Leave management · South Africa
Every day of leave, accounted for.
AwayDesk keeps leave requests, approvals, balances and records in one place for South African businesses. It handles annual, sick and family leave the way the Basic Conditions of Employment Act counts them, and hands payroll a clean month-end file.
- Staff need no email address
- Works in any phone browser
- Leave in days or hours
Leave register
December 2026
T. Mokoena
Annual leave
- Earned this leave year
- 15.00
- Leave, 7–11 Dec
- −5.00
- Shutdown, 24 Dec – 1 Jan
- −5.00
- Balance at year end
- 5.00
Weekends and public holidays never come off a balance
Sunday public holidays move to the Monday
Sick leave counted over a 36-month cycle
Carried leave expires only after written notice
What it does
Built for the way leave actually works here.
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Requests in days or hours
Employees ask for leave from their phone. A two-hour appointment comes off as a share of your working day, not a whole one. Every request needs a reason; you approve or decline with a note.
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Your rules, per business and per person
Set up your own leave types: how many days, earned monthly or all at once, whether unused days carry over and when they expire. Give a senior manager 21 days without changing anyone else.
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Doctor's notes, kept private
Notes and supporting documents are attached to the request and stored privately. You decide which leave types need one before they can be approved.
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Carried leave that expires properly
Unused days move into the new leave year and expire when your policy says. Employees are told three months and one month before, and their acknowledgement is recorded.
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Who is away, at a glance
A leave calendar, a this-week view with departments that are short, and a Monday-morning email to administrators. Chosen managers can see their own departments' leave.
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Staff without email or a desk
People sign in with your company code and a username. A leave capturer can log leave for staff on the floor, so nobody is left out of the record.
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Records that stay put
Every request, decision, balance correction and notice goes into an audit trail that cannot be deleted. When a question comes up months later, the answer is there.
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Reports you can act on
See who has used how much sick leave, how often, and how much falls next to a weekend, by employee and by department. See who has leave at risk of expiring, and your total leave liability.
Month-end
Payroll gets a file, not a phone call.
At month-end, download the approved leave for the month as Excel or CSV: per employee and line by line, with each leave type's payroll code, paid or unpaid, and balances at the month end. Leave that runs into the next month is split, so only the days in the month are counted.
Using Sage VIP or another payroll system? Send us its leave import layout and we will match the file to it.
| Emp. no. | Employee | Code | From | To | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E0142 | T. Mokoena | AL01 | 07 Dec | 11 Dec | 5.00 |
| E0107 | R. Pillay | AL01 | 01 Dec | 11 Dec | 9.00 |
| E0118 | J. van Wyk | SL01 | 14 Dec | 14 Dec | 0.25 |
| E0142 | T. Mokoena | AL01 | 24 Dec | 31 Dec | 5.00 |
| E0107 | R. Pillay | AL01 | 24 Dec | 31 Dec | 5.00 |
Example rows. Highlighted: the year-end shutdown.
Closing over the year-end?
Enter the shutdown dates once. AwayDesk books the working days as leave for everyone, or just the departments that close, skips public holidays and days people already booked, and shows you who would go below zero before anything is saved. Changed your mind? Undo puts every day back.
Getting started
Three steps to get going.
- 1
We set up your business
Your company code, your first administrator, and your leave types to start from.
- 2
Bring your people across
Fill in our Excel template, including the leave days people already have, and import it in one go.
- 3
Everyone signs in
Send set-password links by email, or hand out temporary passwords to staff without email.
Each business is separate
Every record belongs to one business, and every request for data is checked against who is asking. Employees see their own leave; managers see only the departments you allow.
Private by default
The browser never touches the database tables: it can only call functions that check who is asking. Doctor's notes sit in private storage that only the employee, whoever logged the request and your administrators can open.
Nothing quietly disappears
Requests and decisions are never deleted. Changes to leave rules, balances and access are logged with who made them and when.
Pricing
One price. Everything included.
You pay for the employees on the system, nothing per feature.
Provisional
R25
per active employee, per month
- Leave requests, approvals and balances
- Your own leave types and rules
- Doctor's notes and the full audit trail
- Month-end payroll file and reports
- Year-end shutdowns
- Monday email of who is away
Pricing is not final. Final pricing, and any trial, will be confirmed with you in writing before you commit to anything.
Questions
Good to know.
Does it work with Sage VIP?
AwayDesk gives you a month-end leave file in Excel or CSV, with your own payroll code on each leave type and employees matched by employee number. Send us a sample of VIP's leave import layout and we will set the file up to match it.
Do employees need an email address?
No. They sign in with your company code, a username and a password. If they do have an email address, you can send them a link to choose their own password.
Can different employees have different leave terms?
Yes. Your leave types set the defaults, and any employee can have their own number of days for any type.
What about leave people have already built up?
Import it with your employees. Days brought over can be marked as protected prior leave: they never expire and are used only after the current year's leave.
Does it follow the Basic Conditions of Employment Act?
The starting leave types follow the Act's minimums for a five-day week: 15 working days of annual leave a year, 30 days of sick leave over 36 months, and 3 days of family responsibility leave. You can change them to match your contracts. Confirm your leave policy with your labour adviser.
Is there an app to install?
No. AwayDesk runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer.
Where does our data live?
AwayDesk runs on Supabase (the database, sign-in and document storage) and Cloudflare (the website). The privacy policy sets out how information is handled.
Book a demo
See it with your leave rules.
Tell us a little about your business and we will be in touch to set up a demonstration, using your leave types and a few of your real situations.
We use these details only to reply to your request. See the privacy policy.
Received
Thank you. We have your request.
We will contact you to arrange a time.