SOURCE: Vacation Tracker TITLE: What Is the Schedule and Flow of Leave Reminders? URL: https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/what-is-the-schedule-flow-of-leave-reminders/ LANG: en PUBLISHED: 2023-08-15 UPDATED: 2026-01-27 READING: 2 min SUMMARY: Leave reminders within Vacation Tracker are sent to Approvers to remind them to respond to a leave request. Vacation Tracker will send a maximum of 3 reminders per leave request. # What Is the Schedule and Flow of Leave Reminders? # What Is the Schedule and Flow of Leave Reminders? If you're seeing reminders land in Slack, Teams, or your inbox at predictable intervals, that's not random — Vacation Tracker runs every pending request through the same cadence. Three reminders, then expiry. The whole flow caps at seven business days for standard requests, and the schedule resets if the requester edits their leave. ## The Schedule at a Glance Reminders are counted in business days — weekends and configured holidays don't tick the clock forward. Each reminder rides on whatever channel the original leave request came through (Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email). Day 0 Request submitted — the original leave request goes to all Approvers on the Department. Day 1 1st reminder — sent the next business day if no decision yet. Day 3 2nd reminder — sent after 3 business days without a response. Day 5 3rd and final reminder — sent after 5 business days without a response. Day 7 Request expires — both the User and the Approver(s) get an "expired" notification. No further reminders are sent for that request. ### A Worked Example Say a User submits a request on Wednesday, August 2nd for a leave on August 14th, and the Approver is working a standard Mon–Fri week: - Thursday, August 3rd — 1st reminder. - Monday, August 7th — 2nd reminder (the weekend doesn't count). - Wednesday, August 9th — 3rd and final reminder. - Friday, August 11th — request expires; both parties notified. ## What Resets the Schedule #### The User edits the request If a User edits their leave request at any point before it's been responded to or expired, the reminder flow starts over from the beginning. The 1st reminder fires the next business day after the edit, the 2nd after 3 more business days, and so on. #### What doesn't reset it An Approver simply opening a notification, clicking through to the dashboard without acting, or reading an email isn't a "response" — it doesn't count. Only an explicit Approve or Deny action stops the reminder schedule for that request. ## Special Cases #### Auto-approved leave requests If the leave policy auto-approves the request (no approval routing required), no reminders are sent at all. The request goes straight from submission to approved without entering the reminder schedule. #### Multiple Approvers with different working weeks Each Approver's reminders follow their own working days. If two Approvers work different schedules — say one is Mon–Fri, another is Tue–Sat — the request expires 2 business days after the first Approver receives their third reminder. The "first Approver" here is whichever one's working day comes up first after the request is submitted. #### Past-dated leave requests If a User submits a request for dates that have already passed (where the leave policy allows it — see How Can Users Request a Past Leave? (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/how-can-users-request-a-past-leave/)), the reminder flow follows the same cadence but the request expires 2 business days after the final reminder — a total of 10 business days from submission rather than 7. #### The leave ends before the request would expire If the leave's end date arrives before the 7-business-day expiration timer runs out, the request expires at the end of the last day of leave — not on the original 7-day deadline. Example: a request submitted on May 7th for a leave on May 10th expires (if not responded to) at the end of the day on May 10th, since the leave is fully behind us by then. ## What Triggers a Reminder (and What Doesn't) The system only sends reminders for requests that are open and pending. As soon as one of these things happens, reminders for that request stop: - An Approver responds — approves or denies. - The request expires (after 7 business days for standard requests, 10 for past-dated). - The User cancels the request. - The leave is auto-approved by policy. ## Common Questions Why three reminders specifically — why not more? Three is the cap because reminder fatigue sets in fast. The first nudge catches the genuinely-forgot-about-it cases, the second flags the request as urgent, and the third is a last call before the system expires the request and the User has to start over. Going beyond three would just add noise without changing outcomes. Does the schedule respect company holidays? The schedule counts business days, which factors in weekends and the holidays configured for the user's Location. A statutory holiday on a Monday won't tick the reminder clock forward — the timer picks up on the next working day. Can I configure the cadence to be slower or faster for my Department? The reminder cadence is the same across the platform — it isn't a per-Department setting. What you can control is whether requests expire at all (the Leave Request Expiration toggle on each Department). Setting that to Yes keeps requests open until the leave end date, which essentially turns off the auto-expiry behavior. See How to Enable or Disable Leave Request Expiration? (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/how-to-enable-or-disable-leave-request-expiration/) ### What's Next? Why am I receiving reminders? (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/why-am-i-receiving-reminders/) Can I turn off leave reminders? (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/can-i-turn-off-leave-reminders/) What happens if a leave isn't responded to right away? (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/what-happens-if-a-leave-isnt-responded-to-approved-denied-right-away/) Need help? Contact our Support team via email (mailto:hello@vacationtracker.io) or chat (#), Monday to Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM EST.