Product
Holiday requests, approvals and balances, without the spreadsheet
Employees request holiday and managers approve or decline it. HRHive counts working days, keeps each person's balance for the holiday year, adds bank holidays and company closures, carries unused days forward, and builds up holiday for irregular hours at 12.07% of the hours worked.
What problem does this solve?
Holiday is tracked in a shared calendar, a spreadsheet and an inbox. Someone counts working days by hand, remembers which bank holidays fall inside the leave, and chases the balance at the end of the year. Part-year starters, part-time patterns and people on irregular hours make the sums harder, and a mistake becomes a difficult conversation.
What HRHive does
- Lets employees request holiday and managers approve or decline it. HR can decide too. The request shows the number of working days, excluding weekends and bank holidays.
- Works out each person's balance for the holiday year: entitlement (pro rata in the year someone starts or leaves), carried forward, adjustments, bank holidays, taken, booked and awaiting approval.
- Counts working days from each person's working pattern: the days they work, including half days.
- Adds bank holidays for England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland from the official GOV.UK list, which updates automatically.
- Handles company closure days, the days the whole business is closed. You choose whether each one comes out of everyone's holiday allowance.
- Carries unused days forward at the start of the holiday year, up to the maximum you set.
- Lets HR adjust a balance, for example for bought or sold days or a correction. Every adjustment is recorded with its reason.
- Builds up holiday for people on irregular hours at 12.07% of the hours they work. HR records the hours for each pay period.
- Shows who is away on a calendar, and lists approved leave in a report.
- Has nine built-in leave types: annual leave, sickness, unpaid leave, maternity, paternity, shared parental leave, compassionate leave, study leave and other. For each one you choose whether it needs approval and whether it uses the holiday allowance.
How it works
- Set it up once. Choose when the holiday year starts, which nation's bank holidays apply, the default entitlement, the maximum days that can be carried forward and whether bank holidays count against the allowance. Then set each person's working days and entitlement on their employment details.
- An employee asks. From the portal they choose the type, the first and last day, any half days and a note. HRHive shows the working days and turns down a request that overlaps leave already booked or asks for more than they have left.
- The manager decides. They are emailed straight away and approve or decline, with an optional reason that goes to the employee. If the person has no manager recorded, or their manager has no HRHive login, HR, admins and owners are told instead. Nobody can approve their own leave.
- The employee is told. The decision is emailed to them, and the balance updates.
- HR can record leave for someone. Leave recorded by HR or by a manager for their team is approved at once, which suits holiday agreed by phone.
- The year rolls over. Unused days are carried forward, up to your limit, and the new year starts with the balance.
What you see
HR and managers see a Holidays page with a Calendar, Upcoming leave, Awaiting approval, Balances and, for HR, Bank holidays and closures. The calendar shows each person across the month, with pending leave marked differently from approved leave. Employees see their own balance, their requests and a Request holiday button in the portal, on Home and on the Holidays page.
The record it creates
Every request, decision, cancellation and adjustment is recorded on the person's timeline, with who did it and when. The person's Holidays tab keeps the balance and every request for the year. The Holiday balances report lists entitlement, carried forward, adjustments, bank holidays, taken, booked, pending and remaining for everyone, and the Holiday calendar report lists approved leave in a date range. Both export to CSV, Excel and PDF, and the holiday record is a section of the personnel file. HRHive counts days, not money.
Who can do what
Managers decide for their own team, and nobody decides their own leave. HR and administrators can decide for everyone.
What happens next
Home flags leave requests that are waiting for approval, and shows who is away today. When someone leaves, leave booked wholly after their last day is cancelled, and leave that runs past it is flagged for HR to adjust. Sickness is recorded as leave too: see Sickness and absence. Employees do all of this from the employee portal.