The Create Leave Request feature lets employees submit leave requests for themselves. Authorized users, such as HR or managers, can also submit leave requests for other employees if they have the required permission.
The employee must be active and have an active license to create a leave request for them.
This module helps ensure that leave requests are submitted correctly based on employee work schedules, leave type rules, leave balance, attendance records, holidays, and approval flow configuration.
Where to Find It #
Go to Dashboard → Leave → Create. The page has two parts: a Leave Request button that opens the request form, and below it a table of the leave requests you can see — your own, plus any you submitted on someone else’s behalf. Everything in this guide happens on that one page.
Related Setup and Navigation #
Before employees submit leave requests, admins should make sure the required setup is completed.
- Leave Type Setup
Route: Dashboard → Admin → Leave Type
Used to create and manage leave types such as Casual Leave, Sick Leave, Annual Leave, or Lieu Leave. Leave type rules such as past leave limit and future leave limit are configured from here. Please check the Admin module → Leave Type for a better understanding. - Permission Setup
Route: Dashboard → Admin → Permission → Employee Permission / Team Permission
Used to assign leave-related permissions, such as creating leave on behalf of others, editing leave, deleting leave, viewing leave, approving leave, or rejecting leave. Please check the Permissions Management for a better understanding. - Approval Flow Setup
Route: Dashboard → Admin → Approval Flows
Used to configure single-step or multi-step approval workflows for leave requests. Approval flow decides who will review and approve the leave request. Please check the Approval Flows (Workflow Management) for a better understanding. - Work Schedule Setup
Route: Dashboard → Employees → Employee Table → Action Menu → Work Hours
Used to set an employee’s working days, working hours, break time, and shift-related schedule. Employees cannot request leave if their work schedule is not set. Please check the Work Hours/Shift Hours for a better understanding. - Attendance Records
Route: Dashboard → Attendance
Used to track employee check-in, check-out, worked hours, and attendance status. Attendance records are checked when creating leave to prevent conflicts. - Create Leave Request
Route: Dashboard → Leave → Create Leave Request
Used by employees to submit leave requests for themselves or by permitted users to create leave on behalf of other employees.
Who Can Use This Feature #
Subscriber Admin can create a leave request for any employee in the company, at any time, without needing any specific permission.
Employees need permission even to submit a leave request for themselves — this isn’t automatic just from being an employee. Creating a leave request on behalf of someone else requires a separate permission on top of that.
Permission Behavior
Two permissions control who can create a leave request at all, and for whom:
- Create Leave Request (For Own)
Required action: Create
Required just to submit a leave request for yourself. - Create Leave Request (For Others)
Required action: Create
Shows the Search Employee field in the Create Leave Request form, letting you pick another employee and submit the request on their behalf instead of your own.
Without Create Leave Request (For Others), the Search Employee field doesn’t appear, and the form can only submit a leave request for yourself (assuming you hold Create Leave Request (For Own)).
Good to know: Subscriber Admin never needs Create Leave Request (For Own) or Create Leave Request (For Others) — those requirements only apply to regular employees.
Good to know: The Create Leave Request permissions only control who can create a leave request. They do not give permission to edit or delete it later. Editing and deleting requests created on behalf of someone else require separate permissions: Edit Leave Request (For On Behalf) and Delete Leave Request (For On Behalf). These permissions only apply to requests you created, not to all leave requests in the company.
To open and view the details of a leave request, the employee also needs the View Leave Request Details permission.
This permission can be assigned directly to an employee, or to an entire team at once (so everyone on that team inherits it). See the Permissions Management guide for how to assign permissions.
Create Leave Request Form #
The form includes the following fields:
- Search Employee
Appears only for users with Create Leave Request (For Others) permission (or the Subscriber Admin). This is used to select another employee when creating leave on behalf of someone else. - Leave Type
Displays leave types configured by the admin from Dashboard → Admin → Leave Type. - Lieu Leave
The Lieu Leave type is available for selection if the employee is eligible (In Employee Add/Edit, you’ll see the “Eligible for Lieu Off” option) for it — this depends on their eligibility setting, not on whether they currently have any Lieu hours banked, so an eligible employee with zero Lieu hours will still see the option (and would then be blocked at submission if they try to request more hours than they’ve actually earned — see Leave Balance Rules below). Once Lieu Leave is selected, the Starting/Ending Date fields won’t let you pick a date earlier than the day after your Lieu hours became available — you can’t back-date a Lieu Leave request to before you actually earned the hours.
