Time Off Management app

The Time Off Management app by Scoro brings leave planning, automatic team calendar blocking, and real-time balance tracking directly into your Scoro site. Whether you are an employee requesting vacation, a manager reviewing time-off requests, or an HR admin setting up annual time-off balances, your entire team can manage time off directly inside Scoro, eliminating disconnected spreadsheets, chaotic email threads, and standalone third-party HR tools.

This article guides you through how the Time Off Management app works, how to activate and configure it, and how users with various roles can use it.

1. How the Time Off Management app works

If your team is still managing time off via email or in a spreadsheet, activating the Time Off Management app by Scoro lets you move the time-off management process to Scoro. This way, you can centralize leave requests, automate approval workflows, and seamlessly manage team availability, all in one place.

Every team member on your site interacts with the Time Off Management app according to their role:

• All team members can submit full-day or partial-hour time-off requests and extra availability directly in Scoro, as well as track remaining vacation balances in real time.
• Managers and team leads can review, approve, or reject incoming requests. The system automatically cross-references requested days against the employee's allowance upon submission and, upon manager approval, blocks out the employee's calendar and deducts the time from their balance.
• HR or people managers, ops leads, and site managers set up and manage employees' annual time-off allowances, configure manager notification rules, and oversee site-wide balances across the organization.

1.1. Key benefits

• One place for every request: Every time-off request is submitted, reviewed, and approved in a single structured flow within Scoro with a clear status at every step. No more chasing approvals over email or chat.
• Real-time team availability: Once time off is approved, it automatically updates the employee’s availability across Scoro, so you’re never planning work around someone who isn’t available.
• Accurate annual leave balance tracking: Balances update automatically with every approved or canceled request, so you can always see exactly how much leave is left before making a decision.
• Consistent time-off approval process: Every time-off request follows the same approval flow. Create relevant notifications to ensure no request slips through.
• Clear roles and permissions: Control app access levels for different roles with granular permissions. Employees can submit and manage their own requests and view their own balance. Managers can also approve, reject, or cancel requests. HR managers or Ops leads can manage the employees’ time-off balances.
• Flexible leave types: The app supports all default time-off types in Scoro (vacation, medical leave, study leave, etc.), as well as custom time-off types.

1.2. Balance deduction based on time-off types

Here’s how a time-off request approved in the Time Off Management app impacts the users’ balance based on the time-off type:

• Vacation – creates a time-off entry in the calendar and deducts days/hours from the employee’s balance. This is the standard holiday/annual leave flow.
• Extra availability – increases the user’s availability in the selected day(s) and adds days/hours to the employee’s balance.
• Any other time-off type (including custom types) – creates a time-off entry in the calendar but doesn’t affect the balance.

1.3. Things to remember & known limitations

Here's what you need to remember about the Time Off Management app:

• No automatic accrual: Progressive leave accrual is not supported at the moment (e.g., automatically adding 1.6 or 2.33 vacation days per month to employees’ balance). During the initial setup and before the start of each year, administrators or HR managers must set each employee's balance accordingly. All subsequent vacation requests will deduct directly from this static total.
• Cross-year dates are not supported: All dates within a single time-off request must fall within the same calendar year. If an employee requests leave spanning across two years (e.g., December 28 to January 3), they must submit two separate requests (one for the dates of the current year, and another for the start of the next).
• Single balance for all vacation types: The app maintains a single annual balance pot per employee (e.g., Vacation). It does not support separate balances for different leave types (such as parental or study leave).
• Single-level approvals: The app supports a direct manager-to-employee approval relationship. Multi-stage or multi-level sign-off chains are not supported at the moment.
• Past time-off entries don’t impact balance: Time-off entries already added in Scoro before activating the Time Off Management app won’t deduct days/hours from the balances you add in the app, and you don’t need to create time-off requests for them. Only time-off requests added and approved via the Time Off Management app will be deducted from users’ balances.

2. Activating the app

Site administrators can activate the Time Off Management app:

• From the Scoro App Store via the Get this app button;
• From Scoro – go to Settings > Administration > Plan, add-ons and billing, click Manage add-ons, enable the Time Off Management app, and save the changes.

Once activated, the app will be available in the site menu. At first, it's accessible only to the user who activated it, and you can start configuring the app.

3. Configuring the app

Before introducing your team to the time-off management flow and letting them submit their requests, a site administrator must do the following setup steps:

1. Select which users can approve time-off requests
2. Set up the app permissions
3. Disable the regular time off permissions
4. Set up annual time-off balances
5. Configure notifications

3.1. Select which users can approve time-off requests

Select which team members will be the ones to approve the submitted time-off requests:

1. Go to Settings > Site settings > Custom fields.
2. In the Time Off management section, click on the Confirm changes custom field name to modify it.
3. Scroll down to the Access control section and enable the Limit access checkbox. An additional user dropdown field will appear, where you can select the relevant users or user groups. Once selected, click Save.

