The Friday Before Monday’s Leave
Leave starting on Monday is mentioned on Friday, because Friday is when a handover can still happen. Leave ending on Friday says who is back on Monday. A small reminder, timed by your working week rather than by the clock.
Leave is approved weeks in advance and forgotten the day after. Then Monday arrives, a colleague is not at their desk, and their open work has no owner. The approval was the right moment to decide; the Friday before is the right moment to remember.
The memo
For every approved leave request, AWRA sends two short reminders. The first goes on the last working day before the leave starts. The second goes on the last day of the leave and says which working day the person is back. Each is sent to the employee and, worded differently, to their line manager. Working days follow your own working week and public holidays.
Why Friday and not Sunday
A reminder the day before leave starts sounds sensible until the leave starts on a Monday. The day before is Sunday, when nobody is at work to hand anything over. So the reminder is not timed by the clock; it is timed by the working calendar. It goes on the last working day before the leave, which for Monday leave in a Monday-to-Friday organization is the Friday.
The working week is yours to set. An organization that works Sunday to Thursday gets the reminder on the Thursday before a Sunday start. Public holidays marked as days off are skipped the same way, so leave starting the day after a holiday is mentioned the working day before the holiday. Holidays you work through count as ordinary days.
What each person reads
| The employee | Their manager | |
|---|---|---|
| Before | Your annual leave runs from these dates; you are back on this day. Hand over anything open before you go. | This person is on leave from these dates. Check their work is covered. |
| At the end | Your leave ends today; you are back on this day. If you need more time, request it now. | This person is back on this day. A short catch-up helps them pick up what changed. |
Both carry the leave type, the dates, the number of days and the day back at work. The employee’s opens their own leave request; the manager’s opens the request on the approvals side. On a phone, each opens the request directly in the AWRA mobile app.
One-day leave, and staff without a login
A single day off gets the first reminder only. Nobody needs a welcome-back message about a day that ends the morning it starts.
Employees who have no AWRA account still get theirs. It comes by email with the private self-service link they already use to request leave, so the reminder reaches the warehouse and the field as well as the office. Their manager, if they have an account, gets the manager version as normal.
Only the leave in front of them
The reminder is about the leave that is about to start or end, and nothing earlier. Nobody is reminded about a leave request from last month.
The row is HR › Leave Starting / Ending in notification preferences, with separate switches for email, in-app and push. The reminder sits beside the leave management features: balances, two-level approval and the team calendar. The rest of the series starts with Reminded Before the Date.
Four questions about your leave handovers
When is someone reminded that their leave starts on Monday?
A good answer sounds like
On the Friday.
What it actually means
A reminder on Sunday arrives when no handover can happen.
Does the manager hear about it too?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, in their own words.
What it actually means
The manager is the one who finds cover. The employee already knows they are going.
Does it know your working week and holidays?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, from your own settings.
What it actually means
A calendar that assumes Monday to Friday is wrong for a large part of the world.
Do staff without a login get it?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, by email.
What it actually means
Otherwise the people least likely to have an account are the ones never reminded.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A reminder on the last working day before approved leave starts, timed by your working week and day-off holidays.
- A reminder on the last day of leave naming the working day the person is back; single-day leave gets the first only.
- Separate wording for the employee and their line manager, each opening the leave request on their own side.
- Email with the self-service link for employees without a login.
- Each reminder sent once, with email, in-app and push switches under HR in notification preferences.
More we can add to your workspace
- A named cover person on the leave request, told on the same Friday who they are covering for.
- An out-of-office reply set for the employee from the approved dates.
- A weekly who-is-away digest for a whole department, sent on the last working day of the week.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not move or cancel leave because work is uncovered. The reminder prompts a conversation; the decision stays with the manager and the employee.
A cover person and an automatic out-of-office are a natural pair, and we would scope them together.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsLeave management in AWRA
Leave types and balances, one or two approval levels, public holidays and the team calendar.
Read the feature pageFrequently asked questions
When does AWRA OpsHub remind an employee that their leave is starting?
On the last working day before it starts. Leave starting on a Monday is mentioned on the Friday, following your own working week and public holidays.
Is the line manager told about upcoming leave?
Yes. The employee’s line manager gets a separately worded reminder before the leave starts and when it ends, with the dates and the day the person is back.
Is there a reminder when leave ends?
Yes. On the last day of leave the employee and their manager are told which working day the person is back. Single-day leave gets only the first reminder.
Do employees without an AWRA account get leave reminders?
Yes. They get an email with the private self-service link they already use to request leave.
