Leave Management

The Leave module handles everything related to employee time off — from holiday requests and sick leave to parental leave and custom absence types. Employees can request leave, managers approve it, and HR has full visibility across the organisation.

Key features

Leave requests — employees submit requests with date range, leave type, and optional notes
Approval workflows — requests go to the employee's line manager (or a custom approval chain)
Team calendar — see who's off at a glance, with a combined list and calendar view
Accrual plans — automatically calculate leave entitlements based on start date, working pattern, and policy
Carry forward — configure how many days employees can carry into the next leave year
Blackout periods — block leave requests during busy periods (company-wide or per department)
Working pattern validation — only allows requests on days the employee is scheduled to work
Leave balances — real-time breakdown of entitlement, used, pending, and remaining days
Time off in lieu — an earned balance that managers add to as extra hours are worked
Fit notes — attach medical certificates to sick leave requests, automatically filed to the employee's cabinet

How it works

Requesting leave

Go to Leave from the sidebar
Click Request Leave
Select a leave type (e.g. Annual Leave, Sick Leave)
Choose your start and end dates — Luna HR will automatically calculate the number of working days based on your working pattern and exclude public holidays
Add any notes for your manager (optional)
Submit the request

Your request will appear as "Pending" until your manager reviews it.

Approving leave

Managers see pending requests in their Approvals tab. For each request, they can:

Approve — the leave is confirmed and appears on the team calendar
Decline — a reason is required, and the employee is notified with it
Review team coverage — see who else is off on those dates before making a decision

Nobody can approve or decline their own request, regardless of their permissions.

Whoever a request is waiting on is told by email as well as in Luna — the first approver, the next approver when a multi-step chain moves on, someone it escalates to, and the approver of an edited request that needs re-approval. If an approved request is later cancelled, the person who approved it is emailed too. All of these follow the approver's Leave approvals toggle on the Notifications page, not Leave requests & updates, which is about their own leave. Nobody who has left, is working their notice or is suspended is emailed about someone else's leave.

Who can decide a request

A request is routed to one approver, who can always act on it. Beyond that person, the ability to step in depends on permissions:

| Role holds | Can decide | | --- | --- | | Assigned approver for the request | That request | | leave:approve | Requests from their own team — direct reports, or people under a node where they hold a manager, lead or head membership | | leave:approve + leave:view_all | Any request in the company | | admin | Any request in the company |

leave:approve on its own is deliberately team-scoped, so a line manager in one department can't decide leave for an unrelated one. Grant View All Leave alongside it under Admin > Org Structure > Roles for HR-style cover across the whole company.

Line managers are unaffected by the scoping — they are the assigned approver for their own reports, so they can always act on those requests.

Team calendar

The team calendar shows all approved and pending leave for your team. You can:

Switch between list view and calendar view
Filter by leave type or team member
See coverage at a glance to avoid scheduling conflicts

Admin setup

Leave types

Configure the types of leave available in your organisation from Admin > Leave Types. Each leave type has:

A name and colour (used on the calendar)
Whether it requires approval
A Balance setting:
- Yearly allowance — a set number of days each leave year, from leave policy (e.g. Annual Leave)
- Earned (time in lieu) — starts at nothing and grows as days are added for extra hours worked (see below)
- Not tracked — days taken are recorded but never limited (e.g. Sick Leave)
Whether a fit note is required (e.g. for sick leave over a threshold)

Whether a balance is tracked at all is fixed when the leave type is created. A tracked type can be switched between a yearly allowance and earned later. Switching to earned makes everyone's balance only the days credited to them, so leave already booked beyond that shows as over allowance.

Time off in lieu

A leave type with an Earned balance has no yearly allowance. Leave policy's allowance and accrual plan don't apply to it. Its balance is only the days that have been added for it.

To add days, open the employee's profile, go to the System tab, and use Add days on the Time in lieu card. Enter the number of days (in half days, up to 10 at a time), the date the extra time was worked and an optional note. Admins can add days for anyone. Line managers, and people who manage the employee's team, can add days for the people they manage, but not for themselves. The employee is notified.

