Leave allowances

Who: people with Absence settings.

Open Admin, then Allowances under Absences. An allowance plan says how many days of a type people get. Give a plan to an absence type and its absences count against it: people see their balance, and a request for more days than they have left is refused (or let through, as the type says).

A type without a plan has no balance: its absences are counted as usual, and nothing is refused.

How balances are worked out

LogQuill never stores a balance or adds days on a schedule. Each time a balance is shown, it is worked out again from the plan's rules, the person's start date (in People) and the person's absences. A change to a plan shows everywhere at once, and nothing can be left half counted.

Until everything is set up and checked, keep your own tracker alongside, and compare a few people's balances with it.

Plans

A plan sets:

• Days come:

  • All at the start of the year: with 25 days a year, all 25 are there on the year's first day. Someone who joins during the year gets their share from their Joined on date in People: joining on 1 July gives about 12.5.
  • A twelfth at the start of each month: with 24 days a year, 2 on 1 January, 4 on 1 February, and so on. The month someone joins gives its share on the day they join: joining on 16 January gives about 1 that day. New plans start on this choice.
  • A twelfth at the end of each month: the same, once each month is over: 2 on 31 January, 4 by 28 February. Plans made before the choice existed work this way until you change them.

  Without a Joined on date, a balance counts from the day the plan first applied to the person, as if they had been there all along: someone added in July gets the whole year. People and Balances say when someone added since balances began has no date, with a dot in the sidebar. Leave balances

• The year starts in: January, or another month (June for a June to May leave year, say).

• Days a year: whole or half days only, such as 25 or 22.5 (not 22.3). The same goes for every number of days in a plan. Balances can still show other fractions, such as 2.08 after a month of a monthly plan.

• Seniority: extra days a year on top of the plan's own, after a number of months with the company, counted from the person's start date in People (without one, from the day the plan first applied to them). Each level reads After 12 months with the company, employees get 1 more day a year. Levels add up: each level reached adds its days to those of the levels before it. With a level of +1 after 12 months and another +1 after 24 months, someone gets 1 more day a year from their first anniversary and 2 more from their second, for good. Each level shows the total a year it makes. A new level starts 12 months after the last one and adds 1 more day; change both as you like. For a probation, set 0 days a year and add a level after it with the full days: nothing is earned until then.

• Stop earning days at a maximum: a maximum for the whole balance, the days carried over and the year's own together. It can't be below the most days a year someone can get, every seniority level included: below that, a year's own days could never all come in. Ticking it fills in that least value. While the balance is at it, no more days are earned, and days that would take it higher are lost:

  • On a yearly plan, the year's days come all at once, so with a maximum of 30 and 21 days a year, someone who carried 21 over gets 9 of the new 21 on the year's first day. The other 12 are lost, and taking days off later in the year doesn't bring them back.
  • On a monthly plan, earning stops at the maximum and starts again as soon as days are taken.

• At the end of the year: days left are lost, all carried over, or carried over up to a number. Carried days are lost after a number of months, if they aren't used by then. A new plan starts on All days left are carried over: someone off across the start of the new year expects to bring the days they have left, and with days earned monthly the new year holds almost nothing at first. A note under the choice says in a line what your choices do. It turns amber when days left are lost, which suits sick leave more than paid leave.

  Carried days keep the date they expire on. Carried over again the next year, they still go on that date, so days from two earlier years can be waiting at once, each with its own date. With a limit on what is carried over, it counts every day carried, and the days that would expire soonest are the ones lost.

• Email people before their days are lost: off by default. Ticked, each person who would still lose days gets an email a number of weeks before (1 to 26): before the end of the year, for the days left that won't be carried over, and before carried days expire, for those still unused. Only those who would lose some are emailed, once each time, with every type they would lose days of in one email; the absences they've approved and asked for count. With every day carried over and none expiring, nothing is ever lost, so there is nothing to send. Each email is in the audit log.

Days are always used oldest first: carried days before the year's own, so the ones that would be lost go first. An absence across the start of a new plan year takes each day from the year it falls in: with a year starting in January, 20 December to 5 January takes the December days from this year and the January days from the next.

Changing a plan's rules

When you change the rules of a plan, pick the day they apply from, in the amber The new rules apply from box just above the buttons; the save button says it too (Save, from 6 Nov 2026, or Save, from the start). Each part you change turns amber, with what it was beneath it, and the number of unsaved changes shows by the buttons. Days before it keep the rules they had, and Rules over time in the dialog lists each set with its date. From the start replaces every set instead: every balance is worked out again as if the new rules had always applied. A set of rules can be taken back: the ones before it go on.

Remove hides a plan. It can't go while it still applies to anyone, now or later: give them another plan first. Balances keep a removed plan for the time it applied.

Who gets which plan

For each absence type, Give a plan asks who it's for, which plan, and from which day:

• All countries (picked to begin with): everyone, unless their country has its own plan.
• A country: one of the countries you operate in, for the people whose holiday country it is (see Holidays). It comes before the plan for all countries. With a single country, every plan is for everyone.

The plan can be one of yours, No balance (their absences are counted, nothing is refused), or for a country Same as everyone. Every change applies from the day you pick, and the time before keeps what it had: a change coming later shows in amber until its day.

• Change on a line gives it another plan from a day.

• Remove (the bin, on a country's line) takes that country's own plan away entirely: its people follow the plan for all countries again, and their balances are worked out as if the country never had its own. The line for all countries has no bin: to stop it, use Change and pick No balance from a day, which keeps the time before.

• Changes over time lists every change with its day. A change still to come can be called off. One already in force stays on record: to correct it, give another plan from the same day, which replaces it. Giving the plan a line already has from an earlier day moves that line back: a line that gives the same as the one before it is dropped, so the same plan is never listed twice.

  Starting a plan before the day you began using LogQuill counts those earlier years as if nobody had taken a day off: LogQuill doesn't know the absences from back then. To bring in what people had left, give them an opening balance instead (Admin > Balances).

One person

HR gives a person their own plan, adjusts their balance, and imports opening balances or start dates from a file, in Admin > Balances. See Leave balances.

Too few days left

What happens when someone asks for more days than they have is the type's When the person's balance is insufficient (in Absence types):

• Refuse the request (the default): the request can't be sent, and an approver can't approve it.
• Let it go below zero: the request goes through and the balance goes negative. The form tells the person so, and the approve dialog shows it in amber to its approvers.

The days a monthly plan earns until the absence count: someone can ask in February for days in December they will have earned by then. Their other absences count too, in date order: pending ones when they ask, approved ones when an approver approves.

Absences from Odoo are decided in Odoo, which keeps its own balances: they count against the balance here, but nothing refuses them.