Authorising and declining holidays
Last updated
Who can do this: Company admins, Team admins and line managers. Plan: All plans.
When approvals are turned on, leave requests wait for a Company admin, line manager or Team admin to approve or decline them.
How to turn on approvals
- Go to Settings (the Management tab in the Teams app) and open Leave settings. Only Company admins can change these settings.
- Make sure Enable holiday tracking is on.
- Turn on Approvals. This also turns on line managers and Block users editing past whereabouts.
- Turn on Approval notifications if you want emails to be sent. New requests are then emailed to the requester's direct line managers, and people are emailed when their request is approved or declined. Nobody is emailed about a request from someone with no line manager, so Company admins should check the Approvals tab.
Who can approve
- Company admins can approve or decline any request.
- Line managers can approve requests from their direct and indirect line reports. See Creating line managers for holiday authorisation.
- Team admins can approve requests from Standard users in their own team.
How to authorise or decline a request
- Log in on the website or in the Microsoft Teams app.
- Go to the Leave Planner.
- Hover over a pending holiday in the planner and tap Approve or Decline. This works for Company admins, and for line managers with their direct line reports.
- Or open the Approvals tab. Use the drop-down at the top right to choose whose requests to see: Me, Line reports or Indirect line reports. Company admins can also choose any team, and Team admins can choose their own team.
- Use the Pending, Approved and Declined tick boxes to choose which requests to show. Declined also shows cancelled leave. Type in Filter users to find someone by name, and use the arrows at the top to move between leave years.
- Tap Approve or Decline on the request.
Other leave types
Custom leave types with Requires approval? turned on appear on the Approvals tab with their own name, and you approve or decline them in the same way. See Creating custom whereabouts.
What happens next
- Holiday counts against the person's allowance as soon as it is requested. If it is declined, the days are given back.
- A declined holiday shows as Holiday (Rejected) on those days. A declined request for another leave type is cleared from those days.
- If Approval notifications is on, the person is emailed when their request is approved or declined.
- To cancel leave after it has been approved, see Cancelling an approved holiday.