Time off (manager view)

The manager-side time-off flow lives at Settings → Requests (in the sidebar, with a pending count badge if there's anything new).

The inbox

Three filter tabs at the top:

• Pending — your active inbox. Default view.
• Upcoming — approved requests in the future. Useful for planning.
• All — everything, including denied/cancelled history.

Below the tabs: a search bar (filters by employee name or reason), an employee dropdown, and a source dropdown (manager / SMS / email / import). The source filter is handy when you want to triage all the SMS-originated requests in a row, or audit what was filed manually.

Approving / denying

Click any row to expand the inline editor:

• Status pipeline — chips for pending / contacted / converted / closed. Click to change.
• Dates — edit start/end without leaving the row.
• Reason — visible to the employee in their notification.
• Internal notes — only visible to your team. Useful for "I told her in person we can't cover this" context.
• Delete — permanently removes the request.

When you change status to approved:

1. The schedule grid immediately shows a yellow vacation band on those days for that employee.
2. Smart Copy and AI Scheduler exclude those days from any future copies.
3. The employee gets an email + SMS confirming approval (if they have those contact methods).

When you change to denied:

• Same notification flow, with the denial copy.
• Schedule grid is unaffected — employee can be scheduled on those days normally.

Adding time off manually

Use this when you're filing on the employee's behalf — e.g., they called you in sick. Add time off in the top-right.

The form:

• Employee picker
• Start + end dates
• Reason (optional, sent to employee in the notification)
• Status (defaults to approved since you're filing as the manager)

This is also the path for retroactive time off — e.g., recording yesterday's sick day so it shows up correctly in payroll exports.

SMS-originated requests

When an employee texts the Timely number with a time-off request (see Text-to-Timely), the request lands in your inbox marked with a phone icon in the source column. Same approval flow as manager-created — click, expand, approve or deny.

The employee gets the response via SMS continuation (replying to their original thread), so the conversation feels natural.

Conflicts with the schedule

If you approve time off for dates that already have shifts assigned to that employee, Timely doesn't auto-clear the shifts. You'll see a warning indicator in the schedule grid for those dates and you can:

• Delete the shift if you want the day off
• Reassign the shift to someone else
• Leave both (the shift stays, the time-off period stays — Timely doesn't enforce, just informs)

This is intentional — sometimes a manager approves time off but still expects coverage from a swap, and we don't want Timely to silently nuke shifts you might have intended to keep.

Bulk approval

Not currently supported — each request is a single-click approve. For high-volume orgs filing 20+ requests at once, we recommend filing them as a manager-created approved from the start (using "Add time off") rather than waiting for SMS submissions.

CSV export

The Export CSV button in the top-right downloads whatever you have currently filtered. Includes employee name, dates, status, source, reason, and notes. Useful for monthly payroll reconciliation.