Set holiday limits and check daily capacity

Holiday Limits controls how many employees from each department may be on approved holiday on the same calendar day.

Use this area to:

1. Set a maximum number of employees per day, by department or as a company-wide fallback.
2. Review remaining capacity before busy periods.
3. Set limits in bulk for a date range, for example Christmas or the summer.
4. Export configured limits and approved holidays for your records.

Employees submit requests in the Employee Portal, and administrators approve them in the Request Centre. Capacity is checked when the employee submits and again when you approve.

For each employee and date, the system resolves the maximum in this order:

1. The department-specific limit for that date.
2. The all departments limit for that date, if there is no department row.
3. A default of one when nothing is configured.

For example, if all departments is set to five and nursing is set to two, nursing employees use two while a department with no specific row uses five.

Each department has its own pool, so one department reaching its limit does not reduce another department's capacity.

No configured limit does not mean unlimited. Where nothing is set for a date, only one approved employee from that department may be on holiday that day.

1. Open Bulk Set Limits.
2. Choose a start and end date. Every day in the range is included.
3. Select a department, or leave it blank to set the all-departments fallback.
4. Enter the maximum number of employees who may be on holiday.
5. Save.

Repeating a bulk save for the same date and department updates the existing row rather than creating a duplicate.

The capacity overview shows configured limit rows with:

• the resolved maximum after the precedence rules;
• the approved count;
• free slots for department-specific rows;
• summary figures for upcoming availability, fully booked days and total limits.

All-departments rows show their figure as "per department", because each department applies the fallback separately. A multi-day approved holiday counts on every day it covers.

• Only approved holidays count against a limit. Pending requests do not reduce free slots, which means several employees can appear to compete for the same last slot.
• Approval order matters. If two pending requests compete for one remaining slot, the first approval succeeds and the second is blocked with a capacity message.
• A multi-day request is all or nothing. If any single day is full, the whole request is rejected at submission, and the same rule applies at approval. Requests are never shortened or partially approved.
• Directors and authorised administrators can add an approved holiday directly from the schedule. That route does not block when the limit is already full, so treat it as a deliberate override for urgent cover planning.
• Approved holidays belonging to inactive employees still count against capacity, which keeps historical staffing counts accurate.
• Exports are available for configured limits and for approved holidays only, and require the holiday limits permission.