Time off
Someone wants next Friday off. Today that’s a message, a reply, and one of you remembering to put it on the calendar. Time off turns it into a request: they pick the kind (sick, appointment, vacation, bereavement, lieu day), the dates, and add a note if they want; it lands with whoever decides; one click approves it and it’s on the Presence calendar as if you’d logged it yourself. Decline, and they get the reason.
What it does not do, by design, is keep a bank of hours. mizuiro doesn’t know how many vacation days someone has left, and won’t pretend to. Whoever approves the request is expected to know, the way they do today.
- Who can use it: employees and supervisors ask; supervisors and managers decide. Managers log their own time straight onto the Presence calendar and don’t file requests.
- Where: Sidebar → Time off.
- Default: off. Turn it on at Settings → Modules. It pairs with Presence, which is where approved time shows up.
Every request gets a reference number (TOR-DDMMMYY-XXXX).
- Go to Sidebar → Time off and click Request time off, or click any working day on your own calendar on that page.
- Pick the kind: Sick, Appointment, Vacation, Bereavement, or Lieu day.
- Set the From and To dates. A single day can be a morning or afternoon only; a longer request is whole days.
- Optionally say where to take it from: vacation allowance, flex time, banked overtime, or unpaid. This is a note to whoever approves (“use my flex time for this vacation day”), not a balance; mizuiro doesn’t track how much is in any bank.
- Add a note if it helps whoever’s deciding (“dentist at 10, back by lunch”).
- Click Send request.
The page tells you who it’s going to before you send it. Only your normal working days count, and company closures are skipped, so asking for a week that includes a stat holiday is four days, not five.
You can withdraw a request while it’s waiting, or an approved one that hasn’t started yet. Once it’s underway, ask your approver to cancel it. Your company can also ask you to check in rather than cancel approved time off yourself: then the button is gone once it’s approved, and your supervisor or manager cancels it for you.
Requests waiting on you sit at the top of Sidebar → Time off under Needs your decision (and in the Time Off Requests dashboard widget). Open one and you’ll see:
- What was asked, with the working days spelled out, and which bank they’d like it taken from if they said.
- Same days, same team: anyone else on that person’s team who’s already off, or also waiting, over the same dates. That’s the “do I have cover?” answer without a balance.
- A note box and two buttons. Approve puts it on the calendar. Decline sends it back with your note; a note is required when you decline so the person knows why.
An approved request writes one presence record per working day, tagged with the request. The day’s note is the requester’s note, prefixed with the bank when they named one (“From flex time. Long weekend”), so the calendar hover carries the same context you saw. If a day already has that status because you logged it by hand, the approval leaves your entry exactly as it is (your note and half day included) rather than taking it over. If the request is later cancelled, exactly the records it wrote come off again; anything you logged by hand on the same days stays.
If someone leaves while a request of theirs is still waiting, it drops out of the approval queue and the dashboard count, and their approved time stops showing under Away in the next two weeks.
Until it’s decided, a request shows as a dashed outline rather than a filled status:
- On the employee’s Presence tab, a dashed pill (“Vacation?”) on each day it covers.
- On the roster month grid, a hollow dashed dot, and on the day panel a Time off requested list you can act from.
- On the person’s own Time off page, the same dashed pill on their calendar.
Once approved it becomes the ordinary solid status. Declined or cancelled, it disappears.
A single-day request can be a morning or an afternoon. It shows on the calendar as “Sick (AM)” or “Appointment (PM)” and counts as half a day on the request. The same choice is available when you log presence by hand, so a half day logged directly and a half day that came from a request look identical.
Settings → Time off has one setting: the approval chain.
| Chain | What happens |
|---|---|
| Supervisor approves (default) | An employee’s request goes to the supervisor of their team. A supervisor’s own request, or a request from someone with no supervisor, comes to you. |
| Supervisor, then manager | The supervisor says yes first, then it comes to you for the final word. |
| Manager approves | Every request comes straight to you. |
| Approve automatically | Requests are approved the moment they’re filed and go straight onto the calendar. Nobody has to click. Suits a small team that just needs the record. |
Whatever the chain, you can always approve or decline anything that’s waiting, including a request sitting in a supervisor’s queue. A supervisor being away for a week never holds a request up.
At Settings → Time off, on by default. Turn it off if you’d rather people ask before taking back time off that was already approved; their supervisor or you can still cancel it, and a request that’s still waiting can always be withdrawn.
Two notifications, both off until you turn them on at Settings → Notifications:
- When someone requests time off goes to whoever’s turn it is: the supervisor of the requester’s team, or you. In a two-step chain, you get it again when the supervisor passes it on.
- When a time-off request is decided tells the requester the outcome, with your note. It’s also sent if you cancel approved time on someone’s behalf.
Both can carry your own greeting and sign-off, like the other customizable emails.
| Widget | Size | Who | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time Off Requests | 1x1 | Everyone | Approvers: how many requests need a decision. Requesters: how many of their own are still waiting. |
| Away Soon | 2x1 | Managers, supervisors | Approved time off over the next two weeks for the people they can see. |
Can I file a request on someone’s behalf?
No, and you don’t need to: log it straight onto their Presence calendar. Requests are for the person asking; logging is for you.
What if the days aren’t working days?
The request still goes through, but the page warns that nothing would land on the calendar. Approving a request for a weekend does nothing visible; decline it and say so, or ask them to fix the dates.
Can two requests overlap?
Not for the same person. A second request covering a day that’s already requested or approved is refused, so a day is never double-booked.
What does an employee see of their own presence?
Their Time off page has a read-only calendar of their own time: approved time off, remote days, flex time and the like, plus anything pending. It never shows in late, left early, no show or long break. Those are conversations to have, not calendar entries to discover.
Does turning the module off lose anything?
No. Requests and the presence records they created stay; the page and widgets disappear until you turn it back on.
NoteHow to read this: ✓ can see it, ✗ can’t, ○ depends on a setting or condition (explained under the table). As a manager, you always see everything in your company.
| What | You (manager) | Supervisor | Employee |
|---|---|---|---|
| File a request | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| See a request | ✓ | ○ | ○ |
| Approve or decline | ✓ | ○ | ✗ |
| Their own calendar on the Time off page | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
- ○ Supervisor: their own requests, plus their team members’ (everyone’s in shared scope). They decide requests from their own teams when the chain routes there, never their own.
- ○ Employee: only their own.
- HR users don’t take part in Time off; it isn’t one of the HR areas.