- Leave Balance & Calculation
This section is hidden for the Subscriber Admin and for anyone holding Create Leave Request (For Others) — even if that person is submitting a request for themselves rather than on someone else’s behalf, holding the permission alone is enough to hide it. It reflects your balance as of when you opened the Create Leave Request page, not something that refreshes live while the form stays open. What it shows depends on the leave type:- For Lieu Leave, it simply shows the total hours earned so far.
- For every other leave type, it shows the fuller breakdown:
- Entitled leave hours or days — the hours set in Employee Add/Edit → Leave Entitlements for this leave type. This is the full yearly amount exactly as configured — nothing is prorated at this stage yet.
- Earned leave — the portion of that entitlement earned so far, based on joining date. Office-X grows this a little every single day rather than crediting it all at once: it takes the entitled hours, divides by 365, and multiplies by the number of days since the employee’s joining date. This daily accrual applies the same way whether or not the employee is currently in a probation period.
- Used paid leave — hours from this employee’s fully approved leave requests of this type that have been paid out of their earned balance. Pending requests don’t reduce this figure yet.
- Used unpaid leave — the portion of approved leave that went beyond what the employee had actually earned at the time, so it’s recorded as unpaid instead of being deducted from the paid balance.
- Remaining balance — Earned leave minus Used paid leave (and minus Uncategorized hours, if any — see below). This never shows as a negative number: once usage catches up with and passes what’s been earned, the shortfall is reflected in Overused hours instead of a negative balance here.
- Overused hours, if applicable — how far total approved usage (paid, unpaid, and Uncategorized combined) has gone beyond what’s been earned so far. This line only appears once that amount is greater than zero.
- If your company runs payroll in Office-X (this means a Bangladesh company on a plan that includes payroll), an additional Uncategorized figure may also appear alongside the breakdown above — this is approved leave of this type that hasn’t been run through a payroll cycle yet, so Office-X can’t yet say whether it will ultimately count as paid or unpaid. It’s held here separately so it isn’t counted twice, and it clears into Used paid or Used unpaid once payroll processes it.
- Starting Date / Ending Date
Used to select the leave period. - Starting Time / Ending Time
Fill these in only for a partial-day leave request — leave both empty for full days, and Office-X uses your scheduled shift times instead. Once you enter a time, the request has to stay within one day: either a single date, or a night shift that starts one evening and ends the next morning. If you enter times but pick a date range spanning several days, Office-X asks you to either clear the time fields (for full days) or pick a single date. - Reason
Explanation for the leave request. - Send Request
Submits the leave request for approval.
Work Schedule Requirement #
Employees cannot request leave if their work schedule is not set.
Work schedule can be managed from: Dashboard → Employees → Employee Table → Action Menu → Work Hours
If the employee does not have a work schedule, the system blocks the request and shows a message explaining that the work schedule must be set before requesting leave.
Leave Date Rules #
The system validates the selected leave dates before creating the request.
- The Starting Date cannot be later than the Ending Date.
- Past leave requests are allowed only if the selected leave type allows past leave (checked against the Starting Date).
- Future leave requests are allowed only if the selected leave type allows future leave (checked against the Ending Date).
- Each leave type can define how many days back or ahead an employee can request leave.
Leave type date rules can be configured from: Dashboard → Admin → Leave Type
For example:
- If past days is set to
0, past leave is not allowed for that leave type. - If past days is set to
5, the employee can request past leave only up to 5 days back. - If future days is set to
0, future leave is not allowed for that leave type. - If future days is set to
30, the employee can request future leave only up to 30 days ahead.
Working Day and Holiday Rules #
Leave can be requested only for valid working days.
The system checks the employee’s work schedule and work assignments to decide whether leave can be taken on a selected date.
Leave is allowed for:
- Regular working days based on the employee’s work schedule
- Assigned work days for employees (From employees -> Assign Work Days)
- Partial leave on a day where the employee has already worked, if remaining shift hours are still available
Leave is not allowed for:
- Weekends or non-working days, unless a work assignment exists for that day
- Public holidays, unless a work assignment exists for that holiday
- Days where the employee already worked the full scheduled hours
Attendance Conflict Rules #
Attendance records are checked from the employee’s attendance data.
