If you want to submit a request ahead of time for paid or unpaid leave (e.g. vacation, family leave etc.) goto menu Time > My Time-off and follow these steps:

1. Click on '+' new icon to create a leave request
2. From the Time off Type dropdown choose a leave type for example Paid or Vacation or Sick
3. Select or key in a Start Date and an End Date for which you want to take this leave. You can plan to take leave well in advance, or you can fill back-dated leaves in the past
4. You can select a Half day or a Full Day (or other day fractions depending on how your time-off types were customized) for the first and last dates of your leave
5. The duration of your leave is calculated automatically, excluding holidays or weekends
6. Optionally provide a reason for requesting leave. Depending on how your system is set-up there might be options to record the customer, project or task you are working on (to accrue leave against)
7. Most important, don't forget to submit your leave. Click on the submit link in the top right corner

Note: you cannot request time-off if you have an insufficient balance. You also cannot submit two leave requests for the same date unless they are both for a half day.

A key benefit of requesting time-off outside of your timesheet is that you can request any duration of leave in a single time-off request; you do not have to split it up by week or pay cycle. The only exception to this is any time off request spanning or cross the end of a vacation year - such as a leave from December 29th to January 4th with Jan-Dec vacation years - must be split at the end of the year

Enter two requests - one for the days from start until the end of the vacation year and a second request from the start of the new year until the end of your planned time-off

When you select the appropriate time-off type to request today's balance is displayed next to each time-off type as highlighted in the red box above. You can also see if negative balances are permitted. This information should be used to determine what time-off type to request, for example you may not have any vacation days left but you can still take unpaid leave.

Depending on the dates and duration of time-off you request, the anticipated balance on the last day of your planned time-off is displayed in the "BALANCE AFTER" field on the right, as highlighted by the red arrow above. This number is used to determine if you have sufficient balance for your time-off request.

The balance after is calculated in iBE in four ways:

1. For annual leaves (such as personal days or some sick leaves) the balance after is simply the current balance, minus any other prior requests for the same leave type
2. For monthly leaves (such as vacation which is accrued on a monthly basis) the balance after is the current balance, minus any other prior requests for the same leave type, plus any forecast days which will get accrued each month from now until the end date of your planned time-off
3. In addition iBE also scans pre-existing time-off requests in the same vacation year after the dates of the current request, to confirm that the forecast days at the end of the year considering this year's accruals, existing requests and the new or current time-off request - will be 0 or greater than zero
4. Time-off requests for a future vacation year adopt balances forecast at the start of the year as maximum number of days that can be carried forwards, and then consider other requests and forecast accruals in that vacation year.

For example:

• Sally requests a week off in March and was awarded 10 days annual vacation on Jan 1st. Assuming that she already took 2 days out, there is sufficient balance for her March vacation with a balance after of 3 days
• Pete is entitled to 18 days vacation annually, but it is accrued on a monthly basis at 1.5 days/month. His current balance (March 1st) is 0 days but he wants to take a week off in the summer. What is the earliest date he can requests this vacation? Assuming March 1st accrual already passed and accrual is on first of each month, he will need to wait four months until July 2nd before he can take 5 or maximum 6 days off (4 x monthly 1.5 days)