Apply for leave

What this guide covers

Submitting and managing your own leave: applying for any leave type, attaching a medical or supporting document, fixing a date or duration after the fact, cancelling, and returning early. If you manage people, the matching guide is Manage your team's leave — that one covers approving, creating leave on someone's behalf, stand-in selection, and the chain-manager rules.

For the meaning of every status badge (PENDING, APPROVED, EDIT_PENDING, CANCEL_PENDING …) see the companion Leave request statuses field definitions.

Where to find it

Open My Stuff → My Leave in the left menu. The page lands on the Apply for Leave tab by default.

No HR profile? If you see a banner that says "Your HR profile has not been set up", the form will not appear. Contact HR; they need to create your profile, set your leave plan, and assign your department before you can apply.

Step 1 — Pick the leave type

Choose from the Leave Type dropdown. The page reacts as soon as you pick:

• A balance card appears on the right showing Available days and what is already reserved for pending or approved requests.
• A certificate panel appears if the leave type requires one (sick leave, IOD, parental, etc.) — see Step 5.
• For unlimited leave types you see a green "Unlimited — no balance restriction applies" card instead of a balance.

Common types you may see (the exact list comes from HR's leave-type configuration):

• Annual — your normal vacation/holiday leave. Accrues at 1.25 days per month (15 days per year), capped at 20 days with the loyalty bonus.
• Sick — medical-certificate-driven; see Step 5 + the sick-leave deep-dive below.
• Family Responsibility — 3 paid days per cycle for your child's illness (medical certificate) or the death of a close family member (death certificate). Does not accumulate; lapses at the end of your cycle.
• Parental — 4 months and 10 days, shared between parents. Tell the company at least one month before it starts.
• Study — 10 days per calendar year if there are exams (6 days for courses without exams). Granted on full pay; does not accumulate; not deducted from annual.
• IOD — injury on duty.
• Unpaid — no balance held; manager discretion.

Step 2 — Choose how long

Under the Leave Type radio block (it is named the same as the dropdown — confusing but expected), pick one of:

• Days — full working days. You will then enter a Duration (days) and a Return to Work Date.
• Morning Half Day (4h) — half a day at the start of the shift.
• Afternoon Half Day (4h) — half a day at the end of the shift.
• Custom Hours — enter Hours + Minutes, then choose Morning or Afternoon to say which side of the shift the leave falls on. Hours convert to a fraction of a day based on your daily working hours.

Half-day leave counts as 0.5 days against your balance.

Step 3 — Pick the date(s)

Use the Start Date picker. For Days, also fill in Return to Work Date — that is the day you will be back at work, not the last day of leave.

The page then shows a Date Range Summary card with three counts:

• Working Day(s) — what is actually deducted from your balance
• Weekend / Rest Day(s) — not counted
• Public Holiday(s) — not counted, listed by name

Public holidays and weekends are skipped automatically. You do not need to plan around them yourself.

For half-day or custom-hours leave you get a single-day summary card instead.

Step 4 — Add a reason (optional)

The Reason box is optional. It is a good habit to fill it in: managers tend to approve faster when they do not have to chase you for context.

Step 5 — Attach a document (when required)

If the leave type requires a certificate, an orange banner reads "A supporting document (e.g. medical certificate) is required for this leave type." You have two paths:

• Upload now — click Upload Certificate Now, pick a PDF, JPG or PNG. The file name appears as "… ready to attach on submit" once uploaded.
• Acknowledge and upload later — tick "I acknowledge that I will provide the required document". The request goes through, but it lands in your My Leave History with an upload button. After your leave end date the row turns yellow with an Overdue tag if it is still missing — and HR may convert the leave to unpaid if the certificate never arrives.

For leave types that do not require a certificate you still see an optional Attach Document panel — useful for flight bookings, conference invitations, appointment letters and so on.

Sick leave certificate deep-dive

Sick leave certificates have a few extra rules baked in by SA labour law (BCEA) and Solar MD policy:

• A medical certificate is required for every sick day by Solar MD policy. Without one the day is recorded as unpaid leave.
• Three or more consecutive sick days require a certificate by law — no exceptions, no first-warning grace.
• The first two cert-less sick days in a rolling eight-week window are unpaid but not unauthorised — no disciplinary action.
• The third cert-less day in the same eight-week window is unpaid and unauthorised — disciplinary action follows.
• Certificates are also required when the sick day falls on a Monday, Friday, or a day adjacent to a public holiday or to your annual / study leave.

If you cannot get to a doctor on the day, acknowledge the certificate at submit time and upload it as soon as you have it. The yellow Overdue tag in your history is a friendly reminder, not a block — but the underlying policy still applies.

Step 6 — Stand-in manager (managers only)

If you manage people, a Stand-in Manager dropdown appears with everyone in your management scope. Pick someone to cover your approvals while you are away. This is required before your request can be submitted.

