How Employees Request Leave Digitally — The Complete Guide

Paper forms gathering dust by the printer. Emails disappearing into a manager's overflowing inbox. Verbal agreements that nobody ever documented. If leave is still being requested this way in 2026, it costs everyone involved precious time — and can become very expensive if a dispute ever arises.

A digital leave request solves these problems at a structural level: the process runs automatically, is fully documented, and is transparent to everyone involved at any time. This guide explains how such a system works, what it means day-to-day for employees and managers, and how to handle edge cases like half-day leave or special leave properly.

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What the Digital Leave Request Replaces

Before diving into the system itself — what exactly are we replacing?

Paper forms have one fundamental flaw: they have to physically exist, be filled out, pass through multiple hands, and be archived somewhere. If a form goes missing, there's no record. If the manager is home sick, the request sits unprocessed on the desk.

Email chains are better — but only at first glance. Emails get missed, land in the wrong folder, or get answered by the wrong person. There's no central overview of who requested or approved what leave and when. And if employee A and colleague B both want time off during the same period, nobody notices systematically — until it's too late.

Verbal agreements are common in small teams and entirely human — but they're the riskiest approach from an employment law perspective. "I thought you'd approved that" is not a reliable process.

A digital leave request replaces all of this with a structured, automated, and documented workflow.

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Step by Step: How Digital Leave Requests Work in TodayOff

Step 1: Employee Submits the Request

The employee opens the TodayOff app on their smartphone or the web interface in a browser. In the "Leave" section, they tap "Submit New Request" and select the desired period from the calendar.

Right at this stage, the employee can already see:

• Their current leave balance (how many days remain)
• Whether any colleagues are already absent during the selected period (team calendar view)
• Whether the selected period falls on public holidays (calculated automatically)

Optionally, the employee can add a short note (e.g. "Family holiday, already agreed with the team").

The request is submitted — and that's it. No email, no printing, no stopping by anyone's desk.

Step 2: Manager Is Notified

As soon as the request is submitted, the responsible manager receives a notification — either as a push notification on their smartphone or by email, depending on their settings.

The notification contains all relevant information: the employee's name, the requested period, the number of days requested, and the current leave balance.

The manager can approve or decline the request directly from the notification — without having to open the app separately. Those who prefer an overview can open the manager dashboard and see all open requests at a glance.

Step 3: Approval or Decline (With a Reason)

The manager makes their decision with a single click:

• Approve: The leave is immediately added to the team calendar. The employee receives a confirmation notification, and their leave balance is automatically updated.
• Decline: The manager can add a brief reason (e.g. "Important client meeting that week — please choose an alternative period"). The employee is notified and can submit a new request.

Both decisions are logged with a timestamp and are permanently visible to both parties. In the event of a later legal dispute, it is clearly documented when which leave was approved or declined — and by whom.

Step 4: Automatic Update of All Systems

Once approved, everything runs automatically in the background:

• The team calendar is updated — everyone immediately sees who is out and when
• The employee's leave balance is adjusted
• Any reminders (e.g. one day before the leave starts) are triggered
• All changes are traceable in the audit log

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The Manager Overview: Control Without the Effort

For managers, TodayOff provides a dashboard view that consolidates all relevant information:

• Open requests: All pending leave applications, with a direct approval button
• Team calendar: Who is out and when — filterable by department or team
• Leave balances: Current status for all employees, including approved but not yet taken leave
• Conflict warnings: Automatic alerts when too many employees from the same team want to take leave at the same time

The dashboard is available both in the desktop version and fully within the mobile app. Managers can therefore process leave requests on the go — on the train, working from home, or on a business trip.

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Edge Cases: Half-Day Leave, Sick Leave, Special Leave

A realistic leave management system has to handle more than the standard full-day vacation. Here are the most common edge cases and how TodayOff handles them:

Half-Day Leave

When submitting a request, employees can select "Half day" and specify whether it is morning or afternoon. The leave balance is reduced by 0.5 days accordingly. For part-time employees with individual working hours, the calculation is adjusted to their actual contracted hours.

Sick Leave

Sick days are recorded in TodayOff separately from vacation leave. Employees can log their own sick leave entry (or a manager can enter it), without consuming vacation days. Sick days are visible to managers in the team calendar; colleagues only see "Absent" — without any indication of the reason. This protects employee privacy and is compliant with GDPR.

Special Leave

For legally recognised types of special leave — marriage, birth of a child, bereavement, relocation — separate absence categories can be set up. These are not deducted from the standard leave balance and can be reported on separately.

Unpaid Leave

Unpaid leave can also be mapped as its own absence category. The manager approves the request as usual, the leave balance remains untouched, and the entry is flagged as exportable for payroll purposes.

Company-Wide Closures and Team Absences

For planned company closures or periods when the entire business is shut, administrators can create an entry for all employees at once. Leave days are automatically deducted from all affected accounts accordingly.

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What a Good Digital Leave Request Must Deliver Legally

A digital leave request isn't just a matter of convenience — it also has genuine legal significance. The system should meet the following requirements:

Traceability: Every request and every approval must be logged with the date, time, and the person who acted. In the event of an employment law dispute, it may otherwise be impossible to prove when a particular leave was approved.

Immutability: Approvals must not be retroactively altered without a record. Reputable systems maintain a complete change log.

Employee access: Employees have the right to view their own leave data. The system must provide this access.

GDPR compliance: Leave data — particularly sick days and reasons for special leave — constitutes sensitive personal data. Storage and processing must comply with GDPR requirements; EU-based data storage is the practical minimum requirement. What this means specifically for your choice of software is explained in our article on GDPR-compliant leave management.

If you also need to record your employees' working hours in accordance with the law, read our article on mandatory time tracking in 2026 — where we explain the current legal requirements in detail.

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Common Objections — and Why They Don't Hold Up

"This is too much effort for our small team." Setup in TodayOff takes under 15 minutes for the entire team. After that, it saves an estimated 10–20 minutes per employee per month — through eliminated follow-up questions, automatic notifications, and the end of manual calendar maintenance.

"We've always done it this way." Up until 2026, that was often defensible. With the new requirements around time tracking and the growing importance of documentation obligations in employment law, "we've always done it this way" is no longer a sufficient argument.

"Our employees don't have smartphones." TodayOff also runs fully in the browser — on any device. Even on an old office PC, the web interface is fully functional.

"We don't need this — we're only 8 people." Particularly for small teams, a digital leave request makes an especially big difference: often it's just one person — the managing director or an office manager — who coordinates all leave requests. Automation saves disproportionately large amounts of time here.

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Conclusion

A digital leave request is not a luxury for large corporations — it is the simplest way for small and medium-sized businesses to manage their leave process in a legally compliant, transparent, and time-saving manner. The process itself takes employees less than a minute; managers approve with a single click; everything is documented and stored in compliance with GDPR.

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See it live: Start your free 14-day trial with TodayOff and experience how simple leave requests can really be. → https://app.todayoff.de