Setting up Vacation Schedule in Bitrix24
In January, HR sends out an Excel spreadsheet — "fill in your planned vacation dates". The spreadsheet comes back in ten different versions, half the employees forget to fill it, managers don't check for overlaps. By summer, three out of four people in the department are on vacation simultaneously. Bitrix24 allows you to maintain a vacation schedule with balance control, overlap checking, and an approval chain.
Smart Process "Vacations"
Each vacation request is an element in a smart process. Card fields include:
- Employee — linked to company structure
- Vacation type — annual, unpaid, educational, additional
- Start date and end date
- Number of days — calculated automatically accounting for weekends
- Days remaining — pulled from the employee card
- Substitute — who covers the duties
Stages: "Draft" → "Under Review" → "Approved" → "On Vacation" → "Completed" / "Cancelled".
Approval Chain
The approval route depends on type and duration:
- Department Manager — approves first. Sees overlaps with other employees in the department.
- HR — verifies remaining days and compliance with schedule.
- Director — involved for vacations longer than 14 days or for managers.
Each approver receives a notification with request details and buttons to "Approve" / "Reject". On rejection, a required comment with the reason is mandatory.
Overlap Control
When a request is submitted, the system checks whether there are already approved vacations on those same dates for other employees in the same department. If an overlap is found, the approver sees a warning in the request card showing which colleagues are already on vacation on those dates.
Minimum coverage rule: the settings specify the minimum number of employees who must be present in each department. If the vacation violates this threshold, the request gets marked as "Requires Attention".
Balance Tracking
Days remaining are maintained in a field on the employee card or in a linked smart process "Vacation Balance":
- Annual limit is accrued at the beginning of the year (28 days by default)
- When a request is approved, the balance is reduced by the number of days
- When cancelled, it's restored
- Unused days are carried over or forfeited depending on company policy
Calendar Integration
Approved vacation automatically creates an "Absence" event in the Bitrix24 calendar:
- Colleagues see that the employee is unavailable
- When scheduling meetings, the system warns of conflict
- In the department's shared calendar, vacations are displayed as a colored bar
What We Configure
- Smart process "Vacations" with request card and approval stages
- Approval chain accounting for vacation type and duration
- Automatic overlap and minimum coverage checking
- Day balance tracking with accrual and deduction
- Synchronization of approved vacations with the Bitrix24 calendar
- Annual vacation report for HR and managers