The leave request: what it contains and what it passes through

Echipa HR 365 · reviewed 2026-09-05 · 5 min read

A leave request needs five pieces of information and nothing else: who, what type of leave, from when to when, how many working days that comes to, and who covers for them. The other fields you see on forms exist out of habit and cost time at every submission.

The five fields, and why each one

The three states

What the request passes through

1. Submitted — the days are reserved, not deducted; the displayed balance drops, but the reservation can be released
2. Approved — the days are actually deducted; from this point the request is not edited, it is cancelled and a new one submitted
3. Taken — the period has passed; it enters the timesheet with the symbol for that leave type

The distinction between reserved and deducted is the one missing from most manual records and it produces the most frequent balance error: two requests submitted simultaneously for days the person has only once. With reservation, the second is refused automatically; without it, both look possible until somebody notices.

The signed approval: why it matters even if nobody asks

A signed document, generated at approval, looks like a formality until the day somebody disputes a period. Then it is the only proof that the approval existed and that the person knew about it. It costs nothing if it is generated automatically from the approved request; the cost of its absence appears once every few years and is disproportionate.

What it contains: the same five pieces of information from the request, plus the approval date and who approved. It needs nothing more, and any field added “to be safe” makes it harder to generate and easier to postpone.

What you do not ask for in the request

• The reason for annual leave. You do not need it and there is nothing you can do with it.
• Medical details, for any leave type. What is required comes through another channel, to the right person.
• Holiday contact details, as a general rule. Ask only where the role genuinely requires it, and then explicitly.
• Confirmation that “task X will be finished”. That is a conversation with the manager, not a form field.

The notice period for submitting

A reasonable notice period is proportional to the length requested: one day can be asked for two or three days ahead, a week two weeks ahead, a long period in the annual plan. A single rule for everything — “15 days in advance” — is too strict for one day and too lax for three weeks, so it gets circumvented in both directions.

Exceptions have to exist and be named: urgent situations, where the request is submitted afterwards. Without a declared route for them, people will use another absence type to avoid the conversation — and the record becomes false exactly where you need it.

Where to start

Count the fields on your current form. If there are more than seven, cut everything that does not change an approval decision — usually exactly five remain.

Then check whether working days are calculated or typed. It is the one change in this article that removes a whole category of errors without needing anybody’s agreement.

Changing and cancelling

An approved request is not edited. It is cancelled and a new one submitted — it looks clumsier and is the only option that keeps the record clean: a request edited three times no longer has a history anybody can read six months later.

Why the leave type matters in the request

It is not an administrative classification. The type decides three things downstream: whether it is deducted from the annual balance, what symbol appears in the timesheet, and what documents are required. A record that treats everything as annual leave produces, in order, a wrong balance, a wrong timesheet and a conversation at year end.

The number of types differs from company to company and from one legal reality to another. What does not differ is the rule: every type must have an answer to the three questions above, written down somewhere, before it is used for the first time.