Attendance can be reviewed from: Dashboard → Attendance
This check only applies to the Starting Date of the leave request. If the employee has already checked in and out on that date, Office-X checks how many hours they have worked.
The employee can only request leave for the remaining working hours of that day.
For example, if the employee’s scheduled work time is 8 hours and they have already worked 5 hours, they can request up to 3 hours of leave for that day.
Leave Balance Rules #
Leave balance is calculated based on the employee’s entitlement, joining date, used leave, and company rules.
For regular leave types, the system allows the request even if the employee exceeds the earned balance. The exceeded hours may be treated as unpaid leave based on company rules.
For Lieu Leave, the system checks the employee’s available Lieu Leave balance before creating the request. Employees must first be eligible for Lieu Leave, and their Lieu Leave hours must be approved through Attendance to build an available balance. If the requested Lieu Leave hours exceed the available balance, the request is blocked. Lieu Leave hours are only actually deducted once the request is fully approved — see Payroll and Leave Balance Impact below.
Good to know: hours sitting in a pending Lieu Leave request are held aside while that request waits for approval. So if you have 8 Lieu hours and already have a pending request for 5 of them, a new request can only ask for the remaining 3 — even though the balance shown still says 8. This keeps you from accidentally spending the same Lieu hours twice.
Overlap Restriction #
An employee cannot create a new leave request if they already have a pending or approved leave request within the same date range. Rejected and cancelled leave requests don’t count, so they never block a new request for the same dates.
If an overlapping leave exists, the system prevents duplicate leave requests for the same period.
Leave Hours Calculation #
The system calculates leave hours automatically based on the selected date and time range.
During calculation, the system goes day by day across your selected range and:
- Counts only valid working days
- Skips weekends or non-working days
- Skips every public holiday that falls inside the range, unless the employee has a work assignment for that day
- Uses work assignment hours for assigned shift days
- Uses regular schedule hours for normal workdays
- Calculates partial-day leave correctly using the selected start and end time
- Excludes break time where applicable
The calculated leave hours are saved with the leave request.
Approval Flow Assignment #
Approval flow can be configured from:
Dashboard → Admin → Approval Flows
After the leave request passes all validations, the system assigns the correct approval flow.
The approval flow may be selected based on:
- Employee
- Team
- Gender
- Department
- Designation
Good to know: Approval flows are matched based on the employee and the flow settings. A flow can apply to a specific Team, including teams set up for all employees or all reporting managers under Admin → Teams. You can also add specific employees as exceptions, so the flow will not apply to them.
Only active approval flows are used. If no active flow matches, the request goes to the Subscriber Admin. Also, if an approval step is assigned to the Reporting Manager but the employee does not have one, the Subscriber Admin is notified instead, so the request does not get stuck.
Once the approval flow is assigned, the leave request is saved with Pending status.
The first-step approvers are told it’s their turn. Whether that arrives as an in-app notification, an email, both, or neither depends on how that first step was set up in the approval flow — each step has its own notification and email switches.
Important — if no approval flow matches: the leave request is still created and saved as Pending, and the Subscriber Admin gets an in-app notification about it — but the request has no assigned approver. In this situation, only the Subscriber Admin can approve or reject it; any employee holding Approve/Reject Leave permission is blocked from acting on it. Make sure every employee is covered by an approval flow to avoid requests getting stuck this way.
What Happens After Submission? #
After a leave request is submitted successfully:
- The leave request status becomes Pending.
- The request is sent to the first approver in the approval flow.
- The request only saves which step it’s on and who acted on each step — the actual approvers, and the flow’s steps themselves, are read live from the approval flow’s current setup every time an approval action happens. This means editing an approval flow’s approvers (or adding a step) can retroactively change how an already-pending request gets routed — if a flow gains new steps after a request is already pending against it, those new steps are automatically added onto the still-pending request too.
- The first-step approvers are notified — in-app, by email, both, or neither, depending on the notification and email switches on that step of the approval flow.
- The employee whose leave it is always receives a confirmation email, separately from whatever goes to approvers.
- The leave request appears in the employee’s leave request list.
- Every leave request is given its own Request ID, shown as an “ID” column wherever leave requests are listed and in the request’s own detail view. Notification emails also link straight to that specific request instead of just the general leave list.
If the organization uses a multi-step approval flow, the request moves step by step until all required approvers approve it. Who can act on each step comes entirely from the approval flow your Subscriber Admin set up — Office-X simply follows that setup.
