Most of the mess around PTO and leave comes from treating every absence type the same way. A vacation request and a sick note aren't the same thing, and forcing both through the same approval flow creates two problems: vacation days that get rubber-stamped without a real look, and sick leave stuck "pending approval" when it's already a legal fact, not a request. That single rule -reported versus decided- ends up explaining most of the day-to-day friction people run into with leave software, far more than which calendar view it uses.

There's a simple rule that fixes this at the root: what's reported isn't approved. If a leave type is one the law requires an employer to accept -a medical leave, statutory parental leave- there's no reason for it to sit "pending": it's approved the moment it exists, and the only thing that needs to happen is recording it. Everything else -the kind that involves a real decision, like a vacation request or personal leave- goes to pending and a manager decides.

Every leave type, with its own rule

In Cantevia, leave types are configurable, and each one carries its own approval rule. That means the company decides, type by type, which ones are simply reported (and born approved) and which ones need a manager's decision, instead of forcing everything through the same default flow. The vacation, leave and absence calendar lives in one place, so nobody has to check three systems to know if someone's available on a given date.

Balances that don't require asking

Each person can see their own balance without having to request it, and HR has a company-wide panel to see at a glance who's out, whose request is still pending, and how vacation usage is tracking for the year. When a balance needs adjusting -carried-over days from last year, a trade for overtime- the adjustment always requires a stated reason, and it's logged in its own history: nobody changes a number without explaining why.

When a balance adjustment involves overtime too

Not every balance adjustment comes from unused vacation days carried over from last year. Trading overtime hours for days off is common in many companies, and it needs the same level of traceability as any other adjustment -without it, nobody can explain where a specific day off came from six months later.

Cantevia requires a stated reason for any balance adjustment -whether it's an overtime trade or carried-over days- and logs it in its own history, separate from ordinary vacation usage. The result is a balance that can be explained at any moment, not painstakingly reconstructed when someone finally asks.

What this rule prevents

  • Sick leave sitting "pending approval" for days, when legally it's already in effect the moment it's reported.
  • Managers rubber-stamping vacation requests with no real decision to make, just to avoid blocking the flow.
  • Balances nobody can explain, because adjustments were made with no reason and no trail.

Separating what gets reported from what gets decided isn't just another feature of the leave calendar -it's the rule that makes the rest of the system make sense.