Leave Dashboard
The leave overview for HR and approvers, ordered by how fast each part's clock runs: decisions first, the roster second, balances and money third, patterns and the year ahead last. Every tile clicks through to the list that produced it; every metric carries a comparison or a threshold; the approval queue is a workspace, not a report.
Where: HR → Leave Management → Leave Dashboard · Who: HR, approvers, managers
The header
Company, leave year, how many people are out today, how many decisions are waiting, and when the page last refreshed. Department narrows every band. Leave year changes bands 3 to 6 only: a late decision is late today and a person out this afternoon is out whichever year you look at, so bands 1 and 2 ignore it. Each band loads on its own and shows its own progress bar.
First run. A company that has never run the accrual sees Leave accounting has not been set up yet with a Set up leave accounting button. It writes the statutory defaults and staffing floors, then runs the accrual once. Until then the balance, liability and compliance bands are honestly empty.
Band 1: Decisions waiting
Current state. A decision six days late is late today, whatever year it belongs to.
| Tile | Reading it |
|---|---|
| Awaiting decision | Requests nobody has decided. The hint gives the age of the oldest; react to that, not the count |
| Starting within 7 days | Undecided and imminent. Always urgent |
| Retro-dated submissions | Filed after the leave began. A control weakness, not an admin nuisance |
| Median time to decision | Half of this month's decisions were faster. Amber when above the SLA |
| SLA breaches this month | Decisions slower than the SLA, out of all decisions this month |
| Approvers away | Approvers on leave themselves with open requests. The commonest cause of a stalled queue |
The approval queue, longest wait first: reference (with a retro chip), employee and unit, type and days, start (with a soon chip), the stage and person it is waiting on (with a 3/4 decided chip when several reviewers), and age at the current stage coloured against the SLA. Approve and reject act in place, singly or in bulk. Deciding is described in Approving Leave.
Where the queue is stuck: one card per stage with how many requests sit there and the median age, then the approvers with open work, their median decision time over 90 days, and their approval rate. The approval rate is a fairness signal, not a target: an approver at 60% when everyone else is at 90% is worth a conversation; so is one at 100% who has never questioned anything.
Clicking a reference opens the request; clicking a name opens the employee's leave ledger: every leave type with entitlement, carried in, taken, booked, remaining and liability, and their recent requests.
Band 2: Out of office
The picture a supervisor needs before answering the request in front of them.
| Tile | Reading it |
|---|---|
| Out today | On approved leave now, as a share of tracked staff |
| Out this week | Leave touching Monday to Sunday |
| Returning today | Expect them on the roster |
| Overdue returns | Past their resumption date and not clocked in. Reconciled nightly against attendance |
| Absent, no request | Days the attendance register calls an absence with no approved leave behind them. Each is unpaid leave nobody deducted or leave nobody recorded |
| Coverage breaches | Weeks in the next eight where a unit drops below its floor |
Next eight weeks: one row per unit, one column per week, each cell the people booked off, on a blue ramp. A red outline means that week breaches the staffing floor. A unit with no floor shows counts but can never breach.
Out now and in the next fortnight: who is away, when they are back, and who is covering. not assigned in red is the row to act on.
Coverage risk: each unit's worst week in the window with its floor, available count and gap, worst first. Notes underneath name a critical-role clash or the first overdue return.
Band 3: Entitlement and balances
From here down the leave-year filter applies.
| Tile | Reading it |
|---|---|
| Entitlement | The year's entitlement for everyone in scope, with the portion accrued so far |
| Carried in | Brought forward, already capped |
| Taken | Served, as a share of entitlement |
| Booked ahead | Approved, still to come |
| Still unbooked | Not spoken for at all, with the forfeit date. Next December's problem, visible now |
| Taken nothing this year | People with no leave at all, and the days they hold. A burnout signal before it is a liability |
What needs fixing before the forfeit date lists four exposures with their deadlines: days that will be lost above the carry cap, people tracking below the statutory minimum, people who have taken nothing, and balances already negative (always a correction). Balance spread is a histogram of days remaining per employee: the shape matters more than the average.
Band 4: Liability
| Tile | Reading it |
|---|---|
| Accrued and untaken | The liability in days, against the board ceiling if one is set |
| Balance-sheet value | The same in money, and days per head |
| Movement since last month | Positive means leave is accruing faster than it is taken |
| Forecast at year end | If the current booking rate holds |
| Average day valued | The weighted value of a day in the liability, beside the company mean. Senior staff hold the untaken leave, so the first is usually higher |
| Cost of leave taken | What the leave served this year cost |
Liability trend draws month-end snapshots, not a re-derivation; a missing month means its snapshot was never written (see Year End and Jobs). A dashed red line marks the ceiling. By department sorts by days per head, the column size cannot hide behind; 8 or more per head is red, 6 to 8 amber.
Band 5: Patterns and compliance
| Tile | Reading it |
|---|---|
| Sick days | Total and per employee |
| Sick, no certificate | Spells past the threshold with no document |
| Bradford factor flags | Employees scoring 200 or more (spells² × days) |
| Monday / Friday sick | Share of sick spells starting Monday or ending Friday, against the 40% chance alone gives. A conversation, not a verdict |
| Absent with no request | The attendance-versus-leave reconciliation again |
| Half-day requests | Volume in the year |
Statutory and policy checks: one row per rule with the clause it rests on, how many records fail, and a status: clear (green), at risk (amber, forward-looking rules) or gaps (amber, control rules). Hover a row for the remedy. Leave type mix shows days taken by type; watch the shape rather than the totals.
Band 6: The year ahead
Booking curve: cumulative days taken and booked, month by month, against the same point last year. Running behind in August means the days are still coming, compressed into fewer weeks. Weeks that will not clear: where the days people want exceed what the roster can release above its floors. What to do about it: recommendations generated from the numbers, each naming the figure that produced it, such as Open a leave window before the forfeit date or Set delegates for N absent approvers. Holiday pressure: public holidays for the rest of the year and how many requests pile up against each.
Common questions
Bands 3 to 6 are empty. The accrual has never run. Use the banner, or Run accrual on Leave Setup.
The trend chart is empty. No month-end snapshots exist yet. They accumulate from the first month end after go-live; backfill with Snapshot on Leave Setup.
Approvers away is zero but the queue is stalled. The tile only counts approvers on approved leave today. Somebody simply not looking at their inbox shows up in the approver table under Where the queue is stuck instead.