Finding Your Leave Requests #
The table below the Leave Request button is where you track everything you’ve submitted. Each row shows:
- ID — the request’s own Request ID.
- Employee — whose leave it is (useful when you submit for others).
- Type — the leave type.
- Start Date / End Date — the leave period.
- Hour(s) — the leave hours Office-X calculated.
- Status — Pending, Approved, Rejected or Cancelled.
- Requested Date — when you submitted it.
- Action — the menu with View, Edit and Delete (whichever are available to you on that request).
To narrow the list down:
- Search — type an employee name or a Request ID.
- Filters — the Filters button opens Leave Type, Status (All, Pending, Approved, Rejected, Cancelled) and a Requested Date From/To range. The button shows how many filters are active, each one appears as a small badge, and Clear removes them all at once.
- Columns — hide any columns you don’t need, so the table fits your screen.
- Pages — 10 rows per page by default, switchable to 20 or 30, with a “go to page” box for long lists. Newest requests come first.
Action Options #
Available actions depend on the leave status, the logged-in user, and user permissions.
Edit Leave Request #
A leave request can be edited only when its status is Pending.
Approved, rejected, or cancelled leave requests cannot be edited.
When a pending leave request is edited:
- Most of the same validation rules from create leave are applied again — date limits, holidays, attendance conflicts, leave balance, and overlap (checked against every other request, so the leave being edited never blocks itself). One difference: if the employee’s work schedule is missing, editing doesn’t show the same “work schedule not set” message create does — it falls through to a more generic weekend/non-working-day message instead.
- Leave hours are recalculated.
- The existing approval flow state is preserved.
- The request remains traceable.
Permission behavior:
- Subscriber Admin can edit any pending leave request in the company, regardless of who requested it or who created it.
- Users with Edit Leave Request (For Own) permission can edit their own pending leave requests.
- Users with Edit Leave Request (For On Behalf) permission can edit a pending leave request only if they personally created it on that employee’s behalf in the first place. This permission does not let you edit just any employee’s leave — only the specific requests you created for someone else.
Delete Leave Request #
A leave request can be deleted only when its status is Pending.
Approved, rejected, or cancelled leave requests cannot be deleted.
When a pending leave request is deleted:
- The leave request is removed.
- Related comments are deleted.
- Related attachments (from those comments) are also deleted.
Permission behavior:
- Subscriber Admin can delete any pending leave request in the company, regardless of who requested it or who created it.
- Users with Delete Leave Request (For Own) permission can delete their own pending leave requests.
- Users with Delete Leave Request (For On Behalf) permission can delete a pending leave request only if they personally created it on that employee’s behalf in the first place — same rule as editing.
View Leave Request #
Users with the required access can open the leave details page to review the full leave information. The page is organised into tabs: Overview, Approval Flow (only if the request has one) and Comments. When a request is opened from the Approve Leaves page there’s a Leave Quota tab too — that one isn’t shown when you open the same request from All Leaves.
The Overview tab also carries a Timeline — a simple Date / Action / Action By table of everything that has actually happened to this request, in date order: Created (and who filed it, which matters when someone submitted it on your behalf), every approval or rejection with the person who did it, any edits with the exact fields that changed from old value to new value, and Cancelled if the leave was cancelled later. If you ever need to answer “who changed this, and when?”, the Timeline is the place to look.
The details page may include:
- Employee information
- Leave type
- Leave period
- Requested leave hours
- Leave balance and quota information
- Reason
- Attachments (uploaded via comments — see below)
- Approval flow steps
- Approval history
- Comments
Approval Flow:
The approval workflow follows exactly the sequence configured by the Subscriber Admin. Each approval step remains in the Pending status until the assigned approver takes action. As approvers approve or reject the request, the status of each step is updated accordingly. On this page, employees can track the approval progress and clearly see which step is currently pending, which steps have been approved, and if the request is rejected, the exact step at which it was rejected.
Comments:
Users can use comments to communicate about a leave request.
Comments can be used to:
- Ask for clarification
- Provide additional information
- Communicate with approvers or admins
- Keep a record of discussion related to the leave request, with up to 5 file attachments per comment — each file must be a JPG, PNG or PDF and no larger than 2 MB. A file that doesn’t meet those rules is refused as you pick it, with a short message saying why, so check the size before uploading a photo straight from a phone.
