Welcome to Shapes' Time Management feature! A single place where your employees can request time away, see their balance, and much more. Shapes allows managers to approve time away requests with context, and allows admins to set up all of your policies.

Time Management is a standalone app that can be found of the list of the left of the screen.

Settings are inside the app
App settings can be found inside the Time Management app by clicking on the 3 dots on the top right and then clicking on "app settings"

“Requests” tab
Manage all time away requests (pending, approved, denied) in one central place. You can also apply filters and export your list.

Reports in a dedicated tab
Time Management reports live in their own tab for quicker and easier access.

Reasons are the different types of time away requests. You can create as many reasons as you'd like in order to fit your organization's needs.

There are three different types of reasons that a user may request.

Policies are the rules and settings related to requesting a time away reason. You can have unlimited policies for each reason and build each one differently, including whether they are calculated in days or hours. Policies can also be duplicated, making it easy to reuse and adjust existing setups. You can then decide which policy applies to which employee.

When does your Time Away year start?

Since policies work on a yearly basis, you can determine when is the start of that year.

How many days/hours does an employee receive annually?

You can choose how many days/hours an employee can earn throughout the year.

Do employees get additional days based on tenure?

This setting means that after a defined number of years from an employee’s start date, they receive a specified total number of additional days based on their tenure.

How should days/hours be accumulated?

Fixed accrual adds the same amount each period, regardless of hours worked. Relative accrual will be applied only to employees with tracked working hours enabled. Days are earned based on actual hours worked out of the required hours.

Can unused days/hours be carried over?

You can determine the rules about unused time away days/hours at the end of the year. Do they carry over, and if so, are there any limits on that? You can set a completely customizable expiration date for carry over days/hours from the previous year.

If you want to allow employees to carry days/hours over into the next year, you can limit this in two areas:

Is there a maximum balance an employee can accrue?

Set the highest amount of time off an employee can accumulate, preventing further accrual once that limit is reached.

Can the employee exceed their balance?
Allowing an employee to exceed their balance means they can take more time off than they've currently accrued, resulting in a negative balance.

Does this time away request require manager approval?
Requiring manager approval means the employee’s time off request won’t be confirmed until it’s reviewed and authorized by their manager.

Is a supporting document required for this leave?

You can configure a policy that requires a mandatory document for more than X days of absence.

Number of days is prorated or fixed

You can choose whether accruals are prorated or fixed when an employee joins mid-period. Set it to Fixed if you want employees to receive the full accrual amount regardless of their start date within the period.
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Should time away days be rounded?

To better support UK regulations and minimum-request policies (0.5 days), we Allowance Rounding! This prevents "unusable" leftover balances for employees + follow regulations and requirements in the UK.

We allow for Two Rounding Options: Round to the nearest 0.5 or 1.0 day.

When a request is approved, should anyone besides the employee be notified?

Configure dynamic recipients in the Time Away Reason Policy to be notified when a booking is approved.

Every employee listed in the policy will receive a notification and notifications are sent even if the employee does not have permission to view the booking or the person who made it.

Managers with manager level permissions will always be notified for any booking, so there is no need to add them to this configuration too.

To support minimum request policies of 0.5 days, you can choose to round allowances to the nearest 0.5 or 1 day for yearly accrual policies measured in days. Please note this option is not available for hourly, monthly or bi-weekly accruals.

Every reason created will have a default unlimited policy, meaning the employees will not be limited to a fixed number of days that they can request. The default policy also requires approval from managers (this can all be edited.)

Generate complete, compliant time-off policies in seconds, just by describing what you need. Whether you're expanding to new regions or formalizing existing policies, our AI makes it simple to create clear, tailored policies based on local best practices.

Holidays can be set up manually or imported automatically. To import holidays for a certain country, search for the country and choose the relevant one.

Manually created days can also be created by clicking on "New Holiday". Choose the date, add a name, and choose if it will be a full or half day.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to support@shapes.co