Admin Guide

Time-Off Configuration

Types define what a kind of leave is; policies define who gets how much of it. Get the two layers straight and everything else follows.

Time-off types

A type (Vacation, Sick, Compassionate…) carries every behavior of that leave. The pay side: its Pay Code (how it appears on payslips), whether it deducts regular pay (Does this type deduct regular pay? — on means the leave displaces the period's salary rather than paying on top of it), whether it counts in statutory calculations (e.g., Will NIB be calculated for this time-off type?), and lump-sum/advance payment options. The balance side:

Switch	Effect
Should this time off type have a balance?	Off = unlimited type with no balance tracking (e.g., jury duty).
Does this type rollover?	Unused days carry into the new year instead of resetting.
Does this type accrue?	Balance builds over the year rather than granting up front.
When Does The Year Start?	Calendar year or the employee's hire anniversary.
Allow balance to go negative?	Requests can exceed the balance.
Hide balance from user?	Employees don't see this balance (typical for compassionate leave).

The request-behavior switches: supporting document required, back-dating allowed, probation requests allowed, blackout date adherence, ignore workdays/holidays, and Use the work schedule to determine the days? which pre-selects scheduled days on multi-day requests.

Presentation & Policy

A second section on the type form controls how the type introduces itself to whoever is about to request it. Everything in it is optional — a type nobody has configured behaves exactly as it did before these fields existed.

Field	Effect
Category	Groups the type in the request picker — "Paid leave", "Statutory", "Unpaid". Free text, so the first type in a new group can name it; the categories already in use are listed underneath, which is what stops "Paid leave" and "Paid Leave" becoming two groups.
Order within category	Lower numbers list first. Categories themselves follow their lowest-numbered type.
Colour	Used for this type everywhere it appears — calendar chips, dots, balance rings, legends. Left empty, a colour is derived from the name.
Pay treatment	Paid, Unpaid, or Decided at approval. This is what the request form tells someone about pay before they submit. Choose "Decided at approval" rather than guessing — the request flow will say so honestly instead of promising the wrong thing.
Notice required (working days)	Flags a late request to whoever approves it, and is quoted on the request form. It does not block the request.
When a request exceeds the balance	Only shown where the type both holds a balance and allows it to go negative — see below.
Policy lines	One rule per line, shown beside the request form under the type's own name. For example: "Requests over 5 days need two approvals." Blank lines are dropped, and a type with no lines shows no policy card at all rather than an empty one.

When a request exceeds the balance

Allow balance to go negative? says whether an overage is permitted. This setting says what to do with it, and it only appears once the negative balance is allowed:

Choice	Effect
Allow, paid in full (the balance goes negative)	The default. The request goes through, every day is paid, and the balance simply goes negative. No balance check and no split.
Block the request	The overage is refused after all — a deliberate way of saying the permission exists but this case doesn't qualify.
Allow, unpaid, with extra approval	The request is accepted and divided: the days the balance covered, and the days beyond it. The split is recorded on the request at the moment it was agreed. See Time Off Requests for what the requester and approver each see.

Paid in full is the default, and was restored deliberately Between August and October 2026 a type with no overage choice set behaved differently, and over-balance requests could be split into paid and unpaid days. That is no longer the default: every negative-balance type was put back onto Allow, paid in full, and stored splits were cleared so those requests pay in full. A request that an approved or published payroll had already paid keeps its original split, so the payslip and the request still agree. If you want the split behaviour, choose it explicitly.

Turning the negative-balance permission off clears the overage choice with it So a type can never be left describing a case that can no longer arise. If you turn the permission back on, set the behaviour again.

A balance-holding type can pay a salaried person twice — the check is yours to switch on If a type draws down a balance but has Does this type deduct regular pay? switched off, a salaried employee is paid their full salary and paid again for the same day: a period that should pay 2,000 pays 2,200 where a day is worth 200. TriblockHR allows that combination by default. To have it refused, set A leave type that pays a salaried person twice to Refuse to save it on the Rules page below. Either way, types already configured this way keep working and keep overpaying — turning the check on does not find them for you, so audit your existing types once.

The Presentation & Policy section of a leave type, filled in: Category “Paid leave”, Order within category 1, a blue Colour swatch, Pay treatment “Paid”, Notice required 14 working days, and three Policy lines. “When a request exceeds the balance” is set to “Allow, unpaid, with extra approval”, annotated to note that it appears only when the type allows a negative balance.

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Presentation & Policy on a leave type

Screenshot from a demo admin account: the leave-type edit form scrolled to the Presentation & Policy section, on a type that has a balance and allows it to go negative, so the When a request exceeds the balance select is visible. Fill Category, Order, Colour, Pay treatment, Notice required and two or three Policy lines so the section reads as configured rather than empty. App viewport only, 1520px wide.

Save as: admin-guide__settings__time-off-config__shot2.png

Time-off policies

A policy is assigned to each employee (it's required at creation) and answers "how much": per type, it holds thresholds — days allowed by length of service. Five days in year one, ten after a year, fifteen after five: three threshold rows. Policies can also override a type's rollover/accrual/year-start settings for their members, and restrict new hires from requesting leave until they've served a set number of months.

Settings / Timeoff Types — leave types with rollover, NIB-payable, and Deducts Regular Pay columns.

Rules

Settings → Time Off → Rules holds account-wide guards that apply across every leave type. Today it carries one, under Leave Types:

Setting	Options
A leave type that pays a salaried person twice "A type that uses a balance, pays at a rate above zero and does not deduct regular pay pays a salaried person their full salary and the leave on top of it."	Allow it to be saved (the default) or Refuse to save it.

Changes here are recorded in your account's history, so you can see when the rule was tightened and by whom.

Why this is a choice rather than a rule Some accounts genuinely do pay a leave type on top of salary — a payout or a bonus-style line. Refusing the combination outright blocked them, so the check became opt-in. If your leave types are all conventional, turning it on is cheap insurance against a configuration mistake that is otherwise invisible until someone is overpaid.

Blackout dates, calendar, and workdays

Blackout dates are picked on a calendar and block requests on those dates for every type that adheres to them — your December freeze, stocktake week, carnival weekend. Calendar privacy controls who sees what on the company time-off calendar and on a person's Time Off tab: Private (only people the viewer may already see appear at all), Semi-Private (everyone appears, but another person's leave type reads as Out of Office to anybody who is not an Administrator or HR Administrator — and their note and attachment are withheld with it, since those disclose the same thing), or Public. Two rules sit on top of the setting: nobody is ever masked from their own record, and on Who's Out an employee never sees a colleague's leave type at any privacy level, Public included. Workdays defines your working week — it's what makes a Monday-to-Friday vacation request count 5 days, not 7.

Design the type before anyone uses it A type's name locks after creation, and balance behavior changes ripple into balances already calculated. Sketch each type's full behavior (balance? rollover? accrue? paid how?) before creating it; use Inactive status to retire types you got wrong.

Vacation policy from zero (5–6 min)

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Vacation policy from zero (5–6 min)

Screen recording: create a Vacation type (balance on, rollover on, calendar year, paid under a Vacation pay code), build a policy with three tenure thresholds and a 3-month probation restriction, assign it to a demo employee, and show their balance appearing correctly on a request.

Save as: admin-guide__settings__time-off-config__vid1.mp4

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