Who can comment: anyone who can already view that leave request — the requester, the Subscriber Admin, the assigned approvers, the requester’s reporting manager (even if not named as an approver in the flow), or anyone holding View Leave permissions for it.
How long you can comment: only while the leave request is still Pending. As soon as it becomes Approved, Rejected, or Cancelled, commenting is closed off — trying to add a comment on a closed-out request is blocked with a message explaining it’s no longer open for comments. Comments made while it was still pending remain visible afterward.
All comments remain visible in the leave request history for transparency.
Leave Status Workflow #
A leave request follows this basic status flow:
- Pending — Created and waiting for approval.
- Approved — All required approval steps are completed.
- Rejected — Any approver rejects the request.
- Cancelled — An approved leave is cancelled later by an eligible user.
Rejected and cancelled leave requests are final and cannot be changed back to pending.
Deleting a leave request is different from the statuses above — it’s not a status the request ever holds, it’s a permanent removal. Only a still-Pending request can be deleted, and once deleted, the record (and its comments/attachments) are gone rather than being marked with a “Deleted” status.
Payroll (if supported) and Leave Balance Impact #
Leave balance is not finalized at the time of creation.
When the leave is finally approved (the last step in its approval flow, or approved directly by the Subscriber Admin):
- Paid leave usage is updated based on available earned balance.
- Unpaid leave is recorded if leave exceeds the earned balance.
- Backdated leave may be adjusted for payroll-related calculations.
- Lieu Leave hours are deducted only after final approval — not at intermediate approval steps, and not while still Pending.
If payroll has already processed an approved leave period, that leave cannot be cancelled later. There are a couple of other situations that also block cancelling an approved leave — for example, once its end date has already passed, or once a payroll run covering that period exists — and cancelling a still-cancellable approved leave reverses its balance effects (used hours, unpaid-leave amounts, backdated adjustments, and Lieu hours are all restored). See the Cancel Approved Leave guide for the full rules on who can cancel and when.
Your Daily Routine #
Submitting a leave request, start to finish:
- Go to Dashboard → Leave → Create and click Leave Request.
- If you’re filing for someone else, pick them in Search Employee first — every rule below is then checked against their schedule and balance, not yours.
- Choose the Leave Type. If a balance box appears underneath, read it before going further. (It’s shown to employees filing for themselves — if you hold the “for others” permission, or you’re the Subscriber Admin, you won’t see it, so check the employee’s balance from their profile instead.)
- Pick your Starting and Ending Date. Add times only for a part-day request, and keep it within one day.
- Write a clear Reason — this is what your approver reads first.
- Click Send Request. If a message appears instead, it’s one of the rules above — the message says exactly which one, so fix that and send again.
- Find the new row in the table below, note its ID, and watch the Status column. While it’s still Pending you can add a comment, edit it, or delete it.
Good to know: anything you want on the record — an explanation, a handover note, a document — needs to be added as a comment while the request is still Pending. Once it’s Approved, Rejected or Cancelled, comments close for good.
Notifications and Activity Log #
Who hears about what:
- You (or the employee the leave belongs to) get a confirmation email as soon as the request is created, and another notice each time it moves a step or is finally Approved or Rejected.
- The approvers whose turn it is get their own notice asking them to act — in-app, by email, both, or neither, depending on that step’s switches in the approval flow.
- If no approval flow covers the employee, only the Subscriber Admin is told, and only in-app.
- Notification emails link straight to the specific request, so you don’t have to hunt for it in the list.
Activity Log: creating, editing, deleting, approving, rejecting and cancelling a leave request are all recorded in Dashboard → Activity Log, along with who did it and when. Comments are recorded too. So even if a request is later deleted, the fact that it existed and who removed it is still traceable.
Summary #
The Create Leave Request module ensures that employees can submit leave requests accurately and according to company policy.
The system checks work schedule, date limits, working days, holidays, attendance conflicts, leave balance, Lieu Leave availability, overlapping leave, and approval flow rules before saving a request.
Admins can manage related setup from Leave Type, Permission, Approval Flows, Work Hours, and Attendance routes. After submission, the leave request follows the assigned approval flow (or waits on the Subscriber Admin if none matches). Pending requests can be edited, deleted, or commented on based on permission, while approved, rejected, and cancelled requests are protected — locked from further edits and closed to new comments — to keep leave records accurate, traceable, and payroll-compliant.
