Last updated on July 9, 2026
Employee Onboarding: What Roles Can I Assign in Vacation Tracker?
Vacation Tracker has three roles, each with a clear scope: Admin manages the workspace, Approver handles leave decisions for a Department, and User requests their own leave. This article explains what each role can do, how to assign them in the live app, and includes the official onboarding handouts you can share with new hires.
The Three Roles at a Glance
Admin
The highest level of permissions in the workspace. Admins configure everything that shapes how the account runs.
- Create and configure Leave Types, Leave Policies, Locations, and Departments
- Import, activate, and deactivate Users
- Assign other Admins and assign Approvers to Departments
- Export reports (Leave Request, Leave Balance, Monthly Leave Balance, Company Audit Logs)
- Edit billing, integrations, and global notifications
- See Company Logs for the full account-wide audit trail
Approver
Reviews and acts on leave requests for the Department(s) they're assigned to. Otherwise behaves like a User for their own leaves.
- Approve, deny, or cancel pending leave requests for Users in their Department(s)
- View those Users' profile pages, leave history, and balances
- Add a leave on a User's behalf
- Set notifications for their Department
- Assign a Substitute Approver to cover their own time off
- Otherwise has the same self-service capabilities as a User
User
The default role for everyone on the team. Users manage their own leave and visibility, nothing more.
- Submit, edit, and delete their own upcoming leave requests
- View their own profile, leave quota balances, leave history, and Logs tab
- See their Location's holidays and (if Visibility Manager allows) other Users' approved leaves on the calendar / Wallchart
- Connect a personal calendar (Google, Outlook) to sync their approved leaves
How to Assign These Roles
The live app has a single Role field on each User's profile, with two values: Administrator (Admin) or User. Approver is handled separately: it's an assignment on a Department, not a value in the Role dropdown. Anyone, whether their Role is User or Administrator, can be assigned as an Approver on one or more Departments.
Setting the Admin role
An existing Admin opens Users → [User name] → Profile → Edit and switches the Role field from User to Administrator. The new Admin gains full access on their next sign-in. See How Do I Set an Administrator within Vacation Tracker? for the step-by-step.
Setting the Approver role
Approver is configured on the Department, not on the User. An Admin opens Departments → [Department name] → Edit, types the User or Admin's name into the Approver(s) field under Approval Flow, and saves. An Approver can be assigned to multiple Departments. See How Do I Set an Approver within Vacation Tracker? for the full flow.
Setting the User role (default)
No action needed. Every imported person starts as a User. To revoke an Admin's elevated access, an existing Admin edits the relevant profile and switches the Role field back to User; that person retains their leave history but loses configuration access.
Onboarding Resources for Each Role
Vacation Tracker provides ready-made one-pagers for each role across the four integration paths. Send these to new hires on day one. They explain what the new joiner can do in their integration of choice.
Common Questions
Yes, and it's a common pattern. The Role dropdown (Admin / User) and the Department's Approver(s) field are independent. Set someone's Role to Administrator and add them to a Department's Approver(s) list, and they'll have full Admin access plus receive approval requests for that Department's Users. There's no conflict.
Approver is a per-Department assignment, not a workspace-wide level of access. Any User or Admin can be made an Approver for one or more Departments without changing their underlying Role. This lets you give a single person approval power for some teams without elevating them to Admin everywhere.
Only Admins. The Edit Profile button on Users, the Edit Department form, and the Add (Import) Users flow all live in the Admin-only sections of the dashboard. They're not visible to Approvers or Users.
No fixed cap. You can have as many Admins as you want and as many Approvers per Department as you need. For Approvers there's also an Approval Flow Type setting on each Department: choose between Single-level (any Approver can sign off) and Multi-level (sequential approvals across multiple groups). See How Do I Set an Approver? for that detail.
They can assign a Substitute Approver to handle requests during their absence. This works two ways: the Approver themselves can do it from their own profile, or an Admin can do it on their behalf. See How Does an Approver Assign a Substitute Approver? for the exact steps.
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