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The employee asks on the phone,you decide in one place.

Employees send wishes and time-off requests from their phones, and you approve or reject them in one place. Until you approve, planning doesn’t use a request.

The time-off request card says how many published shifts approving it opens up to be filled.

When to use it

When an employee asks for time off in the middle of the week, you need to know before you approve it how many published shifts it leaves open.

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How it works

  1. The employee sends it from the phone

    The employee sends a preference from the phone’s Shifts tab and a time-off request from the Today tab. Time off can be annual leave, balancing day off, sick leave or unpaid leave.

  2. Open Requests and absences

    Pending requests show in the home page tasks and on the Requests and absences page. The time-off card says how many published shifts approving it opens up.

  3. Approve or reject

    Approve or reject on the page, in the home page task or in the popup on a planning board cell. An approved leave marks the published shifts as absence and opens them to be filled, but shifts already clocked don’t change. An approved preference becomes a soft restriction.

  4. Planning takes wishes into account

    An approved preference shows as a marker on the planning board. Auto-schedule (Plus) honours approved preferences where possible and lists the ones it can’t meet.

By hand and with Plana

By hand

  • Requests arrive through different channels, and you have to remember their status yourself.

  • Before approving leave, you look through the roster to see which published shifts fall on those days.

  • When you make the roster, you have to keep the wishes in mind yourself.

With Plana

  • The employee sends the request on the phone and sees its status: pending, approved, rejected or cancelled.

  • One page holds pending requests, preferences and absences, and the leave card tells you how many published shifts approval opens up.

  • An approved preference shows as a marker on the planning board, and auto-schedule honours it where possible.

Example: what an employee can send

The demo data has no figures for preferences or time-off requests, so these are the product’s own values, not customer data.

  • 3kinds of preference an employee can sendProduct values · not customer data
  • 4kinds of time-off requestProduct values · not customer data
  • 200characters in a preference noteProduct values · not customer data
The hard wishes “can’t work” and “wants to work” aren’t among these three: a manager enters them.

The rules Plana watches

  • 3 yearshow long leave records are kept after employment endsPlana’s retention periods

  • Time-off and annual leave records are kept for 3 years after employment ends.

    Plana’s retention periods

  • For sick leave only the type is stored, not the cause: in the database the note of a sick leave has to be empty.

    Plana’s own rule

  • Day-off, morning and evening preferences are soft. “Can’t work” and “must work” are hard.

    Plana’s own rule

  • If a shift lead is attached to a team, they can approve only their own team’s employees’ requests. If a request would change published shifts in another team or location, it is blocked and passed to a manager.

    Plana’s own rule

  • An employee can cancel a pending request but not edit it. What happens to an approved request is up to the manager.

    Plana’s own rule

Who uses it

Owner
Sees pending requests in the home page tasks, on the Requests and absences page and in the planning board’s cells. The approve buttons show according to the permission “Handles leave, absences and shift preferences”.
Manager
Same as the owner. If a custom role loses this permission, they see the requests but can’t approve them.
Employee
Sends requests on the phone and sees the status of their own. Doesn’t see anyone else’s.
Accountant
Doesn’t see it.

What it doesn’t do

  • An employee can send only soft preferences. For “can’t work” to become a hard restriction, a manager has to enter it.

  • Sending and approving a request don’t themselves send a push notification or an email. You see requests on the home page and on the Requests and absences page, and the employee sees the status in the app.

  • Without a connection, sending fails on the spot. The request isn’t queued and isn’t sent later by itself.

  • An approved leave turns published shifts into open shifts, but clocked shifts don’t change. Cancelling an absence is blocked if someone else has already taken the open shift.

  • While a request is pending, the number of clashing days on the phone counts only the employee’s own published shifts.

  • Absences the owner enters on an employee’s behalf, and the draft wish in the annual leave planner, aren’t preferences sent by the employee. They belong to the features Absences and cover and Annual leave.

  • Pending preferences don’t go into auto-schedule. It reads only the approved ones.

Where to find it in Plana

Where to find it in Plana
Handle in a home page task, or the Requests and absences page
Where to find it in Plana
Employees send requests in the phone app. Approving needs the permission “Handles leave, absences and shift preferences”, which owners, managers and shift leads have.

Questions

Next stop in the period

Next stop in the periodPlan · Auto-scheduleOne click fills the period to your needs. You decide which suggestions stay.

Related features

Try it on your own roster.

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