Leave

The leave types most companies start with

A new company is seeded with four suggested types, which you can change, rename or add to:

• AL, Annual leave. 14 days a year, paid, carries forward, no document required, and unused days can be paid out at year end if you switch that on.
• CL, Casual leave. 10 days a year, paid, does not carry forward.
• SL, Sick leave. 16 days a year, paid, requires a supporting document.
• UL, Unpaid leave. No annual allowance; it exists for the days a balance genuinely cannot cover.

Every type can allow half days, and every one of these numbers is a starting point, not a fixed rule, because a leave policy is exactly the kind of thing that varies from one Pakistani company to the next.

The leave year

Your leave year starts in January or July, your choice; it does not have to match the July to June fiscal year payroll runs on. Whatever you pick, balances reset on that date.

Carry forward decides whether unused days cross into the next leave year. Switched off, every balance resets to the type's entitlement on day one of the new year and whatever was not taken is gone. Switched on, up to a company-set maximum number of days per type crosses over: the cap and the switch are two separate settings, and a cap of zero with carry forward on carries nothing, so check both if a balance is not behaving as expected.

The sandwich rule

Common in Pakistani HR policy, and a surprise to nearly everyone it is applied to the first time: with it switched on, a weekend or holiday sitting between two days of leave is counted as leave too, not skipped. It defaults off for exactly that reason. Turn it on deliberately, and tell people before their next request runs into it.

How a request is counted

A leave request's day count is worked out once, at the moment it is filed, and stored. It is not recalculated later. If the shift pattern, the holiday calendar or the sandwich setting changes afterwards, an already-filed request keeps the count it was given, because a balance nobody can argue from is worse than an occasionally out-of-date one.

Approval

A filed request goes to the employee's approver, who accepts or rejects it. A decision, once made, notifies the employee if your company has that notification switched on (see Settings that matter). Approved paid leave reduces the balance for its type and feeds directly into that month's payroll run as paid leave days, not as an absence.