Leave year & carryover

Every member’s leave balance runs on an annual cycle called the leave year. At the end of each year, unused days are (partially) carried over and the entitlement resets. Configure this under Settings → Organization.

Configuring the leave year

Two organization-level settings control the cycle:

Setting	Purpose
Leave year start (month + day)	The date your leave year begins each year. Everything before this date belongs to the previous year; everything from this date onward is the new year.
Maximum carryover days	The most days a member can carry from the end of one year into the next. Anything unused above this cap is forfeited.

Common choices for the start date:

• 1 January — calendar year. Simple but often inconvenient (everyone scrambles to burn days before year-end).
• 1 April — UK tax-year alignment.
• 1 July — common US fiscal-year choice.
• Employee anniversary — see “Per-member leave year” below.

Per-member leave year

An individual member can have a different leave year start from the org default. Set it under Settings → Team → Edit member.

The typical use case is anniversary-based leave: each member’s leave year starts on their employment anniversary, so new hires don’t get a prorated partial year. This is common in the UK and some EU countries.

The maximum carryover cap is always org-wide — you can’t give different carryover limits to different members.

How the rollover works

On the member’s leave year start date (midnight in the organization’s timezone):

1. Previous year is finalised. Used and pending days for that year are archived — still visible in the member’s request history, but no longer “current”.
2. Unused days are calculated. Unused = (entitled + carried over from the year before) − used.
3. Carryover is capped. If unused exceeds your carryover cap, the excess is forfeited.
4. New year starts. Entitled resets to the member’s current allowance. Carried over = the (capped) unused from last year. Used and pending reset to zero.

Example

• Allowance: 25 days
• Carryover cap: 5 days
• Last year: 25 entitled + 3 carried = 28 total available; used 18, so 10 unused.
• Unused 10, cap 5 → 5 days forfeited, 5 days carry over.
• New year: 25 entitled + 5 carried = 30 available.

Changing the allowance mid-year

If you change a member’s allowance under Settings → Team, the new value applies to the current leave year immediately — meaning their “entitled” figure updates, and “available” updates with it.

For example, promoting someone from 20 → 25 days on 1 July in a calendar-year org: they immediately gain 5 days of available leave, regardless of how far into the year they are.

First-year pro-rating for new starters

When an admin adds a member with a start date inside their current leave year, Deckchair automatically calendar-day pro-rates the first-year entitled:

• entitled = allowance × (days_from_start_to_year_end / total_days_in_year), rounded to the nearest 0.5.
• The next leave year always opens at the full allowance.
• If the start date precedes the current leave year (veterans), the full allowance applies.
• If the start date is blank, no pro-rating applies — the member gets the full allowance every year.

Worked example: 25-day allowance, calendar leave year, start date 1 July → 184 days remaining out of 365 → 12.5 days for year one, 25 for year two.

Changing an existing member’s start date recomputes their current-year entitled using the new date. Changing allowance alone also re-pro-rates (pro-rated entitled is a function of allowance). Past years are never touched.

This is calendar-day pro-rating, not working-day — matches the statutory convention in the UK and EU. Leavers are not automatically pro-rated on exit; if someone departs mid-year and you want to adjust their final balance, edit the entitlement directly under Settings → Team.

Changing the leave year start date

Changing your organization’s leave year start is a big deal. Pick carefully. If you do need to change it later:

• The change applies at the next rollover. Members complete their current cycle on the old schedule.
• Balances are carried forward per the new start date, subject to the same cap.
• Consider whether existing members should have their individual leave year overridden, or all migrated to the new org default.

If in doubt, contact support before making the change.

Leave that spans two leave years

A leave request that crosses the leave-year boundary (e.g., 28 December – 5 January on a calendar-year org) is submitted as a single request, but the deduction is split between the two years’ balances by working day:

• Days falling before the rollover deduct from the starting year’s balance.
• Days falling on or after the rollover deduct from the new year’s balance.
• Weekends, non-working days, public holidays (with “public holidays off” enabled) and locked dates are excluded from both sides, the same as any other request.

The requester sees one total on the request form; each year’s balance panel reflects only its own portion. Approving or rejecting acts on the whole request — you can’t split the decision.

When rollover doesn’t happen

Rollover runs automatically — you don’t need to do anything. The only times it doesn’t apply:

• Deactivated members — their balance is frozen at deactivation. Reactivating them mid-year picks up where they left off.
• Non-deducting leave types — they don’t have a balance, so there’s nothing to roll over. Usage history stays in place.