3.2. Set up the app permissions

The level of access in the Time Off Management app for various users is controlled by permission sets. There are separate permissions for time off management and balance management, with more granular sub-permissions under each, giving you full control of what different permission set users can see and do in the Time Off Management app.

• For regular employee permission sets:
  • Enable the Time Off management permission and also the Add and modify entries permission under it to allow them to see, submit, and modify their own time-off requests. If visibility of other users’ time-off requests is needed, enable the View entries of other users sub-permission as well.
  • Enable the Time off balances permission so they can see their own balances. If visibility of other users’ balances is needed, enable the View entries of other users sub-permission.
• For manager and team lead permission sets:
  • Enable the Time Off management permission and the relevant sub-permissions—Add and modify entries, View entries of other users, Modify entries of other users, Delete entries—to let them see, approve, and modify their own and their team members' time off requests.
  • Enable the Time off balances permission so they can see their own balances. Leave the sub-permissions unchecked.
• For HR admin permission sets:
  • Enable the Time off balances permission and the relevant sub-permissions—Add and modify entries, View entries of other users, Modify entries of other users, Delete entries—to let them add and manage the team members' balances.
  • If your HR admins need to manage team members' time-off requests, grant them the same permissions as managers and team leads.

Learn more about managing permission sets.

3.3. Disable the regular time off permissions

To prevent site users from creating regular time-off entries via the Time off button, thus bypassing the time-off approval workflow entirely, make sure to disable the regular time-off related permissions in every active permission set on your site:

1. Head to Settings > Administration > Permission sets, then click the Modules and actions button for a permission set.
2. Scroll down to the Additional features section and disable the Add and modify time off and Manage time off for other people permissions, then save the changes.

Once done, site users won’t be able to create regular time-off entries via the Time off buttons in the calendar and timesheet, but all approved time-off requests will appear globally in Scoro.

3.4. Set up annual time-off balances

Before employees can submit vacation requests, site admins or users with the balance permissions must have a balance record set up for the current calendar year.

To set the time-off balance for individual users one by one:

1. In the Time Off Management app, open the Time off balances list view tab.
2. Click the + New button and complete the following fields:
   • Owner: Select the employee you’re adding the balance for.
   • Balance year: Enter the calendar year (e.g., 2026). You can also proactively add a user’s balance for the upcoming year.
   • Annual holiday allowance: Enter the total number of vacation days allocated to the employee for the year.
   • Remaining balance: Enter their starting balance. It typically matches their annual allowance if no leave has been taken yet.
3. Once done, click Save.

If you’re managing a larger team, you can import time-off balances for multiple employees at once:

1. Prepare your import file: Create a CSV, XLS, or XLSX file. Each row should represent a single team member. Add the following columns:
   • Owner – enter the team member’s first and last name.
   • Year – specify the year for which you’re importing the balance.
   • Annual leave allowance – enter the total number of allowance days for the year.
   • Remaining balance – enter the remaining number of allowance days. For example, if the user has a yearly balance of 20 days but has already used 5, enter 15 days as the remaining balance.
2. Import the file: Open the Import data module, then open the Time off balances section. Click the Choose file button, select your import file, and confirm.
3. Map the fields: Map the fields in your import file to the Scoro fields. Uncheck the Update already existing items checkbox – Scoro will update the user’s existing balance details to what’s in the import file regardless. Click Import to finish importing the data. Scoro will notify you when the data is imported.

3.5. Configure notifications

As the internal workflows and notification needs may vary in different teams, the Time Off Management app doesn’t include any pre-configured notification rules. However, you can set up all the necessary notifications using Scoro’s Triggers and actions. You can use the Time off management or Time off balances actions to set up different rules.

For example, you could create a rule to notify managers and other appointed approvers about new time-off requests. Here are the conditions you would select:

• When: Select ‘Time off management’, set the action to ‘Created’, and select ‘Any user’ or specific users.
  • If you want certain managers to be notified only about requests submitted by their direct reports, you’ll need to create separate notification rules for each manager.
• And it matches: Select any additional conditions if needed.
• Then: Choose the notification format (email, Scoro, Slack) and select the users to notify.

For a full walkthrough of setting up custom notification rules, see our detailed Triggers and actions article.

