Managing leave in a shift-based business is one of those jobs that never quite sits with one person. Managers and supervisors are approving requests and checking who's on the rota.
Payroll needs to know the balances are right before the next pay run. HR needs to know the policies are being applied consistently and that the records will hold up if they're ever questioned. And in between all of that, overtime hours owed back as time off get tracked in a spreadsheet, sick notes end up in email threads, and nobody's quite sure whose balance is current.
Leave Management+, available in Deputy Pro and the Deputy HR add-on, is Deputy's advanced leave feature set, built to take that weight off the people who carry it. It connects leave to the rota your team already works from so balances stay right, coverage stays intact, and the admin that used to fall through the cracks runs automatically.
New advanced leave management features, designed for teams where leave complexity has outgrown the tools tracking it, are rolling out now in Leave Management+. Here's what they do and how they'll change your week.
Overtime hours that bank themselves
Your team covers a busy bank holiday weekend. Five people work extra hours. Each of them is owed time back. And now you're fielding messages asking how much they've got, cross-referencing a spreadsheet that's two weeks out of date, and trying to remember which shifts counted.
Time off in lieu^ now works automatically in Deputy Core and Pro. When extra hours are worked, the balance builds. When leave is taken, it updates. Your team can see what they've earned in their app. You can see what's been spent without chasing anyone. No spreadsheet. No back-and-forth.
Learn how time off in lieu works in Deputy here.
Coverage limits that hold on every approval
A manager approves leave for one person. A different manager approves leave for another. Both look fine on their own. It's only when you're filling the rota for that week that you realise you've got two people down on the same Saturday shift and no one left to cover.
You can now set a cap on how many people can be off at the same time, per team or per location. Deputy enforces it on every approval. If a request would push the team over the limit, it's flagged before anyone says yes. Your rota stays coverable, even when approvals happen across different managers and sites.
Learn how to set your coverage cap here.
Leave balances that recalculate when contracted hours change
Someone drops from five days a week to three. Straightforward enough but now their leave entitlement needs to change too. That means working out how much they've already used this year, what the new balance should be from today, and making sure it matches what's sitting in the system. It's fiddly, it's time-consuming, and it's easy to get wrong.
When agreed hours change in Deputy, the leave balance recalculates automatically. Every adjustment is written to the audit log, what changed, when, and why, so there's always a clear record if you need it. The maths happens in the background. You just confirm the hours change and move on.
Learn how pro-rated leave balances work here.
Absence records attached to the leave, not lost in an inbox
Someone's off sick for a week. They come back with a fit note. You email it to HR. HR forwards it to payroll. Three weeks later, someone asks where it is, and the search begins across four inboxes and a WhatsApp thread.
You can now attach absence and sickness documents (i.e. fit notes, return-to-work forms, anything you need) directly to the leave request in Deputy. They're stored against the employee record, right next to the leave itself. No more hunting. No more forwarding. The record is complete from the first day of absence.
Learn how to attach sickness documentation here.
Absence patterns visible as they develop
One day off in January. One in March. One in April. Each looks routine. But three one-day absences spread across three months is a different story to three weeks off in one go. It's the kind of pattern that tends to go unnoticed until it's affecting the team.
Bradford Score reporting is part of Analytics+ in Deputy. It calculates each person's score automatically as absence data comes in, so you can see patterns as they develop rather than piecing them together at review time. If someone's score is climbing, you get early visibility to have a check-in before things get more complicated.
Learn how Bradford Score reporting works here.
Leave that works in the background so you don't have to
The people who manage leave in a shift-based business shouldn't have to carry leave manually. Overtime hours owed back should build without a spreadsheet. Balances should update when contracted hours change. Sickness records should live where the leave does. Coverage limits should hold without a manager counting heads before every approval.
Because Leave Management+ runs in the same system as your rota, leave is connected, not in a separate tool that has to catch up with what's actually happening on the floor.
How to access Leave Management+
Already on Deputy Pro or Deputy HR? These features are live in your account now. Head to your leave settings to set it up.
Not yet on Pro or Deputy HR? Try Deputy HR free for 30 days. You'll get Leave Management+ plus hiring, onboarding, document management, and performance tools all in the same place as your rota
