OrangeHRM Leave Management Setup Entitlements Apply and Approve
Leave is the module your staff will touch every month — and the one that decides whether OrangeHRM feels like help or homework. Set up types and entitlements once, correctly, and the daily flow runs itself.
✍️ Technical Anshu🌴 Leave Module✅ Approvals
🎥 Watch the complete OrangeHRM server setup in the video, step by step
Ask any office what HR software is really for and the honest answer is leave. Who is off today, how many days does someone have left, and who approved it — three questions that currently need a register, a chat history and a memory. This guide sets up the Leave module so those questions answer themselves.
Leave — apply screen with live balance (illustration)
My Leave > Apply
Leave Type .... Annual Leave
Balance ....... 14.00 day(s) available
From / To ..... 12 Jan — 14 Jan
Duration ...... 3 day(s)
Approver ...... Your supervisor
[ Apply ]
The employee sees their real balance before applying — most leave arguments end right here. Figures are examples.
1
Create Leave Types That Match Your Real Policy
Under Leave → Configure → Leave Types, create the types your office actually grants — typically:
Annual / Earned Leave — the main yearly quota
Sick Leave — often a separate, smaller quota
Casual Leave — if your policy has it
Leave Without Pay — no balance, but tracked — this one matters for salary day
Do not create twelve types because the software allows it. Every type is a balance someone must maintain. Mirror the written office policy; if there is no written policy, this setup is the moment to write one.
2
Set the Leave Period and Entitlements
Leave → Configure → Leave Period: set the year your office counts in (January–December or April–March, as your policy says)
Leave → Configure → Entitlements: add the days per type — for everyone at once, or per department/location where policies differ
New joiners mid-year: add their entitlement pro-rata by hand and note why — future-you will ask
Carry-forward rules: if unused days carry over, add them as an entitlement adjustment at year start; if they lapse, they lapse — the system should say what the policy says
Entitlements are the numbers every future argument quotes. Enter them from the policy document, not from memory.
3
Approvals Follow the Reporting Line
OrangeHRM routes leave requests to the employee's supervisor as recorded in their PIM record. That makes one earlier step critical:
Every employee record needs the correct supervisor — check this in PIM before launching leave
A wrong supervisor means requests land on the wrong desk and staff conclude the system is broken
The owner/top manager usually has no supervisor; their leave is recorded by admin directly
When someone's manager changes, update the record the same day — approvals follow the record, not the announcement
4
The Daily Flow — Apply, Approve, See
Employee logs in with ESS and applies under Leave → Apply, seeing their live balance first
Supervisor gets the request in Leave → Leave List and approves or rejects with a comment
The balance updates automatically — no register, no manual subtraction
Admin's dashboard and the Employees on Leave view answer "who is off today" in one glance
At month end, the leave list export is the attendance register's best friend
Set one house rule and announce it: leave counts only if it is in the system. A WhatsApp "ok" from a manager is friendly, but the record is what salary and balances follow.
5
Reports That End Month-End Arguments
Under Leave → Reports you get the two views that settle disputes:
Leave Entitlements and Usage — per employee: entitled, taken, pending, remaining
Leave List by period — who took what, when, approved by whom
When someone says "my balance is wrong", open the usage report together and walk the list. Nine times out of ten there is an approved request they forgot — and the system has the date and approver, which memory does not.
🔴 Honest limit: OrangeHRM tracks the leave your policy defines — it cannot invent a fair policy for you, and public-holiday calendars differ by state and office. Enter your actual holidays under Leave → Configure → Holidays every year; the system will not guess them.
🎥 Watch the Complete Setup Video
See the full OrangeHRM server setup on screen — installation, configuration and the first login, step by step.
Employees see their own balances and requests in ESS. Supervisors see their team's requests for approval, and admins see everything. A shared "who is on leave" view can be shown through the dashboard widget, which most offices find helpful rather than sensitive.
Someone applied for leave with no balance left. What happens?
The system warns at apply time when the request exceeds the balance. Depending on your configuration the request can still go to the approver — which is where Leave Without Pay comes in. Decide the office rule (reject, or convert to unpaid) and tell approvers, so the decision is policy, not mood.
How do we handle leave for the current year already taken on paper?
Enter it before launch: add past approved leave as admin-recorded entries, or adjust entitlements down by days already taken — one method, used consistently. Otherwise balances start the year too generous and the first dispute arrives by February.
This guide is based on the Technical Anshu OrangeHRM video • Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments 🙏