Year-end without the spreadsheet panic
Leave carry-over that runs itself at year-end
Set your rollover caps, expiry dates and use-it-or-lose-it rules once — Absenca carries unused leave into the new year automatically, per office, with the maths already done.
Carry-over is where most leave spreadsheets fall apart. At year-end someone has to work out who had days left, how many roll forward, which ones are capped, and when the carried days expire — across every employee, often across offices with different leave years. Get one cell wrong and people either lose days they earned or take days they shouldn't have.
Absenca turns that annual scramble into a rule you set once. Define the cap, the expiry and whether it's use-it-or-lose-it, and the rollover happens on the right date for each office, with balances updated and an audit trail recorded. No manual reset, no carry-forward spreadsheet, no awkward conversations in January.
Max carry-over caps
Let people roll over unused leave up to a limit — say 5 days — and anything above it lapses. The cap is enforced automatically when the leave year rolls.
Expiry dates on carried days
Carried days can expire on a date you set — for example, use them by 31 March or lose them. Absenca tracks them separately and removes them when they lapse.
Use-it-or-lose-it
Prefer a clean slate each year? Set zero carry-over and unused days simply don't roll forward — the policy is applied for everyone, no exceptions to chase.
Per-office leave years
Each office can have its own leave-year start month, so carry-over runs on the right date for a January office and an April office alike.
How year-end processing works
When an office's leave year ends, Absenca looks at each employee's remaining balance, applies your carry-over cap, and moves the allowed days into the new year as a separate carried-over bucket. Anything over the cap lapses, and the new year's accrual or entitlement starts fresh on top.
Because it's tied to each office's leave-year start month, the rollover happens on the correct date wherever a team sits — there's no single org-wide reset to coordinate, and no need to remember to do anything.
Carried days, tracked separately and used first
Carried-over days are held as their own balance with their own expiry, so you can always see how much of someone's allowance is rollover versus this year's entitlement. When an employee books leave, carried days are drawn down first — so the ones with an expiry date get used before they lapse.
If carried days do expire unused, the balance updates on the expiry date and the change is recorded in the audit log, so there's never a mystery about where days went.
Set it once, see it before it happens
Carry-over is part of each leave type's policy, alongside accrual and entitlement — so you configure it in the same place, per office, and it just runs. You can set a cap of any size, an unlimited rollover, or none at all.
Employees see their carried-over days and any expiry date in their own balance view, so the rules are transparent rather than a surprise at year-end. Managers and admins get the same picture across the team.
Why teams choose Absenca
- Maximum carry-over caps, enforced automatically
- Expiry dates on rolled-over days (use them or lose them)
- Use-it-or-lose-it or unlimited rollover — your policy
- Per-office leave years, so year-end runs on the right date
- Carried days drawn down first and tracked separately
- Free for up to 15 people, then $0.75/user/month
Frequently asked questions
- What is leave carry-over?
- Carry-over (or rollover) is unused leave from one year that an employee can use in the next. Most policies cap how many days roll over and set an expiry date by which carried days must be taken, or apply a use-it-or-lose-it rule where nothing carries forward.
- Can I set a maximum number of days that carry over?
- Yes. You set a carry-over cap per leave type and office — for example 5 days — and Absenca rolls forward up to that limit at year-end, letting anything above it lapse automatically.
- Do carried-over days expire?
- They can. You can set an expiry date (for example, carried days must be used by 31 March), and Absenca tracks those days separately, draws them down first when leave is booked, and removes any that go unused past the expiry date.
- Does carry-over handle different leave years per office?
- Yes. Each office has its own leave-year start month, so year-end processing and carry-over run on the correct date for each location rather than a single org-wide reset.
- Can I turn carry-over off entirely?
- Yes — set zero carry-over for a use-it-or-lose-it policy and unused days won't roll forward, or set an unlimited cap to carry everything over. The rule applies to everyone automatically.