What the form asks for
- Name, role and the date of the request
- The type of time off: vacation or PTO, sick, personal, unpaid or other
- First and last day, and whether it's a partial day
- Total hours requested
- Whether any scheduled shifts are affected, and who's covering them
- A section for the manager: decision, notes, balance before and after
We've tracked time in hours, not days. If some shifts run five hours and others eight, days will cause arguments later.
Handling requests fairly
The form's the easy part. Here's where it gets harder.
Write down your rules. How much notice? How do you decide between two people who ask for the same weekend? First come, first served is simple and hard to argue with. Without a rule, every decision looks like favoritism.
Answer quickly. People book flights and tell their families. Aim to answer within a couple of days. An unanswered request is the thing that makes people angriest.
Set blackout dates in advance, if you need them. If nobody can take the week before Christmas, say so at the start of the year.
Don't ask for medical details. You generally don't need to know what someone's sick with. Our form says so. Some local sick leave laws also limit when you can ask for a doctor's note.
Check the law before saying no. Paid sick leave, family and medical leave, jury duty, military service and others may be protected, and you may not be able to deny them or count them against someone. If you aren't sure, ask.
Keep the forms. Records of leave can matter later. Federal rules require keeping FMLA-related records for at least three years, if FMLA applies to you.
Working out balances
If you offer PTO, you need a way to track what people have earned and used. Our PTO accrual calculator will work out the rate, and this guide goes through the decisions, such as carryover and caps.
The trouble with paper requests
A paper form goes on a desk, or in a pocket, or under a coffee cup. Someone has to look up the balance by hand and check the schedule. Then they tell the employee, and they remember to fix the schedule. Any of those steps can go wrong, and it usually comes out when someone doesn't show up because they believed they'd been given the day off.
The app version
In PinkLinq, an employee picks dates and a policy on their phone and sends it. They see their balance before asking. You get a notification, and you approve or decline with a tap. The balance updates by itself, approved time off appears on the schedule, and approved paid time off goes into their hours for payroll. It's all on the record. You can set policies for yearly or monthly accrual, carryover and how far a balance can go below zero.
Time off is in the HR & Skills hub on every plan, free for up to 10 people.