Leave settings: entitlements, TOIL, blackouts, and permissions

Entitlements, holiday periods, carry-over, and TOIL.

Written By Campsite

Last updated About 1 month ago

Leave settings: entitlements, TOIL, blackouts, and permissions

Leave settings are organisation-wide rules. They drive balances, manager queues, TOIL conversion, blackouts, and holiday calendars for every staff request at /leave. Treat changes like a controlled release, not a casual toggle.

Where to configure

Open Admin → Leave settings (or your HR leave admin route, often related to /hr/leave). You need organisation leave management permission such as leave.manage_org.

Staff feel the results immediately on /leave. Managers approve from leave queues. Configured bank holidays and breaks appear on timelines.

The building blocks

Leave types

Annual leave, unpaid leave, and any special categories your organisation uses. Clear naming reduces mis-booking.

Entitlements and pro-rata

How balances are calculated for joiners, leavers, and part-year service. Wrong pro-rata settings create unfair balances that are painful to unwind.

Approval chains

Who approves whom. This usually follows reporting lines on the org chart. If the chart is wrong, leave routing is wrong.

Holiday and blackout periods

Dates that restrict or highlight booking. Confirm which leave types each blackout applies to.

Carry-over and encashment

End-of-year behaviour where enabled. Document the policy outside Campsite as well.

TOIL

Approved overtime converted into leave time. Many organisations use 480 minutes as an 8-hour day. Confirm your minutes-per-day value before trusting conversions.

Permissions are not job titles

  • leave.approve_direct_reports - managers approving their reports
  • leave.manage_org - organisation-wide leave admin
  • Separate HR permissions for absence reporting

A senior job title without these keys will not unlock manager leave tools. Fix the role or keys explicitly.

Leave vs unplanned absence

Planned leave and unplanned absence are different flows. If your categories overlap confusingly, managers double-enter dates or miss cover. Align naming with how supervisors actually speak on site.

Bradford-style or trend indicators are indicative. Train managers not to treat them as automatic disciplinary evidence.

Safe change checklist

  1. Draft the policy and get stakeholder sign-off.
  2. Record current settings before editing.
  3. Apply changes in a quiet period if possible.
  4. Spot-check balances for a new joiner, a mid-year leaver, and a full-time staff member.
  5. Broadcast managers before staff discover the change the hard way.
  6. Keep an audit note of who approved the policy.

Mid-year entitlement changes

Communicate early. People plan holidays against balances they already see. If you must correct a systemic error, prepare HR capacity for exceptions and manager talking points.

TOIL operations in practice

  1. Staff log overtime through leave more-actions where enabled.
  2. Managers approve overtime.
  3. Conversion uses the configured working-day length.
  4. If TOIL looks wrong for everyone, check minutes-per-day before adjusting individuals.

Troubleshooting

  • Staff cannot see Leave → permissions or module configuration
  • Manager cannot approve → missing approve permission or wrong reports-to
  • Balances wrong after a change → re-check pro-rata/carry-over and sample real employees
  • Blackout ignored → confirm leave type coverage and date range
  • TOIL unfair across team → minutes-per-day or approval inconsistencies

Manager briefing you can paste into a broadcast

"We updated leave settings on [date]. Please check your team's balances before approving peak holiday weeks. Blackout dates are [summary]. TOIL still needs manager approval before conversion. Ask HR before promising exceptions."

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