Setting up a leave management system for a UK team involves more than just creating accounts and telling people to log in. You need to get the statutory entitlements right, handle bank holidays properly, configure carry-over rules that comply with employment law, and set up workflows that actually match how your organisation operates.

This guide walks you through the complete setup process for Leave Balance, step by step. Even if you are evaluating different tools or have not yet decided to switch from spreadsheets, the principles here apply to any leave management system — and the UK-specific configuration details will save you hours of research regardless of which platform you choose.

The entire process takes about thirty to forty-five minutes for a typical team, and you can be up and running the same day.

Step 1: Create Your Organisation and Set Your Leave Year

The first thing to decide — before you configure anything else — is your leave year. This is the twelve-month period over which annual leave entitlements accrue and reset. Getting this right from the start prevents a painful mid-year migration later.

Choosing Your Leave Year

UK organisations typically use one of two leave year structures:

January to December — The most common choice for private-sector organisations. It is simple, aligns with the calendar year, and is easy for employees to understand.
April to March — Common in the public sector, education, and organisations that align with the UK tax year. If your financial reporting runs April to March, aligning your leave year can simplify budgeting and resource planning.

There is no legal requirement to use either. You can set any start date you like, though these two are by far the most practical.

What to Configure

When you create your organisation in Leave Balance:

Organisation name and details — Straightforward. Use your legal entity name or trading name.
Leave year start date — Select January or April (or your preferred month). This determines when balances reset.
Country — Select United Kingdom. This pre-loads UK-specific settings including bank holiday lists and statutory defaults, which you can then customise.
Time zone — Set to GMT/BST. This ensures leave requests and approvals are timestamped correctly, which matters for audit trails and compliance.

If you have offices in multiple countries, you can configure different settings per location later. Leave Balance supports multi-country setups on the same account, so your UK team and your European offices can each have their own policies, bank holidays, and leave years.

Step 2: Configure UK-Compliant Leave Policies

This is the most important step. Getting your leave policies right ensures compliance with UK employment law and prevents disputes down the line.

Statutory Annual Leave

Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, almost all workers in the UK are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave per year. For a full-time employee working five days per week, that is 28 days.

When configuring this in Leave Balance:

Set the default annual leave allowance to 28 days (or your organisation’s contractual entitlement if it is higher — many employers offer 25 days plus bank holidays, which totals 33 days).
Decide how you handle bank holidays. There are two common approaches:
- Included in the 28-day entitlement — Employees get 28 days total and bank holidays are deducted from that allowance. This is legally compliant but can feel stingy.
- On top of annual leave — Employees get their annual leave allowance (typically 20-25 days) plus bank holidays as additional days off. This is the more common and more generous approach. In Leave Balance, you would set the annual leave allowance to 25 (for example) and configure bank holidays separately so they are automatically applied without reducing the balance.

Bank Holiday Configuration

England and Wales have eight bank holidays per year. Scotland has nine (including St Andrew’s Day), and Northern Ireland has ten (including St Patrick’s Day and the Battle of the Boyne).

In Leave Balance, you can:

Select the appropriate bank holiday calendar for your location (England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland).
Add or remove individual bank holidays if your organisation does not observe all of them, or if you offer additional company holidays.
Set bank holidays as automatic days off (everyone is off by default) or as optional days (employees can swap bank holidays for days of personal significance — increasingly popular for diverse teams).

Sick Leave

The UK does not have a statutory requirement for paid sick leave beyond Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), which is a flat rate paid from the fourth qualifying day of absence. However, many employers offer enhanced sick pay (often called company sick pay or contractual sick pay).

Configure your sick leave policy based on what your organisation offers:

SSP only — Set up a sick leave type with no balance limit (sick days are not capped but SSP rules apply).
Enhanced sick pay — If you offer, say, ten days of full-pay sick leave before reverting to SSP, configure this as a separate leave type with the appropriate allowance.
Self-certification vs fit note — In the UK, employees can self-certify sickness for up to seven calendar days. After that, they need a fit note from a GP. You can add a note to your sick leave policy in the system reminding employees and managers of this requirement.

Carry-Over Settings

UK carry-over rules were significantly affected by case law following the pandemic. The current position is:

Employers can limit carry-over of the additional 1.6 weeks (8 days) of statutory leave, but must allow carry-over of the core 4 weeks (20 days) if an employee was genuinely unable to take it (due to sickness, maternity leave, or similar).
Most employers set a practical carry-over limit — commonly five to ten days — and require carried-over leave to be used within a set period (often the first quarter of the new leave year).

In Leave Balance, you can configure:

Maximum carry-over days — Set the number of days that can roll into the next leave year.
Carry-over expiry — Set a deadline by which carried-over days must be used (for example, 31 March if your leave year runs January to December).
Automatic notifications — Alert employees when they have carried-over leave approaching its expiry date.

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Step 3: Add Your Employees

With your policies in place, it is time to add your team. Leave Balance offers two methods depending on your team size.

Bulk CSV Upload

For teams of ten or more, the CSV upload is the fastest approach:

Download the CSV template from the employee management section.
Fill in employee details — name, email address, start date, team or department, and leave allowance (if different from the default).
Upload the file — Leave Balance validates the data and flags any issues before importing.
Review and confirm — Check the preview, then confirm the import.

The start date field is particularly important for UK setups. If an employee joined mid-year, Leave Balance automatically pro-rates their entitlement based on their start date. For example, an employee who joined on 1 July in a January-to-December leave year would receive half their annual entitlement for that first year.

Manual Addition

For smaller teams, or when adding individual new joiners:

Navigate to Employees and click Add Employee.
Enter their details — name, email, start date, department, and reporting manager.
Assign them to the appropriate leave policies.
Send the invitation email so they can set up their account.

