Leave Management

Editing and Cancelling Leave

Edit a pending request, cancel pending or approved leave, and use the cancellation-request flow to withdraw leave that has already been approved.

After a request is submitted, what you can do with it depends on its status and your role. This page covers editing pending requests, cancelling leave, and the cancellation-request workflow for leave that's already approved.

Editing a pending request

Only PENDING leaves can be edited. When you edit:

The request is re-validated against all the same rules as a new request (notice, overlap, balance, blackout dates, and so on — see Requesting leave).
It stays PENDING and approvers are re-notified.

Role	Can edit
Owner	Their own pending request.
Department Head	Pending requests in their own department.
Administrator / Executive	Any pending request.

Approved leave can't be edited. To change an approved leave you must submit a cancellation request (below) and re-book it.

Cancelling leave

Cancelling is allowed only when the leave is PENDING or APPROVED. Cancellation is a soft action: the row is kept with a note, the change is audit-logged, the status becomes CANCELLED, and the reserved balance is freed.

Who can cancel, and when:

Role	Scope	Can cancel leave that has already started?
Owner	Only their own PENDING request, and only before it starts	No
Department Head	Same-department leave (not their own)	Yes
Administrator / Executive	Anyone's leave	Yes

Timezone of the "today" check. The "has it started?" check uses the leave owner's timezone, not the viewer's. This means same-day cancellations behave correctly across timezones.

If an owner tries to delete an APPROVED leave, it's blocked with: "To cancel an approved leave, submit a cancellation request for approval." — which leads to the flow below.

Cancellation requests (for approved leave)

Because approved leave has already been granted, an owner can't simply delete it. Instead they file a cancellation request that an approver reviews. The leave stays APPROVED and the balance stays reserved until the request is decided.

1. Owner files the request

The owner submits a cancellation request with an optional reason. It's only accepted when:

The leave is APPROVED,
There is no existing pending cancellation request for it, and
The leave hasn't already ended.

Approvers are notified. The leave remains APPROVED for now.

2. Approver approves the cancellation

The approver approves it. The leave becomes CANCELLED, the balance is freed, the calendar event is removed, and the owner is notified.

3. Approver declines the cancellation

The approver declines, optionally with a reason. The leave stays APPROVED (the balance remains consumed) and the owner is notified.

You can't review your own. An approver cannot review a cancellation request for their own leave — that's blocked as a separation-of-duties safeguard.

For the approver's side of this flow, see Leave approvals.

Requesting leave — the validations that re-run on edit.
Troubleshooting — the exact error messages for edit and cancel actions.
Leave approvals — reviewing cancellation requests.

Group Booking

Book the same leave for every active member of a department at once, with automatic skipping of conflicts and a per-user result summary.

Leave Troubleshooting

Leave statuses explained, plus a complete table of the error messages you may see when requesting, editing, approving, or cancelling leave — with causes and fixes.