Change or cancel leave

What you can do to a request depends entirely on its status. Open it from Leave → My leave → My requests and the available actions appear at the top of the page.

Still pending: withdraw it

While a request is Pending, select Withdraw. The confirmation reads Withdraw this request? The pending request will be closed. You can submit a new one anytime.

The hold on your balance is released straight away and no notification goes to your approver.

Note

Only you can withdraw your own request — HR can’t do it for you. If you need HR to intervene on a pending request, they can hard-cancel it instead, which has the same effect on your balance.

Returned for edit: fix and resubmit

If an approver sends a request back, it becomes Returned and you’ll get a notification. Opening it shows an amber banner: Returned for edit by {Approver}, the reason they gave, and Edit the details below and resubmit to send it back for approval.

1. Select Edit & resubmit.

2. The form opens pre-filled with your original type, dates, half-day choice, reason and covering colleague. Change whatever needs changing.

3. Select Resubmit.

Approval resumes at the step that returned it — earlier approvals still stand, so you don’t restart the whole chain. Your balance hold is kept throughout, so the days stay reserved while you’re editing, and it’s re-checked against the new dates when you resubmit.

Approved but not started: request cancellation

On an Approved request whose start date is still in the future, select Request cancellation.

What happens next depends on the leave type:

• Cancellation needs approval (the usual setting) — the request moves to Cancellation pending and goes through the same workflow as the original. Your balance stays held until the cancellation is approved. Toast: Cancellation submitted for approval.
• Cancellation is immediate — the leave is cancelled and your days are restored on the spot. Toast: Leave cancelled.

While a cancellation is pending you can change your mind and select Withdraw cancellation — the leave reverts to Approved. The same happens if an approver rejects the cancellation.

Restrictions

Two type-level rules can get in the way:

Message	Meaning
{Type} cannot be cancelled by the requester. Contact HR.	Self-cancellation is switched off for this leave type.
Cancellation requires at least 3 working days notice before start	You’re inside the cancellation notice window.

HR can cancel on your behalf in both cases — those two guardrails are exactly what “contact HR” is for.

Already started: HR shortens it

Once leave has started, nobody can cancel it — the attempt fails with Cannot cancel leave that has already started. Contact HR.

Instead, a leave admin uses Shorten leave to set an earlier end date. This is the “came back on Wednesday” case. The unused working days at the tail are refunded to your balance, the request keeps its approval, and the change is recorded: the request page shows Shortened by HR with the original dates, the reason, and when it happened.

You’re notified when this happens — Your approved leave was shortened — with the new end date and how many days went back to your balance.

Shortening can’t be used on a half-day request, or to trim a leave down to nothing — cancel is the right tool there.

Changing who covers for you

The Covering colleague row in the request Summary can be edited after submission. Select Add or Change, pick a colleague, and save. Remove cover clears it.

You can edit coverage while the leave hasn’t ended and the request isn’t rejected, cancelled or withdrawn. Half-day requests don’t have coverage at all.

Three people can change it: you as the requester, a leave admin, and the colleague currently holding the cover. That last one matters on leave types where cover is binding — it lets someone who needs leave of their own over those dates pass the commitment on and become free to apply, without waiting on you or HR. They can only hand it to someone else, never clear it, so your leave doesn’t end up uncovered without your say.

You can’t pick someone who is already on leave over those dates — the attempt is refused with That colleague is already on leave from … Pick someone else.

Changing cover notifies both people: the colleague taking it on, and the one being released from it — except that if you’re the one handing your own cover on, you won’t be notified about your own action. The requester is also told whenever somebody other than themselves changes who’s covering.

Caution

A covering colleague does not move any approvals — the dialog says so explicitly. Re-routing approvals for someone who is away is handled separately by your organization’s out-of-office policy.

On some leave types HR also makes cover binding, which stops the person you name from booking their own leave over those dates. On the rest, coverage is recorded for reference and the named colleague is free to book the same days — so it’s worth telling them.

What each action does to your balance

Action	Effect
Submit	Days held as pending.
Returned for edit	Hold kept.
Resubmit	Hold released and re-placed against the new dates.
Approved	Pending becomes used.
Rejected / withdrawn / hard-cancelled by HR	Hold released.
Cancellation requested	Nothing yet — days stay held so they don’t look bookable.
Cancellation approved	Used days returned to your balance.
Cancellation rejected or withdrawn	Nothing changes; leave reverts to approved.
HR shortens the leave	The trimmed working days are returned to your balance.

On off-in-lieu leave the same events apply, except the days come out of your grants rather than an annual balance — and cancelling or shortening returns them to the grant they came from.