Tips for Getting Employee Data Right

Check start dates carefully — Pro-rating calculations depend on accurate start dates. An incorrect date could give an employee more or fewer days than they are entitled to.
Assign teams and departments — This is not just an organisational nicety. It determines which approval workflows apply and which team calendar views are available to managers.
Set reporting managers — This drives the approval workflow. Make sure every employee has a designated approver before going live.
Handle existing leave balances — If you are migrating mid-year from a spreadsheet or another system, you will need to adjust balances to reflect leave already taken. Leave Balance allows you to manually adjust individual balances during setup.

Step 4: Set Up Approval Workflows

A leave request without a clear approval path is just an email with extra steps. Configuring proper workflows ensures requests are routed to the right person, approved or declined promptly, and documented for audit purposes.

Basic Workflow (Suitable for Most Teams)

The standard workflow for most UK organisations is straightforward:

Employee submits a leave request.
Their line manager receives a notification.
The manager approves or declines.
The employee is notified of the outcome.
The approved leave appears on the team calendar.

In Leave Balance, this is the default workflow. You assign a reporting manager to each employee, and the system handles the rest.

Advanced Workflow Options

For organisations with more complex needs:

Multi-tier approval — Useful for senior roles or extended leave. The line manager approves first, then the department head or HR provides a second approval.
Auto-approval for specific leave types — If you offer duvet days or TOIL that does not require manager approval, configure those leave types to auto-approve. The manager still receives a notification for visibility, but the employee does not have to wait.
Backup approvers — Designate a secondary approver for each team so that leave requests do not stall when the primary approver is on leave themselves.
Minimum coverage rules — Set a minimum number of team members who must be available on any given day. If an approval would breach this threshold, the system flags it to the manager before they approve.

A Note on UK-Specific Considerations

UK employers cannot unreasonably refuse annual leave requests, but they can require employees to give notice equal to twice the length of the leave requested (for example, two weeks’ notice for one week of leave). If your organisation enforces minimum notice periods, you can configure this in the request settings so that the system automatically flags requests that do not meet the notice requirement.

Step 5: Connect Slack or Microsoft Teams

This step is optional but strongly recommended. Integrating with your team’s communication platform dramatically improves adoption and reduces the time managers spend on leave administration.

Slack Integration

Navigate to Integrations in your Leave Balance settings.
Click Connect Slack and authorise the app in your Slack workspace.
Choose a default channel for leave notifications (for example, #team-leave or #hr-updates).
Configure which notifications go to which channels — you might want team-specific channels so that marketing leave notifications do not clutter the engineering channel.

Once connected, employees can:

Request leave directly from Slack using the Leave Balance bot.
Check their remaining balance with a simple command.
See who is out today in their team.

Managers can:

Approve or reject requests with a single click on the Slack notification.
View the team calendar summary.
Receive a morning digest showing who is out that day.

Microsoft Teams Integration

The Teams integration follows a similar process:

Install the Leave Balance app from the Microsoft Teams app store.
Connect it to your Leave Balance organisation.
Configure notification channels and preferences.

The functionality mirrors the Slack integration — request, approve, check balances, and view the team calendar, all within Teams.

Which Should You Choose?

If your organisation uses both Slack and Teams (not uncommon during transitions or in multi-subsidiary setups), Leave Balance supports both simultaneously. Each team or department can use whichever platform they prefer — the data stays synchronised regardless.

Step 6: Communicate to Your Team

The technical setup is done. Now comes the step that most organisations underestimate: telling your team about the new system and getting them to actually use it.

What to Communicate

Send a short, clear message to all employees covering:

What is changing — “We are moving from [spreadsheet/email/old system] to Leave Balance for all leave requests starting [date].”
Why — Keep it employee-focused. “This means you can request leave in Slack, check your balance instantly, and get faster approvals” is more compelling than “HR needs better reporting.”
What they need to do — “You will receive an invitation email from Leave Balance. Click the link to set up your account. Your existing leave balance has already been transferred.”
Where to get help — Designate one person (usually in HR) as the point of contact for the first two weeks.
The deadline — “From [date], all leave requests must go through Leave Balance. Requests via email or spreadsheet will no longer be processed.”

A Sample Rollout Message

Here is a template you can adapt:

Hi team,

Starting [date], we are using Leave Balance for all leave requests and approvals. This replaces [current method].

What this means for you:

You can request leave directly in Slack/Teams — just use the Leave Balance bot

You will see your leave balance and team calendar in one place

Approvals will be faster since managers can approve from Slack/Teams with one click

Your action: Check your inbox for an invitation from Leave Balance and set up your account before [date]. Your existing leave balance has already been loaded.

Questions? Message [HR contact name] on Slack or email [address].

Tips for a Smooth Rollout

Brief managers first — Give managers a heads-up a few days before the all-staff announcement. Walk them through the approval process so they are confident when requests start coming in.
Run parallel for one to two weeks — If your team is used to another system, consider running both in parallel for a brief period. This reduces anxiety and gives you a safety net.
Celebrate the first few requests — It sounds trivial, but a quick “Sarah just submitted our first leave request through the new system!” message normalises the behaviour and encourages others to follow.
Follow up after one week — Check adoption numbers. If some team members have not logged in, a gentle nudge from their manager is more effective than an HR email.

Quick-Reference Setup Checklist

To summarise, here is your complete setup checklist:

Most organisations complete this entire list in under an hour. The fourteen-day free trial gives you plenty of time to configure everything, test it with a small group, and roll out to the full team — without any upfront commitment or credit card.