4. Submitting a new time-off request

To create a new time-off request:

1. Open the Time Off management module from your menu and click the + New button.
2. Fill out the request form:
   • Type of time off – select the appropriate leave category (e.g., Vacation, Medical Leave, etc.).
   • Status – select Submitted. Or, if you're not ready to submit the request just yet and just want to save it, you can choose the Draft status and modify and switch it to Submitted later.
   • Dates – use the date picker to select your requested date or range. You can select past dates as well, but you cannot include dates spanning multiple years – cross-year time-off requests are not supported by the app at the moment.
   • Duration – select either Full Day or No. of hours.
   • Hours – if you selected "No. of hours," specify the number of hours you are taking off for each selected day (must not exceed 24 hours). If taking a full day, leave this field blank.
   • Reason – add a brief note for your manager that will review your request (this is optional).
3. Once ready, save the changes. 

Once submitted, your manager or another appointed approver on your team will receive a notification in Scoro about your new request (provided notifications are configured properly).

5. Checking the yearly allowance and remaining balance

To check the annual leave allowance and the remaining balance of you or your team members (if your permissions allow it), open the Time off balances list view tab in the Time Off management module. Adjust the list view filters if needed and check the Remaining balance and Annual holiday allowance data columns.

6. Reviewing, approving, or rejecting time-off requests

If notifications are configured correctly on your site, managers and other appointed request approvers will be notified in Scoro or via email (depending on the notification settings) about every new time-off request submitted by your team.

Time-off requests submitted for review in the Time Off Management app will have a Submitted status, and they need to be reviewed one by one to either approve or reject them:

1. Open the time-off request – you can click on the Scoro notification or the link included in the email notification, or simply open the Time Off Management module in Scoro and locate the submitted request.
2. Review the request details and change the status to Approved or Rejected.
3. Click the Confirm changes button to confirm the necessary calculations, adjust the balance, and create a time-off entry.

To ensure the user who submitted the time-off request is notified of the approval or rejection, site admins must configure notifications accordingly.

7. Modifying an approved request

Time-off requests already approved in the Time Off Management app cannot be modified by the user who submitted them. Only the managers and other appointed approvers can cancel the request:

1. In the Time Off Management module, open the time-off request that needs to be canceled.
2. Change the Status to ‘Canceled’ and click the Confirm changes button.

Once confirmed, the time-off request will be canceled, removing the time-off entry and updating the user’s balance accordingly.  

8. Adding custom time-off types

You can add custom time-off types users will be able to select in the Time Off Management app. However, please note that they won’t deduct time from the employee’s balance – only the Vacation type does.

To add custom time-off types in the Time Off Management app:

1. First, add the custom types under Settings > Site settings > Time-off types.
   You can follow the steps in this article. If custom time-off types are already added on your site, you can skip this step.
   
2. Add them in the Time Off Management app’s custom field:
   Go to Settings > Site settings > Custom fields, scroll down to the Time off management section, and click on the Type of Time Off custom field. Then, click the Add another button and enter the name of the custom type, making sure it matches the one you entered in the Time-off types settings page. Repeat this to add all your custom types, and save the changes.

Once added, users will be able to select the custom types for their time-off requests.

9. Frequently asked questions

Why was a request automatically rejected immediately after submission?

If a time-off request in the Time Off Management app was rejected immediately after creation, check what the Submission status message column says in the time-off management list view. The most common causes are:

• Insufficient balance: The user does not have enough remaining days in their time off balance record for that year.
• Empty hours field: The time-off request Duration was set to 'No. of hours', but the Hours field was left empty or set to zero.
• Cross-year dates: The requested range spans across two years (e.g., December 31 and January 1), which the app doesn't support at the moment. Submit two time-off requests instead, with one year’s dates in one request and the other year’s dates in the other request.

Why wasn't a calendar entry created after approval?

There may be various reasons why a time-off entry isn’t created in the calendar after approval, depending on how the Time Off Management app is configured on your site:

• The request’s status was changed to ‘Approved’ without confirming the changes.
  A time-off request is approved only after changing the Status to ‘Approved’ and clicking the Confirm changes button. Learn more about reviewing, approving, or rejecting time-off requests.
• Custom time-off type might be set up incorrectly.
  If a custom time-off type was selected on the time-off request, custom time-off types may have been set up incorrectly. For more information, see the Adding custom time-off types section.

An approved request was deleted, but the employee's balance wasn't refunded. Why?

Balances in the Time Off Management app are restored only when a manager or other appointed user modifies the approved request, changes its Status to ‘Canceled’ or ‘Rejected’, and clicks the Confirm changes button, thereby triggering the balance calculation. Manually deleting the time-off entry from the calendar or changing the request’s status yourself to ‘Canceled’ won’t impact the balance.