Available for the following HR Classic plans: Standard, Premium, Platinum
Available for the following User Access levels: 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.
The overlapping leave validation feature ensures that leave requests remain accurate and payroll remains consistent. By checking for conflicts across all leave categories, the system helps you avoid accidental double-bookings of your time off. While employees are prevented from submitting conflicting requests, managers and admins maintain the flexibility to manage specific statutory requirements on behalf of their team.
This article shows you how to manage the following:
- Understand leave overlap rules
- Submit leave requests without conflicts
- Manage team leave as a manager or admin
- Further information
Understand leave overlap rules
The system automatically checks for conflicts whenever you create or edit a leave request. This check applies across all leave types, such as annual leave and sick leave.
- Full-day overlaps: You cannot submit a full day of leave if another request already exists for that same date.
- Half-day overlaps: You can book a morning half-day and an afternoon half-day on the same day using different leave types. However, you cannot book two morning sessions or two afternoon sessions on the same date.
- Hour-based leave: If you use units or hours, the system totalizes your leave for the day. You can split your day between leave types as long as the total does not exceed your scheduled working hours.
- Status check: Only approved or pending leave requests trigger a block. If a previous request was declined, you can book new leave for those same dates.
Submit leave requests without conflicts
If you attempt to book leave that overlaps with an existing request, an alert will appear on your web browser or mobile app. Follow these steps to proceed:
- Read the alert message to confirm which dates are currently conflicted.
- Adjust the start or end dates on your current leave application to remove the overlap.
- If you need to change your existing leave instead, navigate to your leave history and edit the pending request.
- Submit the updated request once the dates no longer conflict with other entries.
Helpful Hint
If your request is for more than 14 days, the validation might happen in the background. If a conflict is found, you will receive an email notification and will need to resubmit your request with corrected dates.
Manage team leave as a manager or admin
Managers and HR Admins can bypass the cross-category block when submitting leave on behalf of an employee. This is useful for specific scenarios like top-up payments or reclassifying leave types.
- Log in to Employment Hero on a web browser.
- Navigate to the leave submission page for your direct report.
- Enter the leave dates and details.
- Review the clash indicator that appears to confirm you are aware of the overlap.
- Submit the request to successfully save the overlapping record.
Important
While you can bypass overlaps between different leave categories, you cannot bypass overlaps of the same leave type. The system will still block duplicate entries of the same category for the same date.
Further information
The table below answers common questions about overlapping leave requests, showing how the system behaves in each scenario.
| Scenario | System Behaviour |
| Public Holidays | Public holidays are managed separately and do not cause overlap blocks. |
| Declined Requests | If a leave request is declined, the dates become available for new submissions immediately. |
| Reverse Leave | Requests with negative units used for corrective adjustments bypass overlap validation. |
| Work Schedules | If an employee has no assigned work schedule, the system uses a default of 7.6 hours to calculate daily limits. |