What's covered in this guide?
How negative leave balances happen
By default, staff can request more leave than their balance allows, which creates a negative balance. You can stop this for each leave type by either:
blocking requests that would exceed the balance, or
splitting requests, so any hours over the balance go to a fallback leave type.
📝 Important to note: Workforce.com checks the predicted balance on the date of the leave. That's the current balance plus any leave the employee will accrue before then, minus approved leave. This means employees can book future leave against leave they haven't accrued yet.
Where to find the settings
Open your leave types:
Go to Time & Attendance → Leave → Leave Types.
Select the leave type.
Scroll to 4. Advanced Settings.
Tick Disallow negative leave balances for this leave type. This shows the options below.
📝 Important to note: If you use Workforce.com Payroll, leave types are set up on your payroll screens instead. There, the setting is called Prevent leave balances from falling below 0, and the fallback type is set as Fallback Leave on the leave rule.
Prevent leave requests that exceed the balance
Go to Time & Attendance → Leave → Leave Types.
Select the leave type you want to protect, for example Holiday.
Scroll down to 4. Advanced Settings.
Tick Disallow negative leave balances for this leave type. More options appear underneath.
Tick Prevent leave requests being submitted if they would exceed their existing balance. Fallback only works when this is ticked.
Tick Allow leave to fall back on another leave type if a request would exceed its balance at the time it's taken. A dropdown appears underneath.
Click the Select Fallback Leave Type dropdown and choose the leave type to use for the extra hours. The list shows your other leave types.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
If an employee requests more leave than they'll have available, the request is blocked with a message like:
Insufficient Annual Leave balance: this request is for 7.6 hours, but only 5 hours are available.
A request is also blocked if approving it would make other future approved leave exceed the balance.
Use fallback leave when a request exceeds the balance
Instead of blocking requests, Workforce.com can split them so the hours over the balance go to another leave type.
Go to Time & Attendance → Leave → Leave Types.
Select the leave type, for example Holiday.
Scroll down to 4. Advanced Settings.
Tick Disallow negative leave balances for this leave type. More options appear underneath.
Tick Prevent leave requests being submitted if they would exceed their existing balance.
In Negative leave balance threshold, enter how far below zero the balance can go. For example, entering 8 lets the balance go down to −8 before requests are blocked.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
How fallback leave works
Employees can submit requests over their balance. They don't choose a fallback type; your default fallback type is used automatically.
Managers and approvers see Which leave type would you like to use as a fallback? and can choose a different type.
When the request is approved, Workforce.com splits it in two:
one request that uses the remaining balance of the original leave type;
one request for the extra hours, using the fallback leave type.
Example:
An employee has 5 hours of Holiday and requests 7.6 hours.
Once approved, the request becomes 5 hours of Holiday and 2.6 hours of the fallback leave type.
Manager overrides
Anyone who can approve the employee's leave can still submit a request that exceeds the balance. Instead of being blocked, they see a warning:
Will create a negative balance. This leave request puts the employee into a negative balance. Are you sure this is ok?
How negative balances recover
A leave balance is a running total. It goes up as the employee accrues leave and down when leave is approved. If a balance goes negative, the employee's future accruals bring it back up over time. There's no separate repayment process.
Correct a leave balance
To change an employee's balance, for example if they're working back leave they owe:
Go to the employee's profile and open the Leave tab.
Under Leave Balances, click Edit next to the leave type.
Enter the new balance and save.
📝 Important to note: The value you enter replaces the balance; it doesn't add to or subtract from it. Work out the new balance first. If you use Workforce.com Payroll, edit the Opening balance (UK: Starting balance) instead.
To update many balances at once, use the Leave Balances page to download and upload a CSV.
Default leave hours and autofill
The number of hours on a leave request affects how much balance it uses. To make sure requests use the right hours:
Check default leave hours: go to Settings → Leave → Default leave behaviour and check Default leave hours per full day of leave. Update it to match your staff's usual working day.
Set up autofill: go to Settings → Leave → Leave autofill and click Create Autofill Configuration.
Choose who it applies to.
Choose how hours are filled in: Published roster, Unpublished roster, Regular hours of work or Recent pattern of approved shifts. Drag them into the order you want Workforce.com to try them.
If none of these apply, the default leave hours are used.
Test it: create or edit a test leave request to check the right hours fill in.