Approving your team's time off

In Time-off control you decide on your team’s time-off requests: you approve them, reject them with a reason, or handle deletion requests.

Before you start

You decide because you are their direct manager. You see and resolve requests from the people who have you assigned as their manager on their record, with no special permission. Whoever holds the company’s time-off control permission (in the default roles, HR) resolves them for the whole company. Nobody decides on their own requests, except the administrator. It is the same rule as for clock-in corrections and expenses.

You get a notification for every request. When someone on your team asks for time off, a notification lands in your Inbox pointing you to Time-off control. If the person has no manager assigned, it goes to the administrators. It only goes to the inbox, not by email, and you can turn it off in your notification preferences.

Sick leave isn’t approved: it is reported. It is approved the moment the person records it, may not have an end date yet, and you get a notification that an absence was reported that doesn’t need approval.

Approving or rejecting a request

The same screen shows Coverage by department (No risk, Tight, At risk), handy for checking whether an approval leaves a team short, and Recent history, which you can download as a CSV with Export history.

If your company has connected Slack, you can also approve or reject from the message: see Slack and Teams alerts. A rejection sent from Slack or from a phone goes out without a reason.

Recording the end of a leave

A leave with no end date stays open until someone enters the last day. If the person doesn’t, you can: in Recent history, open the leave with Edit, enter the last day under No end date and select Record the end. The date falls between the start of the leave and today; if the leave starts later on, it can only be the start day.

Deletion requests

Time off that hasn’t started yet can be deleted by the person themselves, without going through you. If it has already started or is in the past, the deletion reaches your queue marked Deletion requested, and your inbox tells you. Resolve it with Approve deletion, which removes the absence and returns the days to their balance, or with Reject deletion, which keeps it.

What happens next

On approval, the request becomes Approved, uses days from the balance and shows on the calendar. On rejection it becomes Rejected with your reason. Either way, the person gets the decision in their inbox and by email, with the dates, the type and, for a rejection, the reason, unless they have turned that email off in their preferences.

If you try to resolve a request that was already resolved, from an old Slack message for example, Orquiva blocks it and warns you. Refresh to see its real status.

Request statuses

Status	What it means	What you can do	What the employee can do
Pending	Waiting for a decision	Approve or Reject with a reason	Delete it if it hasn't started; if it has, request its deletion
Approved	Confirmed and on the calendar	Resolve a deletion request if one arrives	Delete it if it hasn't started; if it has, request its deletion
Rejected	Turned down with your reason	Nothing	Create a new request

If something goes wrong

It won’t let me approve: the document is missing. The time-off type requires one and the request is pending a document. You’ll see Missing required document to approve. Ask the person to attach it.

It won’t let me approve because of the balance. Approving uses up days, and Orquiva won’t let through time off that exceeds what’s available. Check the balance with HR before deciding.

I can’t see a request from someone on my team. You only see people who have you as their direct manager. Ask HR to check the manager assigned on their record.

I rejected it by accident. If the message is still on screen, select Undo. If it’s gone, the rejection stands: tell the person to create a new request.

I’m going on vacation and nobody will clear my queue. There is no delegation or stand-in. Whoever holds the company’s time-off control permission can resolve requests while you’re away.