Luna HR Docs

Policies

Luna HR's policy system lets you configure rules that vary across your organisation. Instead of setting one leave entitlement for the entire company, you can set a default and then override it for specific offices, departments, or teams.

How policies work

The basics

A policy is a set of rules attached to a level in your org structure. For example:

  • Company level — 25 days annual leave (the default for everyone)
  • London Office — 28 days annual leave (override for London employees)
  • Engineering Department — carry forward up to 5 days (additional rule for Engineering)

When Luna HR needs to determine what rules apply to an employee, it looks at their position in the org tree and merges all applicable policies from the company root down to their specific node. More specific policies override more general ones.

The merge follows a few firm rules:

  • Only the fields you set in an override are overridden. Leaving a field blank means "inherit from the parent policy" — it never resets an inherited value.
  • Qualifier-specific policies layer on top of general ones. A policy for a specific leave type or expense category applies only to that type; a policy without a qualifier forms the base layer for all types.
  • Employee overrides win. A policy scoped to an individual employee applies only to that person and takes precedence over every org-level policy.
  • One active policy per scope. You can't create two active policy sets for the same node, module, and qualifier — edit or deactivate the existing one instead.

What policies control

Policies can configure settings for different modules:

Leave policies:

  • Annual leave entitlement (days per year)
  • Carry forward limits
  • Whether carry forward days expire
  • Minimum notice (blocked at submission if too short; never applied to sick-leave reports)
  • Maximum consecutive days per request (enforced at submission)
  • Holiday calendar used for duration calculations

Expense policies:

  • Per-item and per-report spending limits (enforced at submission)
  • Receipt threshold — items above it must carry a receipt or a missing-receipt reason
  • Allowed categories
  • Whether recurring expense templates can be created
  • Whether finance authorisation is required
  • Default approver for high-value claims

Training policies:

  • Annual training budget
  • Whether approval is required for external courses

Setting up policies

Creating a policy

  1. Go to Company Structure in the sidebar
  2. Navigate to the org node where you want to set the policy (e.g. "London Office")
  3. Click the Policies tab
  4. Click Add Policy Override
  5. Select the module (Leave, Expenses, etc.)
  6. Optionally select a qualifier (e.g. a specific leave type)
  7. Configure the settings for this level

Example: different leave entitlements by office

  1. Set a company-wide default: 25 days annual leave
  2. Navigate to London Office > Policies > Add Override
  3. Set annual leave to 28 days for London
  4. Navigate to Manchester Office > Policies > Add Override
  5. Set annual leave to 26 days for Manchester

Now employees in London get 28 days, Manchester gets 26 days, and everyone else gets the company default of 25 days.

Provenance

When viewing an employee's effective policy, Luna HR shows where each setting comes from — so you can see at a glance whether a value is the company default or an override from a specific node.

For example:

  • "28 days — from London Office override"
  • "Carry-over: 5 days — from Company default"

Tips

  • Start with company-wide defaults — set sensible defaults at the company level, then only add overrides where needed
  • Keep it simple — the fewer overrides you have, the easier it is to understand what applies where
  • Check effective policy — use the Policies tab on any org node to see the merged effective policy and where each value comes from