Available for the following plans: Employment Plus, Employment Unlimited
Available for the following HR classic plans: Premium, Platinum
Available for the following user access levels: Manager, Admin
Important
If you have joined Employment Hero on or since 1 January 2026, you will have access to the new leave experience. See here for more information regarding this.
If you joined Employment Hero before 1 January 2026, you will get access to the new leave experience from 4 August 2026.
Question
How do I enable the negative balance feature?
Answer
You can manage the Prevent Negative Leave Balances feature via Leave Category Settings. This feature is managed individually per Leave category in Settings rather than on the Employment Details page.
We calculate negative leave based on submitted and approved leave. Should a manager or administrator allow an employee to go into negative leave, only they can submit the leave request for that employee.
Important
Only HR + PY has the option to track and prevent negative leave balances.
If your payroll admin enables the Hide an Employee's Leave Balance feature within the payroll platform, then an employee can still submit a leave request even if they go into a negative balance and you have enabled this feature.
- From the Employment Hero dashboard, click the Beta Flask drop-down.
- Click on the prevent negative leave balance toggle to turn it on (purple is on, grey is off).
- Click the Yes, Count Me In button.
- Click the Settings menu option.
- Click Leave Categories (or go to Leave category settings).
- Select and edit the relevant leave category.
- Under Other Settings, tick or untick the Prevent negative leave balances checkbox as required.
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Click the Save button.
Further information
When enabled, this feature prevents employees from requesting leave if their projected balance on the leave start date would be negative.
How it works:
- It calculates the projected balance on the leave start date.
- It includes future accruals from last payslip to leave start date.
- Allows requests if projected balance will be sufficient at the time of the leave start date.
- The validation checks future balance with accruals, not current balance. This allows employees to request future leave even if their current balance is temporarily negative.