How to create your company’s Leave request notice period policy

Leave Dates lets you control how much notice employees and approvers need to give when submitting a leave request.

The Leave request notice period policy sets the minimum amount of advance notice required before a leave request can begin. For example, if you set a notice period of 7 days, an employee must submit their leave request at least 7 days before the requested start date. Requests made within the restricted period are automatically blocked.

This policy also gives you the option to choose whether to allow leave requests to be submitted for dates in the past.

Feature availability: With our Plus plan, you have full policy editing rights, enabling you to create your own personalised leave request notice period policy with different rules for each leave type; on the Essential plan, you are able to edit the default policy, which will then be applied to all leave types; on the Starter plan, you cannot edit any of the policy settings (these are configured to the Leave Dates system default) but you can still view all the policies to understand what rules are being applied.

Open the Leave request notice period policy

To view or change the notice period policy:

Go to Settings.
Select Policies.
Select Leave request period from the list of policies.

Understanding the default notice period settings

Leave Dates provides system default notice period settings. These are:

Role	Past requests	Future requests	Notice required for future requests
Employee	Allowed	Allowed	0 days
Approver (on behalf of a direct report)	Allowed	Allowed	0 days

This means that, under the system default settings, both employees and approvers (on behalf of their direct reports) can request leave that has already happened (past requests) and don’t need to give advance notice when submitting a future leave request.

Admins aren’t included in the policy settings as they already automatically have permission to submit leave requests at any time.

How the notice period works

The notice period determines how far in advance a future leave request must be submitted.

So, if you specify a 7-day notice period, an employee requesting leave starting on 30 October must submit the request 7 days in advance, i.e. by the end of 23 October

A notice period of 0 days means that no advance notice is required, so an employee can submit a leave request even on the day the leave starts. For example, a company might require 14 days’ notice for annual leave to give managers time to plan cover, while allowing sick leave to be requested on the same day, as illness is often unplanned.

If the request is submitted too close to the requested start date, Leave Dates will prevent it from being submitted because it does not meet the configured notice requirement. The person submitting the request will receive an error message explaining why their request cannot be sent.

Why use a notice period?

A notice period can help companies give managers enough time to:

review incoming leave requests;
arrange cover for absent employees;
identify potential clashes with other leave;
manage team availability; and
plan work around upcoming absences.

The notice period determines how far in advance a leave request must be submitted, not when it must be approved. Once a request has been submitted, it can be approved at any time, following the company’s normal approval process.

Customise the default notice period and permission to submit past requests

If the default setting of allowing past leave requests and a 0 days’ notice period for future requests does not suit your organisation, you can change it from the Details tab.

The policy lets you configure notice requirements for:

Employees - for their own leave requests.
Approvers - when booking leave for their direct reports.

You can also configure separate rules for:

requests in the past; and
requests in the future.

For future requests, you can specify the number of days' notice that must be given.

To change the default settings:

Open Settings > Policies > Leave request period.
Make sure you're on the Details tab.
Locate the Default settings.
To remove permission for allowing the submission of past leave requests, untick the in the past box for employees, approvers or both.
To change the notice period for employees and/or approvers, enter the required number of days' notice for future requests.
Select Save changes.

Your updated policy settings will then apply to all new leave requests.

We recommend giving employees the most restrictive permissions, with progressively greater permissions for approvers and admins. This creates a clear path of escalation: if an employee cannot submit a request themselves because of the policy settings, they can ask their approver to submit it on their behalf. If the approver is also restricted, they can escalate the request to a company admin, who can submit leave requests without restrictions. If employees have higher permissions than their approvers, this escalation path may not work as intended, so Leave Dates will display a warning.

Set different notice periods and past requests permission for individual leave types

You may not want every type of leave to allow requests for past dates or to have the same notice requirement for future requests.

For example, a company may want annual leave to only be requested with at least 7 days’ advance notice while allowing another compassionate leave and sick leave requests to be submitted for past dates or with no notice.

The Details tab allows you to configure leave types separately from the company default - and to set different rules for employees and approvers if needed

Each leave type has a Use default option. When this is selected, the leave type follows the company-level default settings. If you need a particular leave type to have different rules, you can disable Use default and adjust its settings.

To customise a leave type

Open Settings > Policies > Leave request period.
Go to the Details tab.
Find the leave type you want to customise.
Disable Use default by unticking the box.
If you want to prevent leave requests in the past, untick this box for employees, approvers or both.
Set the appropriate notice period for future leave requests for employees, approvers or both.
Select Save changes.

Leave Dates automatically switches a leave type back to Use default when its configuration matches the company default. This can happen when you manually change the settings for a leave type, but the settings you’ve chosen actually match the default. Or if you change the default settings and they now match changes you previously made to individual leave types. This prevents unnecessary duplicate configurations and keeps genuine exceptions clear.

Review policy updates

The Updates tab provides a full audit trail of changes made to the Leave request notice period policy. Every change is recorded as an event in the timeline, with no exceptions. Events are never deleted or modified, so you can always see the history of how the policy has changed.

The most recent changes appear at the top. For each event, you can see when the change was made, who made it, and which policy settings were changed. By comparing the Before and After columns, you can see exactly how the rules were updated.

If the user who made a change is later deleted from Leave Dates, their name may appear as “(Deleted)”, but the event itself remains in the audit trail.

This can be particularly useful when checking when a notice period was changed or understanding why the current settings differ from previous ones.

Test your notice period policy

Before saving your changes, use the Test tab to check how your notice period rules will apply in different scenarios. This lets you confirm that the policy works as intended before applying the new settings.

Testing your policy this way is also much quicker than manually creating leave requests through the Wallchart.

The test tool allows you to select a date for a leave request and see whether the request meets the notice period requirements for each leave type. This is particularly useful after changing the policy because it allows you to check the effect of your new settings before they are applied in practice.

To test your policy:

Open Settings > Policies > Leave request notice period.
Select the Test tab.
Select the date you want to test.
Review the results for each leave type
Check whether the request is shown as Allowed or Not allowed for employees and approvers.

Reset the policy to the system default

If you no longer want to use your customised leave request notice periods, you can return the policy to its system default.

The policy interface includes Reset to system default at the bottom of the policy window.