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Holidays & Events

Book, Approve, and Track Holidays and Events

Manage all leave types, automate entitlement calculations, set your own approval rules, and give employees an easy way to request time off. AI analysis helps you stay on top of availability, trends, and staffing risks.

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Track holidays and entitlements

Keep on top of holiday allowances, leave entitlements, TOIL, and more, with up-to-date stats and analytics about your workforce, to see things like who has used up most of their leave, which teams need to use more up, and what upcoming events may impact your calendar.

Create custom leave types

Go beyond the standard limits of holidays or parental leave, and create as many custom leave types as you like. This could mean birthday leave, duvet days, charity events, jury service, or something else entirely! Each leave type can have its own entitlements, automations, and rule sets.

Leave approval workflows

Specify who should approve each different leave request, whether that’s a line manager, a senior colleague, or a company director. Or design multi-approver workflows that send the request to more than one person, and even trigger other events within your HR system upon approval or denial.

Heatmaps and planners

See who is in or out at a glance in your company or team planner, and see colour-coded days based on public holidays, locked days, or the types of events people have booked. Heatmaps show you the days people are most likely to be away, and let you filter by things like team or location.

What's inside

Explore the modern way to manage holidays and events

Here's how Sense HR helps you manage, track and automate holidays, events, and leave.

Calendar View

See who is off at a glance, and filter by team, department, location or job type, for quick insights.

One-Click Approvals

Managers can approve requests directly from email, Slack, mobile, or their Sense HR dashboard.

Automatic Entitlements

Auto-calculate accruals in line with UK statutory entitlement, or customise company allowances.

Multi-Level Approvals

Require multiple approvers for leave requests, such as line manager, HR, and office manager.

Locked Dates

Stop leave requests coming in for busy days, weeks, or even months. Lock days by team or role.

Carry-Over Rules

Set how much entitlement should carry over between years, or run a use-it-or-lose-it policy.

TOIL

Track hours that need to be credited as time-off-in-lieu, and auto convert hours into entitlements.

Mobile App

Request or approve leave from anywhere, with the Sense HR mobile app with custom permissions.

Multi-Country Support

Use different statutory rules or entitlements on a per-country basis, with configurable bank holidays.

Leave-type library

Select from our library of pre-built leave templates

Easily add and customise new types of leave from our library of pre-built templates, or create your own from scratch!

  • Annual Leave

    Your standard holiday allowance – statutory, plus whatever is in your contract – with auto-accrual.

  • Parental Leave

    Maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental leave, and more, with statutory pay auto-calculated.

  • Jury Service

    Register time off for serving on a jury, with custom rules such as paid or unpaid, per your policy.

  • Compassionate

    Give time off for bereavement, family emergencies, and more. Use discretion, or per your policy.

  • Study Leave

    Time off for exam days, study days or personal development days, with built-in approval workflows.

  • TOIL

    Calculate time-off-in-lieu based on qualifying overtime, and auto-convert to a person’s leave balance.

  • Sabbatical

    Give employees configurable long-service leave for hitting special service milestones.

  • Unpaid Leave

    Let people request unpaid time off, with salary deductions automatically calculated.

  • Bank Holidays

    Use standard templates set by region, or set your own bank holidays by team or department.

  • Volunteering

    Allow for charity days, fund raising, or time off for good causes, and track contributions.

  • Training

    Give time off for off-site courses, conferences, or other types of training – different to study leave.

  • Custom Leave

    Design any type of leave you wish to give out, and set the rules, approvals and entitlements.

Built for you

Modern leave management that works with the rest of your business

  • Calendar integrationsIntegrate holiday and leave data with your external calendars, with ready-made integrations for systems like Google or Microsoft to make event syncing easy. Or, you can build any custom connection you like using Sense Automate.See integrations
  • Deeper insights with AI analysisAnalyse holiday and other leave patterns, by asking your HR assistant AMI. AMI can answer questions about things like who is off, which teams have a high outstanding holiday balance, and whether you might have staffing issues coming up – things traditional reports may miss.
  • Employee Self ServiceGive your workers an easy way to view their calendars, check their entitlements, see their upcoming leave, check who else is off, or submit holiday requests for approval. The Sense HR mobile app gives each worker features and tools approved by you, that they can access anywhere.
  • Custom Holiday RulesDecide how you want holiday rules to work, and set them company-wide, or per team, job role, or department. For example, you might want employees to request holidays by the hour, or you might want to give different job types different entitlements or approval rules.

Explore more from Sense HR

DocumentsLearn more about contracts, policies, e-signatures and attachments. PerformanceCreate goals, hold one-to-ones, review histories, and compare notes. Employee RecordsStore unlimited custom information about any person in your workforce. AMIMeet your AI-powered HR assistant and hire specialist AI agents.

Discover holiday management for yourself

Book a free demo or start your free trial to discover modern holiday and leave management with Sense HR.

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FAQ

Common questions about holidays

Does Sense handle UK statutory entitlement (5.6 weeks)?

Yes — statutory 5.6 weeks calculated automatically, including bank holidays. Pro-rata for part-time workers. Configurable for additional contractual leave (e.g. 5.6 weeks + 3 contractual days).

How does carry-over work?

Fully configurable. Cap the carry-over amount (e.g. max 5 days), set an expiry date (e.g. use by 31 March), allow buy-back at year-end, or enforce use-it-or-lose-it. Different rules per role, per location.

Can we set custom approval chains?

Yes — per leave type, per duration, per role. Annual leave under 5 days might be manager-only; over 10 days might need skip-level approval. Parental leave might go straight to HR. Fully configurable per policy.

Does it integrate with payroll for parental leave statutory pay?

Yes — statutory maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay calculations push to Sage, Xero, Brightpay payroll automatically. HMRC compliant.

Multi-country support?

Yes — configure different statutory rules per country (UK, Ireland, Channel Islands, EU). Country-specific bank holidays auto-applied based on employee location.