Leave categories
Set up the types of leave your company tracks, and how each one behaves.
A leave category is a named type of leave — Annual leave, Unpaid leave, Appointments, and so on. Each one decides how it's paid, whether it counts against the holiday allowance, and whether it earns holiday for staff on irregular hours. Open Leave categories from the sidebar, under Your policy.
📷 Screenshot: The Leave categories list.
The Leave categories list
Each row is one category:
Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Category | The name, with an "Added by you" badge for a custom category, and a sub-line — retired, case managed, or "cases if it runs long". |
| Record type | The ledger record type it posts as. |
| Used this year | Hours used against this category so far this leave year. |
| Shown to staff | A toggle — whether staff can book this category from their app. |
Search with the keyword box. New category opens the wizard.
Creating a category
Click New category. The wizard has two parts:
1. Pick a starting point
Copy the closest one, then change what differs. You get four templates — Annual leave, Unpaid leave, Appointments, Time off for dependants — or Start from scratch for a blank paid category.
📷 Screenshot: The wizard's starting-point cards.
2. The draft
Fill in:
- Name, Code (auto-filled from the name until you edit it by hand), Description, and a Colour for the calendar and legend.
Then three plain-English statements — select any line to change it:
- Pay — the normal rate, the 52-week average, a set rate per hour, or unpaid.
- Allowance — extra time off on top of the holiday allowance, or drawn from it.
- Holiday earning — whether holiday keeps building for casual employees while they're off this category.
An advanced section (collapsed by default) holds the Paycode and the Ledger record type.
📷 Screenshot: The category draft form with the three statement rows.
Click Create category name to save it. It's live for everyone straight away.
Editing a category
Click Edit on any category to reopen the draft form. Once a category has been used, its behaviour locks — you can still rename it, change its code, description and colour, but not how it's paid or earns holiday. This keeps past leave and pay entries true to the rules that produced them.
Showing or hiding a category
Toggle Shown to staff to add or remove a category from what staff can book in their app. Hiding a category doesn't affect leave already booked or approved against it.
Retiring or removing a category
- Retire — the safe way to stop a category being booked, without losing its history. Nobody can book it from today; leave already taken keeps its entries.
- Remove — only offered for a category you added that has never been booked against. It's a clean delete — nothing in the ledger changes.
Retired and locked categories always show Retire, never Remove.