When your staff request time off, it lands in one place for you to act on. This guide covers the approvals queue — how to read it, how to approve or deny, and what an approval does to the schedule so coverage never slips through the cracks.

Open the approvals queue

You'll know a request is waiting: you get a notification in the app and an email, and the schedule's Tools menu shows a red count next to Time Off Requests. Open Tools and choose Time Off Requests to reach the queue, titled Time Off Requests.

Managers, directors, admins, and super-admins can review requests. A manager sees requests from staff at their location; directors and admins see everyone.

Read the queue before you decide

The pending list gives you everything you need to make the call in one row:

Staff — who's asking.
Dates — the range they want off (with a time window if it's a partial day).
Reason — whatever they typed, or a dash.
Requested — when they submitted it.
Scheduled shifts — the part that matters most for coverage. If they're already on the schedule during those dates, you'll see an amber N in range badge; if not, it reads None. That number is your heads-up that approving this will leave shifts to re-cover.

Approve or deny

For each pending request:

To approve, tap Approve. You'll see "Time off approved," and the request moves to Recent decisions.
To deny, tap Deny. A box opens — Reason for denying (shared with staff member). Add a short reason so they understand, then tap Confirm deny (or Back to step out). The staff member sees this note.

Either way, the staff member is notified in the app and by email with your decision.

You can't approve or deny your own time-off request — that row shows Needs another manager. Someone else with approval rights has to sign off, so no one clears their own days.

What approval does to the schedule

Approving isn't just a courtesy — it changes what the scheduler can do:

The staff member is blocked from being assigned on those dates. In the shift editor's assignment picker they come up as a conflict, the same hard block that stops a double-booking. Overriding it works the same way too — it follows your role, and a reason is written to the audit log.
Their approved days show as a distinct rose-striped band on the Time Grid — an all-day band for a whole day off, or a timed band for a partial-day window — labeled Time off. Anyone reading the week sees at a glance who's out.

A pending request doesn't block anything yet — it shows up as a soft warning when someone tries to schedule that person, so you're nudged but not stopped. Only an approval turns into a hard block.

Handle the coverage the approval creates

If the Scheduled shifts badge warned you that approving would strip coverage, deal with those shifts next. Open the week on the Time Grid, find the now-conflicted shifts on the person's row, and reassign them or convert them to open shifts to find coverage. Approving the time off and covering the gap are two steps — the queue handles the first, the grid handles the second.

Cancelling approved time off

Plans change. If someone's approved time off is no longer needed — they can work after all, or it was approved by mistake — find it under Recent decisions and tap Cancel time off. That frees those dates back up on the schedule, and the staff member is notified it was cancelled.

Next steps

See what your staff experience in Requesting time off.
Re-cover the shifts a leave opens up with call-off coverage.