In a time off policy, you have the following setting available:
Do not allow to book more days than remaining in the current period.
This prevents employees from submitting a request under the policy if their available balance is lower than the required amount at the time of request.
The system only checks this at the point the employee requests the time off. Therefore, it's still possible for an employee to have a negative balance under the policy with this restriction set.
Reasons why an employee can have a negative balance
Someone originally created the booking under a different policy. They then edited the request and assigned it to a restricted policy
Sage HR calculates leave balances for one period (year) at a time. If the employee has requested leave for the following period and someone approves it when the policy resets, there could be a negative available balance
For policies using working patterns, someone could have changed the employee’s working days after they submitted the request. They may have changed this either by assigning a new working pattern or editing the existing working pattern
For policies that use working patterns, the employee’s working days may have changed after they submitted the request. This can happen when you assign someone to a new working pattern or edit the existing pattern
For policies using Calendar settings, someone changed the weekend days under Settings > Calendar > General
For policies using Calendar settings, someone assigned the employee a new employment status with a different weekend day. Alternatively, they changed the weekend days on their existing status
Someone changed the policy’s public holiday settings, affecting leave booked on public holidays
Someone added, removed, or edited public holidays that overlap with the employee’s booked leave
Someone changed the employee’s individual allowance for the policy
Someone updated the employee’s start or termination date, which applied a pro‑rated adjustment
Someone manually adjusted the employee’s balance using Change balance
Someone disabled the following setting: Do not allow booking more days than remaining in the current period. Someone then submitted a time off request, and then someone re‑enabled the restriction
📎NOTE: Someone doesn't need to approve the request before the restriction.
How do I know what the cause was?
You can review booking changes by:
Opening the employee’s Time off tab
Clicking the eye icon on the booking
Checking the Activity section.
📎NOTE: Not all changes create logs, so you may not always find the exact cause of a negative balance.
If an employee has overused their allowance, first confirm that all bookings are correct and match the used balance shown. If they do, agree with the employee on how they'll repay the balance. They can do this by:
Cancelling a future booking under the policy to restore the balance to zero
Taking the excess leave as unpaid leave or a different leave type
Reducing the following year’s allowance by the overbooked amount