How to Approve Time Off in Microsoft Teams

A request lands while you're mid-meeting. You don't want to open a portal, find the right tab, and squint at a balance. You want to read it, check the calendar, and tap Approve without leaving the chat you already live in.

That's the whole point of approving time off inside Microsoft Teams. Below is exactly how it works for managers, including the routing and escalation rules that decide which requests reach you in the first place.

This is a manager-side guide to running leave inside the tools your team already uses. If you're still designing the rules behind it, start with how to set up leave policies, and the docs cover the integration setup step by step.

How do you approve a time-off request in Microsoft Teams?

When an employee submits a request, TimeLeaf sends an approval notification straight to the responsible manager in Teams. You read the details and approve or decline right there. The balance is deducted only on approval, never when the request is submitted.

Here's the flow end to end:

• An employee requests leave (vacation, sick, personal, parental, unpaid, bereavement, jury duty, or any leave type your admin defines) in TimeLeaf (web or mobile).
• TimeLeaf identifies the responsible manager from your org structure and routes the request to you in Teams.
• You get a Teams notification with the request details and act on it.
• The employee gets a confirmation message the moment you decide.
• On approval, the days come out of their balance and land on the shared team calendar.

No portal hop required for the routine yes/no. Microsoft Teams notifications are part of the Microsoft 365 integration, available on the Professional plan and above (alongside Entra ID directory sync, Outlook calendar sync, and Microsoft SSO).

What does a manager see in the Teams approval message?

The Teams notification gives you enough to decide without digging. You see who's asking, the leave type, the dates, whether it's a full or half day, and any note or required documentation they attached.

That context matters because a good approval is a fast one. Before you tap approve, the things worth a glance:

• The dates against the team calendar. TimeLeaf keeps a shared in/out/upcoming view that syncs with Outlook and Google Calendar, so you can see who else is already out.
• Blackout periods. If the dates fall inside a restricted peak window, TimeLeaf warns you and flags it, but it does not hard-block the request. You stay in control and can approve an exception or override.
• Overlaps. Conflicting requests are surfaced for you to decide, not auto-rejected.

You make the call. TimeLeaf surfaces the friction; it never silently blocks a person's leave.

Routing: direct manager, multi-level, or a designated approver

Who receives a request depends on the approval workflow your admin configured for that leave type. By default, requests route to the employee's direct manager, falling back to HR if no manager is assigned.

TimeLeaf supports four routing types, and you can set a different one per leave type:

• Direct manager is the default. Goes to the person the employee reports to.
• Multi-level escalates to a higher approver once a request crosses a day threshold (for example, anything over five days needs a second sign-off). Multi-level is available on Professional and above.
• Designated approver means a specific person owns approvals for a specific leave type. Parental leave can always route to HR, for instance, regardless of who the manager is.
• Auto-approve clears certain leave types automatically with no manager touch.

Fully custom routing logic (mixing and matching beyond these patterns) unlocks on Business and above. Single-level approval works on every plan, including Starter, but the Teams notifications themselves require Professional+. For the policy side of all this, see how to set up leave policies.

What happens when a request escalates after 48 hours?

If a pending request sits unactioned, TimeLeaf sends a reminder after 48 hours, then escalates after 5 days. Both timings are configurable, so you can tighten or loosen them to match how your team works.

This is the safety net for the request that slips past you while you're heads-down or out of office. Instead of an employee chasing you in a separate DM, the system nudges:

• At 48 hours: a reminder lands so the request doesn't go stale.
• At 5 days: it escalates beyond you so someone else can clear it.

For growing teams where one manager might field a dozen requests a week, this is the difference between leave that gets answered and leave that sits unanswered in a queue. Nobody has to remember to follow up, because the workflow does.

Approval delegation: covering while a manager is away

When you're the one taking time off, you can delegate your approvals for a date range so requests don't pile up behind you. Whoever you nominate receives your team's incoming requests in Teams for the window you set.

This solves the classic gap: the approver goes on holiday, and suddenly nobody can sign off on anyone else's holiday. With delegation set:

• Requests that would normally reach you route to your stand-in for the dates you specify.
• The handoff is scoped to that range and reverts automatically when it ends.
• Your team keeps moving without a manual reassignment scramble.

Set it before you leave, and the queue stays clear while you're out. It pairs naturally with the escalation rules above; both exist so no request is ever stuck waiting on one unavailable person.

Multi-level and custom routing: which plan unlocks what

The approval features available to you scale with your plan, so it's worth knowing where the lines fall before you design a workflow.

• Starter ($50/mo): single-level approval, team calendar, email notifications, blackout periods, CSV export, and GDPR tools. No Teams notifications, no multi-level routing.
• Professional ($90/mo, most popular): adds the full Microsoft Teams integration, multi-level escalation, designated approvers, approval delegation, directory sync, and SSO.
• Business ($120/mo): adds fully custom approval workflows on top of everything in Professional.
• Enterprise (custom): adds directory sync write-back and other org-scale controls.

Every plan includes 10 employees and then a flat per-extra-employee rate, with annual billing around 10% off. There's a 7-day free trial on every plan (a credit card is required to start), and most teams are set up in under 30 minutes. The full breakdown lives on the pricing page, and if you run shifts, shift scheduling and leave management covers how leave and rosters stay in sync.

Declines and cancellations: how balances are restored

When you decline a request, nothing is deducted, because the balance only moves on approval in the first place. When an already-approved request is later cancelled, TimeLeaf restores the days back to the employee's balance automatically.

Requests move through four clear statuses so there's never ambiguity about where a balance stands:

• Pending: submitted, awaiting your decision. No balance impact.
• Approved: you signed off. Days deducted, calendar updated.
• Declined: you said no. No deduction, ever.
• Cancelled: a previously approved request is withdrawn. Balance restored.

That symmetry is what keeps allowances accurate as plans change. An employee who books a week, then cancels because a project shifted, gets those days straight back without anyone editing a spreadsheet.

Approving time off in Teams is meant to be a five-second decision with the full picture attached. Set your leave policies and routing rules once, and the requests come to you already framed. Ready to try it? Start a free trial and approve your first request from Teams today.