How to Manage Leave Requests in Slack
In most teams the leave process is still split between spreadsheets, email threads and "can I take time off?" messages. If your team already uses Slack, this guide explains step by step how to bring requests, approvals and team visibility together in one flow.
Why should the leave process live in Slack?
A leave request is a conversation: the employee asks, the manager answers, the team is informed. If that conversation already happens in Slack, moving the process to another tool has two costs — context switching (everyone has to go to a separate site and remember a password) and invisibility (an approval given in a spreadsheet is not seen by the team; overlaps are noticed only when it is too late). When the process stays in Slack, the request, the decision and the announcement live in one place, and the tool takes care of record-keeping.
The four parts of a leave flow in Slack
1. Request
The employee types /izin (Turkish for "leave"; Slack commands are currently in Turkish) and picks the date range, leave type and approver in the form that opens. For a half day or hourly leave a time range can be chosen; the duration is calculated in proportion to the working day.
2. Approval
The approver gets a single message in Slack: the request details + Approve/Reject buttons. The decision is one click; the requester is notified of the result immediately.
3. Visibility
The answer to "who is off today?" is right in front of the team, via a command (/kim-izinli) or an optional daily summary message.
4. Balance
Remaining leave days can be checked from Slack; weekends and Turkish public holidays are not deducted, and the balance updates itself.
Setup: adding to Slack
- Add to Slack: OffTracker is connected to your workspace; your team is imported from Slack.
- Choose approvers: set one or more company-wide approvers; if you like, define separate approvers per team (department).
- Review the settings: working hours, leave types and the public holiday calendar come preset; adjust them to your needs.
Once setup is complete, leave requests can be made from Slack.
Approver and team availability rules
Approval authority has two layers: if team-specific approvers are defined, requests go to them first; otherwise company-wide approvers apply. When opening a request, the employee chooses from the list of approvers that applies to them.
The most common problem in small teams is a silent overlap: two people from the same team are off at the same time and nobody notices. In OffTracker, the message to the approver shows who in the team will be off on those dates and how many people the team will drop to as a warning — the request is not blocked; the decision is made with the information at hand.
When does the web dashboard come in?
The daily flow lives in Slack; the overall view is on the web dashboard: the team leave calendar, per-person balance and quota management, public holiday settings, a history of past requests and an audit trail of all important actions. At month end a manager answers "who used how much?" from the dashboard; employees can see their own history and balance there too.
Three common mistakes
- Relying on a single approver: when the approver is on leave, the process stalls. Define at least two approvers per team.
- Deducting public holidays by hand: if the tool knows the holiday calendar, let it handle the deductions; manual calculations go wrong at least once a year.
- Approving in a DM without recording it: an "ok, you’re off" message is not a record. If the decision is made with the button, balance, calendar and audit trail stay correct on their own.
Frequently asked questions
Does Slack have a built-in leave feature?
You can type "on leave" in your Slack status by hand; but a request-approval flow, balance tracking and record-keeping need a leave app. OffTracker brings that flow into Slack.
Can an employee who does not use Slack request leave?
Yes — the web dashboard works in any browser; requests can also be created from the dashboard and go into the same approval flow.
How does pricing work?
There is no per-seat fee; the price is set by band from the number of active employees. ₺2,990 TRY +VAT per month for 1-25 active employees.
What if the approver is unavailable?
You can define more than one approver per team; the employee picks from the list when opening the request. An HR Admin can decide on behalf of the assigned approver when needed, and this is clearly communicated to everyone involved.
Move your leave flow into Slack
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