Approve Shift Swaps And Manage Leave Calendars

A roster is a living thing. Someone needs Friday off for a wedding and finds a colleague to cover; the whole organisation books the same public holiday; a nurse’s annual-leave balance has to top up month by month. This page covers the two desks that keep all of that honest: the manager who accepts or rejects shift-swap requests (each accepted swap actually moves the roster), and the HR administrator who defines the leave types, holiday calendars and accrual that every leave request is measured against.

Two short pieces of vocabulary before we start. A leave type is a kind of time off — Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Unpaid Leave — each with its own rules. Accrual is the way a balance grows over time: instead of giving a full year’s allowance on day one, the system tops it up gradually (monthly or annually) so the available figure is always fair. A holiday calendar is the list of public holidays your facility observes, so those days are not counted against anyone’s leave.

Who / when: the Line Manager (or HR Manager) clears the swap inbox whenever a request lands; the HR Manager, HR Officer or Administrator sets up the leave configuration once, then maintains it. We’ll follow Tunde, a ward sister with swap-approval rights, and Ngozi in the HR office.

Accept a pending shift swap (the main path)

1. Line Manager — open Human Resources → Time & Leave → Shifts, then select the “Shift Swaps” tab. Every swap request is listed with its reference, the shift’s date and template, who is giving the shift away (From), and who would take it (To).
2. Line Manager — find the request you want, sitting at status “Pending”. Read the From/To pair and the shift date so you know exactly which roster slot will change hands.
3. Line Manager — select “Accept” on that row. Veona records your decision and, in the same step, performs the roster move: the shift is reassigned from the original owner to the colleague who agreed to take it.
4. The row flips to “Accepted” and a confirmation appears: “Swap accepted — the roster has been updated.” No one has to edit the roster by hand; the published week now shows the new name against that shift.

Note

Accepting a swap is the same atomic move you would otherwise do by hand on Human Resources → Time & Leave → Roster — but here it is one click, fully audited, and it can only happen once both staff are on the request. There is never a moment where the shift belongs to nobody or to two people.

Tip

The “Accept” and “Reject” buttons only appear if you hold the swap-approval right. If a row shows no action buttons, you can see the request but someone with approval authority needs to decide it.

Other ways this goes

If you reject the swap with a reason

1. Line Manager — on the pending request in the “Shift Swaps” tab, select “Reject” instead of Accept.
2. Line Manager — give a short reason (for example, “Both staff rostered to the same ward that night — no cover”). The reason travels with the decision so the requester understands why.
3. The row moves to “Rejected”, the original owner keeps the shift, and the roster is left exactly as it was. The staff member who asked is notified.

Create a leave type (paid and accruing, or unpaid)

1. HR Manager — open Human Resources → Time & Leave → Leave & Absence, select the “Leave Types” tab, then “New Leave Type”.
2. HR Manager — name it (for example “Annual Leave”), choose the “Accrual Rule” (Annual grants the full entitlement, Monthly tops up gradually, None for a fixed allowance, Per Shift), pick the “Unit” (Day or Hour), set the “Entitlement” (for example 20), and optionally a “Max Balance” cap.
3. HR Manager — set the “Paid” toggle. Leave it on for paid leave that counts toward payroll; turn it off for an unpaid type. Leave “Active” on so the type is selectable, then “Save”.
4. The new type appears in the list with its auto-generated code and is now offered to everyone raising a leave request.

Caution

Turning a leave type inactive (rather than paid/unpaid) only hides it from new requests — it never disturbs leave already taken or balances already accrued. Use Inactive to retire a type cleanly.

Create a holiday calendar and add holidays

1. HR Officer — still under Human Resources → Time & Leave → Leave & Absence, open the holiday-calendar area and select “New” to create a calendar (for example “Nigeria Public Holidays 2026”).
2. HR Officer — open the calendar you just made and add a holiday for each date you observe (name and date — for example “Independence Day”, 1 October). Repeat for every holiday in the year.
3. The calendar is now in force. Those dates are recognised as public holidays so they are not silently charged against a staff member’s leave balance.

Run the leave accrual top-up on demand

1. HR Manager — open Human Resources → Time & Leave → Leave & Absence and use the “Balances” tab to see where everyone stands.
2. HR Manager — trigger the leave accrual run. Veona tops up every active employee’s accruing balances to the correct figure for this point in the year — the full entitlement for an Annual type, or the pro-rated amount (elapsed months out of twelve) for a Monthly type — never exceeding the type’s max-balance cap.
3. The run is idempotent: anyone already at or above the right figure is left untouched, so you can run it whenever you need to without ever double-crediting. It also runs automatically on a slow cadence in the background, so this manual run is just for when you want it brought current immediately.

View org-wide leave balances

1. HR Officer — open Human Resources → Time & Leave → Leave & Absence and select the “Balances” tab.
2. Read each row: the employee, the leave type, and their Accrued, Taken, Pending and Available figures. Available is the live number a staff member can actually book against. Balances are seeded the first time someone requests that leave type or the accrual runs.

Blocked: leave-manage versus swap-approve are different keys

1. The authority to configure leave (create types, build calendars, run accrual) is the leave-manage permission. The authority to decide a shift swap is the separate swap-approve permission. They are granted independently.
2. So a payroll-free HR officer might be able to set up leave types but see no Accept/Reject buttons on swaps; a ward manager might decide swaps all day but never see the Leave Types editor. If a control is missing, it is this split at work — ask an Administrator to grant the specific key, rather than working around it.

What happens next

Accepted swaps are reflected immediately on the published Roster, and the affected staff see the change on their own My Shifts view. The leave types, calendars and accrued balances you maintain here become the rulebook for every leave request: when a staff member books time off from My HR → My Leave, the system measures it against the right type, skips the public holidays on your calendar, and draws down the balance the accrual has been quietly building. Paid leave you configured then flows on into payroll at the next pay run.

Follow the trail

• Previous: Build And Publish The Roster And Shifts · Configure Approval Chains And Delegations
• Next: Decide HR Requests In My Approvals · Request Leave And Track My Balance
• Related: Build And Publish The Roster And Shifts · Decide HR Requests In My Approvals · Request Leave And Track My Balance · Configure Approval Chains And Delegations