A leave approval process nobody has to chase

Amina asks for a week in March in a WhatsApp message on a Thursday afternoon. Her manager replies "should be fine" from a client meeting and forgets about it. Three weeks later Sam asks for most of the same week, by email this time, and gets the same answer from someone else. In early March the studio finds out that both designers are away in the week the client wants final artwork, and both of them have, quite reasonably, booked flights.

The request went through a channel that doesn't remember anything, the yes was given without the facts that would have changed it, and nobody had the whole picture of who was away. A small team only needs a few rules, written down, and somewhere that holds the facts while someone decides.

One named approver per person

"Ask whoever's around" is how a request ends up approved by someone who didn't know the deadline. Give every person one named approver, usually the person who plans their work, so the yes comes from someone who knows what the dates collide with. Then give each approver a backup. Approvers take leave too, and if a request waits two weeks for an answer, people book the flights anyway.

Owners and admins should have an approver as well. It is tempting to let the boss approve their own leave, but the boss is often the person whose absence causes the most trouble, and somebody else should at least see it coming.

Some leave shouldn't need approval

Nobody should have to ask permission to be ill. Sick leave, and anything else that happens to people rather than being planned by them, is better recorded than requested: the person (or their manager, if they are too unwell) marks the days, and the team sees them. The leave types that do need a yes are mostly the planned ones, annual leave above all, where there is a real choice about dates.

The approver should see the cost before saying yes

The quick "should be fine" in the opening story was given without three facts: how many days the request actually costs, what the person's balance would be afterwards, and who else is already away on those days. A week over Christmas might cost three working days or five, depending on the public holidays, and a negative balance or two designers away in the same week would both change the answer.

So whatever holds your leave should put those facts in front of the approver alongside the request, rather than leaving the approver to go and look them up. A request that reads "Amina, 8 to 12 March, 5 days, leaves 3 days, Sam is also away 10 to 12 March" can be decided in ten seconds.

The answer should come back without anyone asking

The requester should hear back automatically, yes or no, and a no should come with a reason. "Not that week, we have the Acme launch" keeps trust intact, where a silence that later turns out to have been a no slowly wears it down.

How it works in ToDoing

Leave lives under People. Each person can have a named approver and a backup, and without one their requests go to the workspace's admins. An admin can set any person's leave to be approved automatically, and each leave type says whether it needs approval at all, so sick leave can go straight onto the calendar while annual leave waits for a yes. Admins' own requests are routed the same way, unless they have chosen automatic approval or nobody else could approve them, as with a sole owner.

When someone books, they see who their request will go to before they send it. The approver gets an email saying a request is waiting, and the count of requests waiting for them shows on People in the menu. The request itself shows its real cost in days, with public holidays already left out, who else is away on those days and, for admins, the balance it would leave. Approving takes one click. Declining asks for an optional reason, which goes back to the requester by email. If someone cancels, their approver is told, and if an admin records leave on someone's behalf, that person is told.

There is deliberately no approve button inside the email. Many mail systems scan every link in an incoming message to check it is safe, and a link that approved leave when opened would approve it the moment the email arrived. The email takes the approver to the request, and the decision happens in the app.

A workspace can also set the most people it wants away at once. A booking that would go over that number still goes through, but the person booking is told it would put more than that many people off at once, and the team's leave calendar marks those days.

What it doesn't do

Approval in ToDoing is a single step: one approver, with a backup. A company that needs a chain, the team lead and then HR and then a director, or different routes for different leave types, will want a dedicated leave system with configurable approval flows. For a small team, one person saying yes with the facts in front of them is usually enough process, and the leave then shows up on the same calendar the work is planned on, which we wrote about in Put the team's leave where the work is planned.