Days count towards the leave year they are added in, not the one they were worked in. Time worked over New Year and added in January stays usable.
Bookings can't take the balance below zero, unless the leave policy allows a negative balance.
A credit can be removed from the same card, unless its days are already booked or taken. Cancel that leave first.
Employees see their balance and every credit (who added it, when the time was worked, and the note) on their Leave page.

Claiming time in lieu

Employees can also ask for the days themselves. On the Time in lieu card on their Leave page, Claim days asks for the number of days, the date worked and what the extra work was. The claim goes to whoever approves their leave requests: the approver set in leave policy, otherwise their line manager, and then up the organisation. If that person has delegated their approvals, it goes to the delegate. The approver is told in Luna and by email. The email follows the approver's Leave approvals notification setting, and admins can reword it or switch it off as Time in Lieu Claim in Email Notifications.

Claims wait under Approvals > Leave > Time in lieu, with the claims you've already decided listed underneath (newest first, and noting any approved days that were removed later). Approving one adds the days exactly as if a manager had added them. Declining needs a reason, which the employee sees on their card. The assigned approver can decide a claim, and so can an admin or anyone who manages the employee. Nobody can decide their own claim.

While a claim is waiting, the employee can cancel it from their card. Only one waiting claim per day worked is allowed.

The employee is told the decision in Luna and by email. The email follows their Leave requests & updates notification setting, and admins can reword or switch off the Time in Lieu Approved and Time in Lieu Declined emails.

If the approver leaves, completing their offboarding hands any claims still waiting on them to someone who can decide: the leaver's own line manager, a manager higher up, or an admin. The new approver is told in Luna and by email. Claims the leaver made themselves and hadn't had decided are cancelled, because days can't be added for someone who has left.

New companies get Leave in Lieu set to Earned. Companies set up before this keep a yearly allowance until an admin changes the setting in Admin > Leave Types.

Leave years

Set your leave year period (e.g. January to December, or April to March) from Admin > Leave Years. This determines when entitlements reset.

Holiday calendars

Add public holidays for your region from Admin > Holiday Calendars. UK bank holidays are pre-loaded — just assign the calendar to the relevant offices or departments.

Accrual plans

Set up accrual plans from Admin > Accrual Plans to define how leave entitlement is calculated:

Full entitlement — employees get their full allowance from day one
Pro-rata — entitlement is calculated based on start date within the leave year

Blackout periods

Block leave requests during critical business periods from Admin > Leave Blackouts. Blackout periods prevent employees from submitting leave during dates you specify.

For each blackout, configure:

Name and reason — e.g. "Year-End Close" with a reason shown to employees
Date range — the start and end dates of the blocked period
Scope — company-wide, or limited to specific departments/teams via the org tree
Leave type filter — optionally restrict to certain leave types only (e.g. block annual leave but allow sick leave)
Active toggle — enable or disable without deleting

When an employee tries to request leave that overlaps with an active blackout, they'll see a clear message explaining why the dates are blocked.

Only holders of admin or View All Leave (leave:view_all) can book their own leave through a blackout — the ability to approve leave does not carry an exemption, so a blackout applies to line managers like everyone else. A leave type can also be marked to bypass blackouts entirely, which is the usual way to keep sick leave bookable during a freeze.

Double-booking

An employee can't book the same days off twice. If a new request overlaps leave they already have pending or approved, it's rejected with a message naming the clashing request — they need to cancel or edit that one first. Cancelled and rejected requests free their dates back up, and historical imports never block new bookings.

Half-days are handled sensibly: a morning and an afternoon booking on the same date don't clash, but the same half booked twice does.

Carry forward

Manage carried-forward leave balances from Admin > Leave Carry Forward. At the end of each leave year:

Unused leave can be carried forward up to the limit set in your policy
Carried-forward days can have an expiry date — after which they're lost if not used
Send reminder emails to employees with carried-forward days approaching expiry (not to anyone who has left or is leaving — their balance is settled on exit)
View a summary of all employees' carry-forward balances

Policies

Leave entitlements (days per year, carry forward limits, etc.) are configured via Policies. Policies can be set at any level of your org structure — company-wide defaults with overrides for specific offices or departments.

Policies — how leave entitlements are configured and inherited
Company Structure — how departments and teams affect leave policy
Approvals — how approval workflows are configured