Requesting leave

Anyone in your organization can submit a leave request for themselves. Managers and admins can also submit on behalf of team members they approve for.

Submit a request

1. Click Request leave from the dashboard or top nav.
2. Leave type — pick from the types your admin has configured. The form shows the type’s description (if set) and whether it requires approval.
3. Dates — choose a start and end date. Single-day requests use the same date for both.
4. Start unit and End unit — for each end of the range, pick Full day, Morning (half day AM), or Afternoon (half day PM). This lets you take a half-day at either end of a longer trip — e.g., leave at lunchtime Friday, back full-day the next Monday.
5. Reason (optional) — free-text note for your approver. Appears in the request detail view.
6. Click Submit.

As you change dates and units, the total days figure updates live. This is the number that’ll be deducted from your balance if the leave type deducts from allowance.

How days are counted

Deckchair only counts working days against your balance. The total excludes:

• Non-working days from your work schedule. If you only work Monday–Wednesday, a request for Monday–Friday counts as 3 days, not 5.
• Public holidays that fall in the range — but only if your account has “public holidays off” enabled. If you work public holidays, they’re counted as normal.

Half-days count as 0.5 regardless of leave type. So Monday–Friday with a half-day Friday afternoon is 4.5 days.

Warnings you might see

The form flags issues before you submit:

• Overlap — you already have an approved or pending request that covers one or more of the selected days. You can’t submit overlapping requests.
• Locked dates — your admin has marked some of the selected days (e.g., a company-wide shutdown). You can still submit, and those days won’t deduct from your balance. The warning names the range and the reason. See locked dates.
• Insufficient notice — the leave type requires a minimum notice period and the start date is too soon. Pick a later start date, or ask your admin to override.
• Balance — submitting would take you below zero available days. Deckchair warns you but doesn’t block the request; your approver can still approve it if your policy allows negative balances.

What happens after you submit

If the leave type requires approval, the request enters a pending state:

• Your approver (assigned on your member profile) gets an email notification if they have New request notifications enabled.
• The days are held as “pending” against your balance — still subtracted from your available days, but not yet “used”.
• You receive an email when the request is approved or rejected (if you have those notifications enabled).

If the leave type doesn’t require approval, the request is automatically approved and the days move straight to “used”.

Editing or cancelling

You can cancel any request that’s still pending, or an approved request that hasn’t started yet:

1. Open the request from the dashboard or your leave history.
2. Click Cancel request. You’ll be asked for an optional reason.
3. The balance is immediately restored.

Deckchair doesn’t currently support editing a submitted request. If you need to change dates, cancel and re-submit.

Requesting on behalf of someone else

If you’re a manager or admin approving for a team member, you can book leave directly for them:

1. Open Request leave.
2. In the Booking for selector, pick the team member.
3. Fill in the rest of the form as usual.

The request is submitted under that member’s name and deducts from their balance, not yours. If the leave type requires approval, it’s auto-approved when an approver submits it.

Group bookings

Managers and admins can book the same dates for several people in one go — useful for company offsites, team training days, or shutdown periods that aren’t blanket-locked.

1. From the dashboard, open the ⋮ menu next to New Request and pick New group booking.
2. Choose a leave type, start/end dates, and start/end half-day units (same options as a single request).
3. Tick the members to include. Use the search box to filter by name, email, or job title, and Select all to bulk-toggle the visible list. Managers only see their own department; admins see everyone.
4. Add an optional reason and click Book.

Group bookings are all-or-nothing and auto-approved:

• Every selected member must pass pre-flight (the leave must overlap at least one of their working days). If any member fails, nothing is written and you’ll see the failures inline — deselect or fix them and resubmit.
• Member rows are created as approved on the spot, with the booker recorded as the reviewer in each member’s history.

To cancel a group, see cancelling group bookings.