SOURCE:    Vacation Tracker
TITLE:     How Do I Set Half-Day Intervals?
URL:       https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/how-do-i-set-half-day-intervals/
LANG:      en
PUBLISHED: 2020-12-29
UPDATED:   2026-01-27
READING:   1 min
SUMMARY:   Sometimes, somebody from your team may need to take a few hours from work but not the whole day. In these cases, it’s best to have a half-day policy set in place.

How Do I Set Half-Day Intervals?

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Last updated on January 27, 2026

How Do I Set Half-Day Intervals?

Not every absence needs to be a full day. Half-day intervals let employees book a morning or afternoon off instead of burning a whole day of leave — useful for appointments, errands, or when someone just needs a shorter break.

Priya has a dentist appointment at 2 PM. Instead of booking the whole Tuesday off, she requests a half-day. She works the morning, logs off at noon, and only half a day comes out of her PTO balance.
Good to know
Half-day intervals are available on both the Core and Complete plans. If you need to break leave down further — into 1 hour, 30 minute, or 15 minute chunks — that's the Hourly option, which requires the Complete plan.

How to Enable Half-Day Intervals

Half-day intervals are controlled by the Shortest Leave Duration setting on a leave policy. You set it per Location and per Leave Type, so you can turn half-days on for Vacation but keep Sick Day as full-day-only if you want.

  1. Sign in at app.vacationtracker.io.
  2. In the left-hand menu, expand Leave Setup and click Locations.
  3. Click Edit Leave Policies on the Location you want to configure.
  4. Click the edit icon next to the leave policy you want to update (for example, Vacation or Personal Day).
  5. Find the Shortest Leave Duration drop-down.
  6. Select Half day.
Shortest Leave Duration drop-down expanded, showing Full Day, Half day, 1 hour, 30 minutes, and 15 minutes
  1. Click Update to save your changes.

Employees assigned to that Location and Leave Type will now see a Half day option when they submit a request for that leave type.

Shortest Leave Duration Options

The Shortest Leave Duration drop-down has five values, grouped into three levels of granularity. Click any option below for details.

Every leave request takes a minimum of one full working day out of the balance. This is the default for new policies and works well for companies that only track whole days.

Amy requests a single day off for a family event — that day is deducted from her PTO balance as one full day.

Users can request either a full day or a half day. When they pick Half day on a request, they choose the start hour for the half-day (for example 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12) — it's not locked to a fixed AM or PM block. 0.5 days is deducted from their balance instead of a full day.

Oscar has a 2 PM dentist appointment. He books a half-day starting at noon — 0.5 days come out of his balance, and his team sees him available in the morning.

On the Complete plan, the drop-down also includes 1 hour, 30 minutes, and 15 minutes. Employees pick the time block they'll be away, and leave is deducted in hourly fractions of a day.

Your team often steps out for errands or short appointments. Setting the shortest duration to 1 hour lets someone book a quick 2-hour gap in their day without using a half-day of PTO.

Want Even Shorter Intervals?

Hourly Intervals Complete

If half-days aren't flexible enough — say, an employee only needs 90 minutes for an appointment — Hourly Intervals on the Complete plan let them request leave in 1 hour, 30 minute, or 15 minute blocks. Same screen, same setting, just a more granular choice.

Set up Hourly Intervals
Tip
The Shortest Leave Duration setting is per Location and per Leave Type. You can allow half-days on Vacation while keeping Sick Day as full-day-only, or let one office use hourly while another stays on full days. Each policy is independent.

Common Questions

What's Next?

How Do I Create and Configure Leave Policies? How Do I Set Up and Configure Accruals? How Do I Set a Brought Forward (Rollover) Policy?
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Contact our Support team via email or chat, Monday to Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM EST.

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