Protect coverage when it matters most
Blackout periods that protect your peak season
Block or cap leave during your busiest weeks — across the whole org, a single office or one department — so nobody books time off when you can least afford to be short-staffed.
Every business has weeks it can't run a skeleton crew: retail in December, accounting at year-end close, a support team during a launch. Without a rule in place, those are exactly the weeks people request off — and a manager ends up declining leave by hand and explaining why. Blackout periods set the boundary once, up front, so the system holds the line for you.
In Absenca you mark a date range as a blackout, choose who it applies to, and add a message explaining why. From then on requests that fall inside it are flagged or blocked at the moment someone picks the dates — before it becomes an awkward conversation, and without anyone having to remember the policy.
Org, office or department scope
Black out the whole organisation, a single office location, or just one department — so a warehouse freeze doesn't stop the marketing team taking a day off.
Caught at request time
A request landing inside a blackout is flagged the instant an employee picks the dates, with your message explaining why — not after a manager has already started reviewing it.
Coverage protection that stacks
Use blackouts alongside max-simultaneous-absence limits per department, so you cap how many people can be off and ring-fence the weeks that matter most.
A reason people can see
Each blackout carries a short message — "year-end close", "peak holiday trading" — so employees understand the boundary instead of just hitting a wall.
Set the boundary once, not every December
A blackout period is a date range where leave is restricted. You give it a name, a start and end date, a scope and an optional message — for example "Peak trading: no annual leave, 1–24 Dec" applied to your retail office. Absenca then enforces it automatically for every employee in scope, every year you keep it in place.
Because the rule lives in the system, there's no policy doc to circulate and no manager left declining requests one by one. The employee sees the constraint while they're choosing dates, so most never submit a clashing request in the first place.
Scope it so it only hits the right people
Blackouts are scoped, not blunt. An org-wide blackout covers everyone; an office-level one covers a single location with its own busy season and timezone; a department-level one covers just the team under pressure. A finance team's year-end freeze doesn't have to ground the whole company.
This matters most for multi-office setups, where each location has its own leave year, work week and peak. Each office can carry its own blackout periods, so a December freeze in one country and a summer freeze in another coexist without conflict.
Blackouts plus the rest of your coverage rules
Blackout periods are one of several ways Absenca protects coverage. Pair them with a maximum number of people allowed off at once per department, clash detection on the shared calendar, and the wallchart view of who's already booked — so peak weeks are protected and ordinary weeks still flag a coverage gap before it happens.
Everything else keeps working as normal: balances, accruals, carry-over and approvals are untouched. A blackout simply governs when leave can be taken, not how it's counted.
Why teams choose Absenca
- Block or limit leave for your busiest dates
- Scope to the whole org, one office, or a single department
- Requests flagged at the moment dates are picked
- A visible message so employees know why
- Works alongside max-simultaneous-absence limits per team
- Free for up to 15 people, then $0.75/user/month
Frequently asked questions
- What is a blackout period?
- A blackout period is a date range when employees can't book leave — typically a peak season or critical deadline. In Absenca you set the dates, choose who it applies to, and add a message, and requests inside it are flagged automatically.
- Can I apply a blackout to just one team?
- Yes. A blackout can be scoped to the whole organisation, a single office location, or one department — so you can freeze leave for a warehouse or finance team without affecting everyone else.
- What happens when someone requests leave during a blackout?
- The request is flagged at the moment they pick the dates, with the message you set explaining why, so most people choose different dates before submitting anything.
- How is a blackout different from a max-absence limit?
- A blackout restricts leave for specific dates regardless of how many people are already off; a max-simultaneous-absence limit caps how many people in a department can be away at once on any day. They work together to protect coverage.
- Is this included for free?
- Yes — blackout periods are part of the leave policy tools, and Absenca is free for up to 15 people, then a flat $0.75 per user per month.