Enter your idea

When approving a pay run, Xero should check whether any employees included in the pay period have leave requests that are still awaiting approval and inform the payroll officer.

If pending leave requests exist, display a warning before the pay run can be completed, for example:

"2 employees included in this pay run have pending leave requests awaiting approval for the selected period."

This warning should work regardless of whether the business uses Xero Timesheets, enters payroll manually, or imports hours from a third-party timekeeping system.

Why this is important

In many businesses, leave approvals are performed by line managers while payroll is processed by a separate payroll administrator. If a manager hasn't approved a leave request before payroll is run, it's easy for the leave to be overlooked.

This can result in:

Payroll corrections after processing
Overpayments or underpayments
Missed leave entries
Additional administrative work investigating and correcting payroll

There is already an idea requesting reporting for uncompleted leave requests, however reports rely on payroll administrators remembering to check them. A warning during pay run approval would act as a preventative control and help reduce payroll errors before payroll is finalised.