Common Holiday Settings

In Flowtly, as a manager, you can establish common holiday settings for your organisation to align your holiday management process with company policies and operational needs. These settings allow you to customise approval processes and categorise different types of holidays. To update these settings, navigate to the Settings item from the main menu of your organisation and select the Time off types tile.

Approval Count

Approval Count defines the number of approvals required for a holiday request to be finalised and accepted. This setting ensures that holiday requests are properly reviewed and authorised before confirmation.

To set up the Approval Count for your organisation:

1. Navigate to the Settings item from the main menu.
2. Select the Time off types tile.
3. In the Approval Count section, enter the desired number of approvals needed for a request to be validated.
4. Select Save.

For example: If you set the Approval Count to 2, employees' holiday requests will remain pending until two individuals with the designated role approve them.

Holiday Types

All holiday types can be found and adjusted in the Time off types section, located below the Approval Count settings within the Time off types tile. Each holiday type has a specific colour and icon for easy identification.

Flowtly has twelve built-in time off types:

• Vacation
• Sick leave
• Pick up day
• Marriage
• Army
• Unpaid
• Remote
• On demand
• Family matters
• Coaching
• Client office
• Day in lieu

You can edit this list based on your company's policy, and you can add types of your own, as described under Adding a time off type below. To prevent employees from requesting a specific holiday type, you can deactivate its status.

To manage holiday types:

1. Navigate to the Settings item from the main menu.
2. Select the Time off types tile.
3. Scroll to the Time off types section.
4. Select the Pencil icon (Edit mode) next to the holiday type you want to modify.
5. To deactivate the holiday type, untoggle Active.
6. To activate the holiday type, toggle Active.
7. To make a description mandatory when requesting this holiday type, toggle Description required.
8. Select Save.

If Description required is toggled off, the description field will remain optional for that holiday type.

A holiday type can also ask for a supporting document, such as a sick note. When the type is set to Requires approval, tick Supporting document required before approval: the request cannot be approved until a document is attached. When the type is set to Accepted automatically, the same switch is labelled Ask for a supporting document: because the request is accepted straight away, a missing document does not hold it back — the employee or HR attaches it afterwards, from that absence's entry in the Time off history tab rather than from the request itself. The setting is kept if you later change the approval mode.

Adding a time off type

Add time off type, on the Time off types tile, opens a dialog offering two ways to do it. They are not variations of the same thing, so it is worth knowing which one you want before you start typing.

Predefined turns on one of the twelve built-in types listed above, under a name you choose. Choose the type from Built-in type and enter the name your organisation uses for it in Name. The name is what employees see when they request time off; the built-in type behind it is what the rest of Flowtly recognises. Each built-in type can be turned on once, so the list offers only the ones not already in use, and once all twelve are in use it says so.

Custom creates a time off type of your own. It takes a name, an icon and a colour — all three are required — and nothing else: there is no built-in type behind it. Use it when the absence your organisation records is not one of the twelve, such as a business trip.

The choice is not only about the name, and this is the part worth reading before you pick Custom. A built-in type is one Flowtly recognises as a kind of leave, so behaviour tied to that kind follows it. Time off taken as Vacation or On demand draws down the accrued annual leave entitlement. Remote is the type the remote-work marker in time tracking records against. A custom type carries none of that. It is a real time off type — employees request it, it appears in the calendar and in reports, and a per-person allowance can be granted for it — but nothing treats it as a kind of leave it happens to resemble. A custom type called "Annual leave" does not draw down the annual leave entitlement; the built-in Vacation type is the one that does. If the absence you are adding behaves like one of the twelve, choose it under Predefined and rename it rather than recreating it under Custom.

Both modes offer the same settings alongside the name, all of which can be changed later: Active, Description required, the supporting-document switch described earlier on this page, whether a project can be chosen on the request, whether repeating requests are allowed, and whether the type Requires approval or is Accepted automatically. A type you add requires approval and asks for nothing else until you say otherwise.

Carry-over

Carry-over lets unused time off roll into the next period instead of being lost. When enabled, four options control how it behaves:

• Enable carry-over — turns the carry-over policy on or off for the organisation.
• Expiry date — the month and day on which carried-over days expire.
• Max carried days — the maximum number of unused days that can roll over.
• Consume carried days first — when requesting time off, use carried-over days before the current period's allowance.

These options are configured on the Time off settings page, not here.

Example use cases

• Centralized approval: A large organisation configures the Approval Count to require two levels of approval (e.g., direct manager and department head) for all holiday requests to ensure proper staffing coverage.
• Streamlined approval: A small team with a flat hierarchy sets the Approval Count to one, allowing a single designated approver to quickly process holiday requests.
• Custom leave categories: A company customises its Holiday Types to include specific categories such as "Volunteer Day" or "Study Leave" to reflect unique employee benefits or industry-specific needs.
• Policy compliance: An organisation deactivates holiday types like "Marriage" or "Army" if they are not applicable to their current workforce or internal policies, simplifying the available options for employees.