The system enforces it for you.

Decide who can cancel booked leave, when they can do it and how much notice is needed. 

This means you can tailor the rules to individual leave types where needed. 

Why it matters:

Plans change, but that shouldn’t mean a scramble of Slack messages to work out whether a cancellation is even allowed.

Instead, you build your policy to suit the limits you want to apply, and then everyone knows where they stand.

Set the rules for cancelling agreed overtime, including who can cancel it, when it can be cancelled and how much notice is needed.

Why it matters:

Overtime affects more than the rota. 

Employees may have changed plans outside of work; however, managers need to keep staffing and workloads on track.

Therefore, having a clear policy helps avoid confusion and ensures cancellations are handled consistently

Sometimes employees only need a short amount of time off, rather than a full or half day. 

Allowing leave requests in smaller intervals, such as 15 minutes or an hour, gives employees more flexibility and helps businesses track time off more accurately.

Why it matters:

Not every absence needs to be a full day. 

Allowing employees to request all-day, half-day, or shorter periods of leave gives them more flexibility. 

Meanwhile, it also allows businesses to set suitable intervals to keep requests consistent and easy to manage.

Set how far into the future employees and approvers can book leave. 

For example, annual leave could be bookable up to 12 months ahead, while other leave types may have a longer window or no future limit.

Why it matters:

When employees can book leave years in advance, it can make future staffing harder to manage. 

A maximum booking period gives managers a more manageable planning window, while still giving employees plenty of time to organise their holidays.

Set the maximum amount of continuous leave an employee can request at one time. For example, you could limit requests to two consecutive weeks, while allowing longer periods for certain leave types.

This differs from maximum leave booking period. Maximum leave request controls the duration of a single request, while the booking period controls how far into the future leave can be booked.

Why it matters:

Long periods of continuous leave can make it harder to maintain adequate staffing and cover. Setting a maximum helps businesses manage absences more effectively, while allowing flexibility where longer periods of leave are necessary.

And that’s everything in our latest policy update.

These new features are based on customer feedback, which helps give businesses more control over how they manage leave.

If there’s a policy feature you’d like to see in Leave Dates, let us know. We’re always looking for ways to make things work better for you.