Understanding your balance
Your dashboard shows five numbers for each leave type that deducts from allowance:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Entitled | Your annual allowance — set by your admin on your member profile. |
| Carried over | Days carried from the previous leave year, capped by your organization’s carryover limit. |
| Used | Days from approved leave requests that have already started or completed. |
| Pending | Days from submitted requests awaiting approval. |
| Available | Entitled + Carried over − Used − Pending. This is what you can still book. |
An example
Section titled “An example”Alice’s entitlement is 25 days. She carried 3 days over from last year. She’s taken 8 days of approved leave so far this year. She has a pending request for 5 days in July.
- Entitled: 25
- Carried over: 3
- Used: 8
- Pending: 5
- Available: 15
If her July request is approved, Used goes to 13, Pending goes to 0, Available stays at 15. If it’s rejected, Pending goes to 0 and Available goes back up to 20.
New starters: first-year pro-rating
Section titled “New starters: first-year pro-rating”If your start date falls inside the current leave year, your first-year Entitled is reduced to the fraction of the year you’ll actually be employed. A 25-day allowance with a 1 July calendar-year start becomes 12.5 days — the 184 remaining calendar days out of 365, rounded to the nearest half day. Your second leave year always opens at the full 25.
This applies automatically when an admin adds you with a start date, and is recomputed if they later correct the date. It does not apply if you joined before the current leave year started — you’ve been here the whole year, so you get the full allowance.
If your start date is blank, you get the full allowance regardless. Ask your admin to add one if your first-year number looks wrong.
See managing members → start date and first-year pro-rating for the admin view.
Why pending days are subtracted
Section titled “Why pending days are subtracted”Deckchair treats pending requests as “held”. This prevents double-booking: if you submit a request for 5 days and then try to book another 12 days the same week, the second request can’t rely on days that might be consumed by the first.
If an approver rejects your pending request, the held days are released immediately.
What counts as a “day”
Section titled “What counts as a “day””A day, in balance terms, is a working day on your work schedule. Half-days count as 0.5. Public holidays count if you’re configured to not take them off; otherwise they don’t reduce your balance.
So if your schedule is Monday–Wednesday only (0.6 FTE), a week-long leave request from Monday–Friday is 3 days, not 5.
Hours vs days
Section titled “Hours vs days”Deckchair supports two allowance units:
- Days — the default. Balances and requests are expressed in whole or half days.
- Hours — used for hourly workers or teams with very granular part-time patterns.
The unit is set per-member (Settings → Team → Edit member). You can mix both in the same organization.
Leave types that don’t deduct
Section titled “Leave types that don’t deduct”Not every leave type touches your balance. Types configured with deducts from allowance = off (typically sick leave, bereavement, jury duty) are tracked for record-keeping only — the dashboard shows how many days you’ve taken but doesn’t subtract from anything.
When the leave year rolls over
Section titled “When the leave year rolls over”On the morning of your leave year start date:
- Your Used and Pending for the previous year are archived (they stay visible in your history).
- Anything unused above your organization’s carryover cap is forfeited.
- The capped carryover becomes your new Carried over.
- Entitled resets to your configured allowance for the new year.
Example: entitlement 25, used 18, carryover cap 5. Unused = 7, capped to 5 → new year starts with 25 entitled + 5 carried = 30 available.
See leave year & carryover for more.
Something looks wrong — what do I check?
Section titled “Something looks wrong — what do I check?”- Have any pending requests been approved or rejected? Check your request history. Pending → approved moves days from Pending to Used; the available total shouldn’t change.
- Is your work schedule correct? A wrong schedule miscounts multi-day requests. Check under Settings → Team → Edit member (managers/admins) or ask your admin.
- Is your allowance set correctly? Your entitlement is set manually per-member; if you changed jobs or roles, it may not have been updated.
- Has the leave year just rolled over? If the rollover just happened, your dashboard reflects the new year. Last year’s totals are still in your history.
If none of that explains it, ask your admin — they can see the full calculation on your member profile under Settings → Team.