Behind the scenes the system writes your stand-in into your department's tempManager slot for the start date of your leave, so any leave or OT request your team submits while you are off routes to the stand-in instead of getting stuck waiting for you.

Step 7 — Submit

Click the green Submit Request button (paper-plane icon).

What can stop the submit

• "Start date must be on or before the return to work date." — fix the dates.
• "You have an overlapping leave request for these dates." — a small table shows the clash. Click Cancel existing and submit new to resolve, or change your dates.
• Insufficient leave balance — an orange panel appears explaining how many days short you are. Choose:
  • Yes, Submit Anyway — the shortfall becomes either unpaid leave (the system creates a second linked Unpaid request alongside the paid one) or a negative balance on your primary type, depending on policy and how your manager decides to handle it. Both halves go through approval as separate rows.
  • No, Go Back — go back and shorten the request or pick a different type.

Why two rows on overflow? When you ask for more days than you have, the system splits your request into paid + unpaid halves so each half can be tracked, approved and reported on independently. Your manager can also convert the unpaid half to a negative balance (charging it against your next accrual) instead of treating it as unpaid — see the manager guide.

After you submit

• The request appears in My Leave History with status PENDING.
• A notification fires to every manager in your chain — direct manager, that manager's manager, and so on. The first one to decide wins; the others lose access to the row once a decision is recorded.
• You will see the badge change to APPROVED or REJECTED. The manager's comment shows up in the Comment column.
• For sick or other certificate-required leave: if you only acknowledged the certificate (did not upload), come back and upload from My Leave History once you have the document.

If no one in your chain has the manager role configured, the request is auto-approved at submit time. This is the fall-back; in practice you should always have at least one chain manager.

Editing a request after the fact

Edits start from My Leave History. Click Edit on the row.

The behaviour depends on the current status:

• PENDING (not yet approved) — Edit cancels the original immediately and submits a new request with your changes. It goes through the chain from scratch.
• APPROVED — Edit creates a new EDIT_PENDING request linked to the original. The original is locked (you cannot edit-on-edit), but it stays in your history. A manager has to approve the edit:
  • Edit approved: the original's days are refunded to your balance, the edited request is approved, and the new days are deducted. Attendance is updated to match.
  • Edit rejected: the edit is discarded (EDIT_REJECTED), and the original stays approved as it was.

Do not plan to edit a leave request the same day it starts — the chain has to action it before it takes effect, and approvals can take a few hours.

Cancelling a request

Click Cancel on the row in My Leave History.

• PENDING (not yet approved) — Cancel takes effect immediately. The pending row vanishes from your manager's queue, the request becomes CANCELLED, and your balance is untouched (it was never deducted).
• APPROVED — Cancel creates a CANCEL_PENDING state. The original stays visible, but a separate cancellation work order goes to your chain. The leave is still in effect until a manager approves the cancellation — even if you are still well before the start date. On approval, your balance is refunded; on rejection, the leave stays approved.

A reason on cancel helps the manager decide quickly, especially when an approved request flips back to pending.

Returning early

If you come back from approved leave sooner than planned, open the request from My Leave History and pick Return Early. Enter the actual return date. The system trims the leave to the shorter range, refunds the unused days to your balance, and updates attendance for the days you were back.

You cannot return early before the leave starts — for that, cancel the request instead.

Coming in via a notification link

Notification emails and chat messages can deep-link to a specific row:

• ?leaveId=<id> opens My Leave focused on that request and pops its dialog.
• The same link works for managers from Pending Approvals — it routes to the correct page based on who you are.

If the request has already been actioned by another chain manager (or by you on a different device), you simply land on a clean page. That is the first decision wins rule in action.

My Balances tab

Open My Balances to see one row per leave type:

• Entitlement — how many days the policy gives you per cycle.
• Accrued — how many of those have unlocked so far. Annual leave accrues monthly on your work-anniversary day-of-month.
• Carried Over — what came across from the previous cycle. Carry-over is capped (six months for annual leave at Solar MD) and expires when the previous-cycle expiry date passes — anything not used is forfeit.
• Taken — what you have already used this cycle.
• Balance — what is still available.
• Cycle Period — the start and end of the current accrual cycle.

If you are a BCEA-exempt employee with banked overtime, a Banked Time panel appears above the balance table listing each banked entry (Date Earned, Earned, Used, Remaining, Expires).

Tips and gotchas

• Annual leave is paid out on termination — but is not exchangeable for cash while you are still employed.
• The Available number in the balance card already excludes days reserved for pending or approved requests, so you cannot accidentally double-book.
• Leave is not concurrent with other leave types — you cannot be on annual + sick at the same time. If you fall sick during annual leave, your annual leave is suspended only with a medical certificate.
• No leave during your notice period. If you fall sick during notice, a certificate is mandatory for the sick day to count.
• Custom-schedule (overtime) requests live on a separate tab — see My Leave → Apply for Custom Schedule. They have to fall on a single date (start and end on the same day).