How do I check my leave balance?

Quotas are per type because the types are not interchangeable. Days set aside for illness and days set aside for a holiday answer different needs.

So a single pooled figure would hide the thing people actually want to know, which is whether the specific allowance they are about to draw on has anything left.

Allocations come from a grid an administrator maintains, with a row per person and a column per type. Each cell holds what was allocated and what has been used.

That grid is also where an unusual case lives. Somebody with a different allowance from their colleagues has it recorded in one place rather than remembered by one person.

The year selector catches people out more than anything else here. A balance read with last year selected looks wrong in a very convincing way. Check the year first, every time.

Pending requests are the second trap. A request that has been made and not yet agreed is not the same as one approved, and the funnel shows both states separately. A balance can look healthier than it is while several sit waiting.

Read the per-type rows rather than the overall figure. Sixty per cent used across everything can sit on top of one allowance already spent to zero.

The year selector matters more than it looks. A balance read without checking which year is selected is a common way to conclude that days have vanished.

Read the per-type breakdown rather than the overall percentage. An overall figure of sixty per cent used can sit on top of one type entirely exhausted.