Payroll: Show employee leave balances when approving leave
When a leave request comes in for approval and the employee can take leave in advance (the box is ticked), it should show you how many hours the employee has available. This amount should be the number available minus the leave balance that has already been approved in the system. The leave balance report is only useful when employees can't take leave in advance in their first year. It's a challenge each time (especially leading up to Christmas) to calculate leave that is available before approving the request because you have to review how much leave has been approved in future.
Hi everyone, thanks for voting and your detailed comments on this idea.
We understand the challenge of having to navigate away from the approval screen to find an employee's leave balance. Providing this information directly within the approval screen could streamline the process and reduce the risk of approving leave that results in a negative balance.
The good news is that our product team's reviewed this idea and recognise the value it would deliver. It's something they’d like to work on in the long term. It's not on the roadmap just yet but we'll update you when we're able to bring more focus to this idea.
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Amy Robinson
commented
This is fantastic news!!! I very much look forward to the day this feature will be available to us all.
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Amy Robinson
commented
Having a report that gives managers/employers a projection of the leave balances will be in a future date is vital for approving leave. Agree with the original poster, that this is most necessary in the lead up to Christmas.
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Abbie Wone
commented
Yes! This is definitely required and needed.
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Kathy Tung
commented
How is this not a standard function? Managers can't perform their responsibilities properly if they are unable to make informed decisions to approve leave. A projected balance would also be very useful based on leave dates and other approved leave in the system. Plenty of other non-Xero payroll modules provide this functionality, so it's not impossible!
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Jenny Mason
commented
At least flag in red the negative leave balance so that it stands out would be hugely useful
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Kali Martin
commented
It would also be great to be able to enter different types of leave on the one request. E.g. 5 hours sick leave, 2.6 hours unpaid leave
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Hristo Chernev
commented
I don't understand why this isn't a feature already. It's such a logical thing to have. Also, a calendar view would be useful.
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Sharyn Nankervis
commented
We are a medium to large size company still processing our payroll within, and the lack of ability to flag a negative leave request is almost enough of a reason to change. It can cause a very costly mistake. I would also like to be able to upload documents to employees from "files", that is my number one request and also the ability to put in reminders for pay rate changes such as birthday changes and probation dates
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Chris Price
commented
Current Leave Balances are calculated as at the end of the last pay run. You cannot see what the leave balance is, as of today or as of a future day. This makes it difficult to evaluate whether a leave request should be approved.
You may approve a leave request for 8 months time, which they have the leave balance to cover at the time. But they put in a second leave request for 3 months time, which because of the way Xero reports leave balances, means that the system shows they have plenty of leave available. So you approve it, but meanwhile that future request which has already been approved now means they are in significant negative leave.
For this reason, it be extremely useful to include a graph showing leave accruing over time and dropping when its used. With the leave requests we can see the graph and its impact on leave balances over time. This makes it very easy to decide whether to approve or reject. It would also be a very innovative feature for Xero.
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Kat Duddridge
commented
Xero needs to introduce an option to stop employees from entering into negative leave balances based on company policy.
It is laborious, opens up exposure to errors and therefore cumbersome to expect this to be checked by employee or payroll officer each time a leave request is submitted. -
Dayna Edwards
commented
Leave balances should be viewable AND there should be an option for a manager to see/approve ONLY their team's leave and NOT everyones.
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Leonie Marshall
commented
Like the reply from support - not helpful! If this has been flagged by multiple people since 2022, that we can see, how many people does it take over what period of time,for what seems to be a basic function, before is it going to be a function?
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Leonie Marshall
commented
We have also had other errors occure in Xero with exporting invoices which apparently Xero is aware of, since April, and it's still not fixed, this is adding to my admin time I'm paying people to manually fix.
I'm paying for a service that doesn't work for basic accounting needs. Maybe the customers should be invoicing Xero for the added work we have to do because Xero is failing and I still have the issue!Myob is looking good at this point.
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Hilarin Mendis
commented
I agree with all below comments and particularly with Marcia. This a very critical function that xero should built in.
01. Negative Leave balances should be flagged to the approver.
02. Future leave balance forecast should be available, factoring all leave taken, applied to take and projected leave accruals. -
Cheryl Price
commented
Same as comments below
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Linda Rogers
commented
We should implement a minimum balance requirement for each leave type, preventing employees from submitting a leave request if their balance falls below the company guideline of of 0 hours. This would ensure they are required to request 'unpaid' leave instead.
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Marcia Dunne
commented
This feature should not just be about flagging a negative balance, but it would be a step in right direction!
My experience with other payroll programs is that it will forecast what leave you are entitlement to, based on the projected date you are applying for the leave. This would also take into account any leave already applied for and approved.
At no time should a payroll officer be forced to sit and calculate what entitlement an employee would have when they submit a leave application. -
Alba Luz Pabon Molero
commented
I got referred to this website to rise the same issue as everyone here.
According to this website, this issue has been flagged since 2022. And seems to be just a chat window to complain about the issue. Is there a way that this feature is added? It is critical, we have more than 100 employees and for a payroll officer is hard to check every week if a person has enough leave or not.
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Justine Frescher
commented
This needs to be set up as a Manager may not have access to know how much leave someone has in a small business. It should at the very minimum flag to the approver to check their leave balance, it's very important for a small business.
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Madeleine Linsley-Aubrey
commented
Would also like to flag this as hyper-critical option. Just a "STOP - Not Enough Leave Available" Even better would be a "leave without pay" option to cover the rest within the same request.