How a Manager Approves Leave Out of Order

Managing Future Annual Leave Approvals

When approving annual leave for an employee, there may be situations where the employee has requested additional annual leave at an earlier time.

If the employee has leave approved far in the future, this can create confusion about how much leave entitlement they actually have, as the future leave has already been deducted from their balance.

Recommended Approach

To resolve or avoid this confusion, we recommend temporarily declining the approved future leave, approving the earlier requested leave, and then re-approving the future leave.

This approach allows the annual leave periods to be processed in the correct order, which can make it easier to clearly understand how much annual leave is being taken.

Example Scenario

From a manager’s perspective, the employee is requesting leave from the 26th January to 30th January.

This totals 32 hours of leave, however it appears the employee only has 20 hours of annual leave available.

This is because leave for a future period, from 4th May to 8th May, has already been approved and deducted from the employee’s balance.

To avoid confusion, temporarily decline the leave scheduled for May.

This will return the annual leave planned for May back to the employee’s balance.

From there, approve the leave scheduled in January first.

Then re-approve the scheduled leave in May afterwards.

Before approving the leave scheduled in May, the leave balances will show how much annual leave the employee actually has as of that day.

Re-approving the leave periods in the correct order helps ensure the employee’s leave balance reflects their true entitlement.