Carry-over between leave years

The organisation rule

The Leave allowances card on Settings → Leave sets the carry-over mode for everyone:

• None — unused leave is lost at year end.
• Capped — unused leave carries up to a cap you set (in days or hours).
• Unlimited — everything carries.

Carry-over happens automatically at the year boundary under this rule: whatever is left of the year’s allowance carries, up to the cap if there is one. Carried time shows on each person’s My leave card as “includes X carried over”. Nothing carries automatically into the leave year the organisation or the person started in (add a carry-over grant, described below, to bring a balance in), and unused carry-over doesn’t carry again. A per-person carry-over cap override is available from People → Personal settings. If you turn on Leave in advance, a negative balance carries into the next year as well, shown as “borrowed from last year”.

The Next year view of the allowance card on My leave doesn’t estimate how much will carry. While carry-over is on, and until the year ends, it says that leave you don’t use this year is added when it ends (with the cap, if there is one); someone who already has a carry-over grant for next year sees that grant as carried-over time instead.

Carry-over grants (statutory and agreed)

Some carry-over is a legal right regardless of your cap. From People → Personal settings → Carry-over grants, admins can add a grant that replaces the automatic carry-over for that year for that person:

• Sickness — up to 4 weeks may carry, with an expiry no later than 18 months after the end of the leave year it is carried into.
• Family leave — full carry, no expiry.
• By agreement — anything you’ve agreed individually, with an optional expiry.

Each grant takes the leave year it is carried into, an amount, a reason from that list, an optional expiry and a note. Leave the expiry blank and a sickness grant is dated 18 months after the end of the leave year it is carried into, and a by-agreement grant gets no expiry date; family leave has no expiry field. Whatever its expiry date, a grant only counts in the leave year it is carried into: what is left of it is not carried into the year after, so add another grant then if the time should still be available. Rotaleave checks the statutory limits when you add the grant, and refuses a sickness grant over 4 weeks, or one with an expiry more than 18 months after the end of that leave year.

Expiry — and not losing it

Carried time can come with an expiry date. Once a grant has expired, only the part of it that was used up by leave taken before that date still counts. Rotaleave nags before it’s wasted:

• Each person can enable the “My carried-over leave is about to expire” email in their notification preferences.
• Managers get an Expiring carry-over report tab — who’s holding expiring time, how much remains now, and when it lapses (90-day window by default). See Reports overview. It can also be emailed monthly.