Pending Approvals

What this page is

Pending Approvals is the manager inbox for everything an employee in your management chain has asked you to decide on:

• Leave requests
• Custom Schedule / Overtime requests
• OT cancellation requests

Open it from My Stuff → Pending Approvals (inbox icon).

This article is the UI tour of the inbox. For the workflow — when to approve vs reject, how the chain rule plays out, how to override an unpaid split, how to create leave on behalf — see the companion guide Manage your team's leave. For status badge meanings see Leave request statuses field definitions.

The page at a glance

The page header explains the rule: "Leave, custom schedules and cancellation requests for any employee in your management chain. Any chain manager can approve — first decision wins."

Chain-aware. A request is visible to every manager above the employee in the org chart — direct manager, that manager's manager, and so on. The first person to click Approve or Reject locks in the decision; everyone else loses access to that row.

Across the top, three count cards show how many items are waiting in each queue — Leave, Custom Schedule / OT, OT Cancellations. A Refresh button (top right) re-pulls the queues without a full page reload.

If nothing is pending you see a green check and "Nothing pending. You're all caught up."

Leave Requests

Each row shows:

• Employee — full name plus department in small text
• Type — leave type name. Unpaid paired with another type means a paid + unpaid auto-split; the two rows share the same employee and dates.
• From / To — start and end dates
• Days — duration in days (decimals reflect half-days and custom hours)
• Reason — what the employee wrote (may be blank)
• Direct manager — the employee's line manager (helpful when you are approving as a chain manager and not the direct one)

Approve dialog

Click Approve on the row. The dialog shows the employee's name and an optional Manager comment field. Click the green Approve button to confirm.

The row disappears from your queue, balance is deducted, attendance is marked, and a notification fires to the employee.

Reject dialog

Click Reject on the row. A reason is required here — the employee needs actionable feedback. Write why, then click the red Reject button.

If the request was the paid row of a paid + unpaid split, the linked unpaid row is auto-rejected with the comment "Auto-rejected: linked annual leave request was rejected".

Custom Schedule / Overtime

The Custom Schedule / Overtime section lists OT requests with columns:

• Employee (name + department)
• Date — the day the OT will be worked
• Start / End — the proposed hours
• Minutes — total minutes requested
• Reason
• Direct manager

Approve opens a dialog with an optional comment; Reject opens a dialog where a reason is required. Same pattern as leave.

For counter-proposing different OT hours (instead of just rejecting), use the manager view on My Leave → Apply for Custom Schedule.

OT Cancellation Requests

When an employee asks to cancel a previously approved OT request, it lands in the OT Cancellation Requests queue. Columns:

• Employee
• Date — the originally approved OT date
• Reason — why they are cancelling
• Direct manager

Click Approve cancel to release them from the OT (optional comment) or Reject cancel to insist the OT still happens (reason required).

Watch the wording. Reject cancel means "the OT must still happen". Make sure that is what you mean before sending it.

Coming in via a notification link

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

• ?leaveId=<id> — opens the leave approve dialog
• ?otId=<id> — opens the OT approve dialog
• ?cancelOtId=<id> — opens the OT-cancellation approve dialog

If the request is still in your chain-visible queue, the page lands on Pending Approvals and pops the right dialog automatically. If someone in the chain has already decided, you arrive on a clean page — that is the first decision wins rule in action.

Who sees what

• Direct manager + chain managers above them see their team's pending items.
• Stand-in managers see items for the manager they are temporarily covering, on the dates the cover applies.
• HR Admin / HR Reader / Site Admin see everyone's pending items across the company — useful for HR sweep-up at month-end.

Tips

• Refresh if the queue feels stale — clicking it re-pulls without losing your place.
• A reason is mandatory for every reject (leave, OT, OT-cancel) so the employee gets actionable feedback.
• A reject on an OT cancellation means "the OT must still happen" — make sure that is what you mean before you send it.
• Chain managers see the Direct manager column on every row, so you can defer informally if it is not yours to decide.
• If you want to counter-propose different OT hours instead of approving or rejecting outright, that lives on the manager view of My Leave → Apply for Custom Schedule — not on this page.