Liability forecasting
Projects accrued balances forward against carry-forward caps, so the year-end exposure is visible while there is still time to act on it.
Zepth Node · Workforce
Leave & Holidays
Leave that balances itself — every request, accrual and holiday on one record, so a balance is never a guess.
Last updated
Zepth Node module
Leave & Holidays
AI agent built into the module
Configurable leave typesAccruals & balancesHalf-day supportApproval workflows
Overview
Leave goes wrong in a predictable way. The policy lives in a handbook, the balances live in a spreadsheet, the approvals live in an inbox, and the three disagree by the end of the first quarter. The employee finds out when a request is refused against a number they have never seen.
Node keeps the policy, the balance and the decision on the same record. Accruals run automatically, approvals route to the person who owns them, and the balance an employee sees is the balance payroll will use.
A balance is a promise
An accrued leave balance is money the organisation owes and time the employee has already planned around. Treating it as a number in a spreadsheet understates both. When the spreadsheet and the handbook disagree, the employee is the one who discovers it, usually after booking something.
Keeping the accrual rule and the balance in one place means the number is derived rather than maintained. Nobody types a balance, so nobody can type it wrong.
Approval is a decision, not an inbox
Leave approved by email has no state. Nobody can say whether a request is pending, refused or simply unread, and the only person tracking it is the one waiting for an answer.
Routing a request to a named approver with a decision recorded against it makes the state legible to everyone who needs it — the employee planning, the manager arranging cover, and payroll working out what to pay.
One route per type. Each leave type routes to a defined approver, so a request is never simultaneously everybody’s and nobody’s.
Decisions carry a timestamp. Approval turnaround becomes measurable, which is the only way it improves.
The outcome flows onward. Approved leave is already on the record attendance and payroll read. No one re-enters it.
Holidays are local
A holiday calendar maintained at head office is wrong everywhere else. Distributed teams work across states and countries whose public holidays do not align, and a single calendar guarantees that somebody is either working a holiday or being paid for one they do not have.
Per-location calendars remove the guesswork. Leave is calculated against the calendar of the place the employee actually works.
The value
Why it matters
Balances accrue automatically and everybody reads the same live number.
Requests route to the right approver instead of ageing in an inbox.
Distributed teams get their own location’s public holidays, not head office’s.
Approved leave lands in attendance and payroll without a month-end spreadsheet.
Capabilities
What you can do
01
Configurable leave types
Model earned, sick, casual and unpaid leave, plus any type your policy defines — each with its own accrual rule, carry-forward behaviour and approval route.
02
Accruals & balances
Balances accrue on schedule and update as leave is taken. The employee, the manager and payroll all read the same figure.
03
Half-day support
Grant and track leave down to the half-day, so a morning off does not have to be recorded as a whole one.
04
Approval workflows
Requests route to the right manager and are decided in one place, with the decision and its timestamp on the record.
05
Location-aware holidays
Holiday calendars per location, so a distributed team is not asked to work its own public holiday or paid for somebody else’s.
The workflow
How it actually runs
- 1
Define types and accrual rules
Set each leave type, how it accrues, whether it carries forward, and when it expires.
- 2
Publish holiday calendars per location
Assign each location its own calendar so leave is calculated against the right one.
- 3
Employee requests leave
The request is raised against a live balance, in whole or half days, and routed to the named approver.
- 4
Manager decides
Approval or refusal is recorded against the request, with a timestamp and a reason.
- 5
Balance and payroll update
The balance adjusts on approval and the leave is already on the record payroll runs from.
AI that does the work
How AI changes Leave & Holidays management.
Cover conflicts
Flags overlapping absence that would leave a team or a site below the cover it needs, at the point the request is raised rather than the week it starts.
Stalled approvals
Surfaces requests ageing past the point where the employee can still plan. The nudge goes to the approver; the decision stays theirs.
The engineer’s judgment stays in charge; the AI removes the latency and the blind spots.
Best practices
- Set carry-forward and expiry rules before the first accrual runs. Retrofitting them means recalculating balances people have already planned around.
- Give every leave type exactly one approval route. Two routes for one type is how a request goes to nobody.
- Publish the holiday calendar per location at the start of the year — a calendar that appears in March has already caused the argument it was meant to prevent.
- Keep unpaid leave a distinct type rather than a zero-balance case. Payroll needs to tell the difference.
Dashboards & reporting
Dashboards cover balance and liability by team and leave type, absence rates and seasonality, approval turnaround by manager, and carry-forward exposure ahead of year end. Every figure drills through to the requests behind it.
Live dashboards
Drill-down & filters
Export to Excel / PDF
FAQ
Common questions
Can we model our own leave types?
Yes. Earned, sick, casual and unpaid are provided, and you can define your own with their own accrual rules, carry-forward behaviour and approval routes.
How are balances calculated?
They accrue automatically on the rule you set for each type and adjust as leave is approved. Nobody types a balance, which is why the employee, the manager and payroll all see the same number.
Can employees take half a day?
Yes. Leave is granted and tracked down to the half-day, and payroll reads the same fraction.
How do public holidays work for distributed teams?
Holiday calendars are per location. Each employee’s leave is calculated against the calendar of the place they actually work, rather than a single company-wide list.
Does approved leave reach payroll automatically?
Yes. Approved leave sits on the same record payroll runs from, so there is no export and no month-end reconciliation between a leave tracker and a pay run.
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