RotaCloud Pro lets you establish rules to automatically manage staff’s leave requests. Leave Request Rules can monitor the number of staff available for a particular Location, Role, Group, or the entire account, and only permit requests that won't leave you short-staffed in various areas of your business.
If a user tries to request leave and breaks a rule that you’ve created, their request will be automatically rejected. By using Request Rules, you can ensure that you always have the right number of staff available and don’t allow too many people on holiday at the same time.
Adding a new Leave Request Rule
To open the Request Rules page, on the Leave page, open the ‘Tools’ menu, and then click ‘Request Rules’. Here, you’ll see a list of any existing rules that have been set up. To add a new rule, click the blue ‘+’ at the top of the page.
You’ll then be directed to the ‘Add Request Rule’ page.
You can give your Request Rule a name for easy identification later. Next, choose a start and end date for the Request Rule by clicking on each field and selecting the dates from the calendar. If the rule contains a half-day, you can use the AM/PM dropdowns to set this.
Optionally, you can add a custom message that will be shown to the employee when their Leave Request is rejected under this rule.
Setting the rule parameters
The Rules section is where you set the parameters that will determine if a request is allowed to be submitted or is automatically rejected. There are four types of rule that you can set:
Minimum available employees
This rule allows you to set the minimum number of staff you need to be available at the same time. If a staff member is not on leave of any type on a given day, they are considered "Available". If a request would drop the number of staff below the figure you choose, it will be rejected.
Minimum available employees on location
This rule allows you to set the minimum number of staff who are available at a particular location of your choosing.
Minimum available employees in a group
This rule allows you to set the minimum number of staff who are available in an Employee Group of your choosing.
Minimum available employees assigned a role
This rule allows you to set the minimum number of staff who are available to work a particular role of your choosing.
Tips/FAQs
Admins (and Managers with the ‘Manage leave’ permission) will still be able to manually add Leave even if it breaks a rule. The Request Rules are only used when an Employee is submitting a Leave Request.
When a new Leave Rule is created, it will not affect any leave that's already in the system, even if the rule is already broken.
You can set as many parameters as you wish for each Request Rule but if only one parameter is broken, the Request will be rejected.