Last updated on October 15, 2026
What Happens If a Leave Isn't Responded to Right Away?
A pending request doesn't sit there forever. Vacation Tracker pings the Approver with reminders, gives them the option to snooze any single one, and — if no decision lands by the deadline — expires the request automatically. The User then has to resubmit. Three moving parts: reminders, snooze, and expiration.
How Long Until It Expires?
The clock counts in business days, respecting weekends and the Approver's working schedule. The expiration deadline is:
If the request hasn't been approved or denied by that deadline, it expires automatically — the leave doesn't auto-approve or auto-deny, it simply lapses, and the User has to submit a fresh request to get those dates off. Both the User and the Approver(s) get a notification confirming the expiration.
The Department's Leave Request Expiration setting also factors in. If a Department has the toggle set to "Yes, keep future pending requests open until the leave end date," requests on that Department don't expire on the 7-day clock at all — they stay open until the leave dates themselves arrive. See How to Enable or Disable Leave Request Expiration?
What Happens While It's Pending
Between submission and expiration (or response), Vacation Tracker runs the request through a fixed cadence. Two main moving parts an Approver will notice — reminders and snooze.
1. Reminders go out automatically
The first reminder lands on the next business day after submission. A second arrives after 3 business days, and a third — the final one — after 5 business days. These are sent on whatever channel the original request came through (Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email). For the full cadence, see What is the schedule / flow of leave reminders?
2. Approvers can snooze individual reminders
Reminders are automated and can't be turned off, but they're not all-or-nothing. Each leave request reminder includes a snooze action — useful when an Approver knows they're going to act on it but not at this exact moment. Snoozing one reminder doesn't stop the schedule from running on the rest; the next reminder in the cadence still arrives on its scheduled day.
3. The request expires if no one acts
Once the deadline above passes, the request lapses. Both the User who submitted it and the Approver(s) get a notification confirming the expiration, and the User has to submit a new request from scratch if they still want those dates off.
Common Questions
The original leave request lands on whatever channel they're set up on — a Slack DM, a Microsoft Teams card, or an email. Each reminder is the same kind of notification with the same Approve / Deny / Snooze actions, plus context that says it's a reminder. The dashboard also shows pending requests in the Approver's queue.
Snooze suppresses that particular reminder for a short window, but it doesn't stop the underlying reminder schedule. If the request is still pending when the next scheduled reminder is due (the 2nd or 3rd in the cadence), that one will still arrive normally. Snooze is per-reminder, not per-request.
Yes. The expiration notification goes to both the User and the Approver(s) — the User is told their request expired without a decision, and the Approver(s) see the same. The request itself is marked as expired in the User's profile. To get the time off, the User needs to submit a new request.
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