An annual leave tracker in SharePoint sounds like a quick job: a list for requests, a flow for approvals and somewhere to see who is away. The trouble starts with the questions a UK employer gets every week. How much holiday does a part-time starter have left? Does Easter Monday count for the team in Glasgow? How many days can someone carry over after a long sickness absence?
Whether you call it SharePoint leave management or a holiday tracker in Microsoft 365, the same rules apply. This post covers those rules, what SharePoint and Power Automate can do on their own, where that runs out, and how HRPoint handles leave in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.
What UK holiday rules does a leave tracker have to follow?
GOV.UK's guide to holiday entitlement sets out the baseline. These are the points that matter most for a tracker:
- 5.6 weeks a year. Almost all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year. Most people on a 5-day week must get at least 28 days, and statutory paid holiday is capped at 28 days, so someone working 6 days a week still gets 28.
- Part-time is pro rata. A part-time worker on regular hours all year gets at least 5.6 weeks, which comes to fewer than 28 days. Someone working 3 days a week gets at least 16.8 days.
- Bank holidays can count. Bank holidays do not have to be given as paid leave, and an employer can choose to include them in statutory annual leave. Your tracker has to know which approach you take.
- Irregular hours and part-year workers. For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, these workers build up leave from the hours they have worked in each pay period, rather than getting a fixed number of days.
- Starters part way through the year. A new starter is only entitled to part of the year's leave, depending on how much of the leave year is left.
- Leave keeps building during absence. Holiday builds up during maternity, paternity and adoption leave, and while someone is off sick.
- Leavers are paid for untaken leave. The only time statutory leave can be paid instead of taken is when someone leaves, and employers must pay for untaken statutory leave.
Carry-over
The contract says how many days can be carried into the next leave year. If a worker gets 28 days, they can carry over a maximum of 8. Leave missed because of family-related leave can be carried over. Leave missed through sickness can be carried over up to 20 of the 28 days for regular-hours workers, or up to 28 days for irregular-hours and part-year workers. The whole entitlement can be carried over if the worker was not given a reasonable opportunity to take it, or was not told they would lose it.
Notice and refusals
Unless the contract says something different, a worker gives notice at least twice as long as the leave they want, plus 1 day. An employer can refuse or cancel leave by giving as much notice as the leave requested, plus 1 day. Employers can refuse leave at a certain time, but cannot refuse to let workers take their leave at all.
Records
This is the one most home-made trackers miss. GOV.UK's holiday pay guidance says that from 6 April 2026, employers must keep detailed records of annual leave and holiday pay for at least six years from the date they were made, such as the number of days taken and the holiday pay paid. You choose how to keep them, but you may have to pay a fine if you cannot show that you keep them.
Do bank holidays differ across the UK?
Yes, and a tracker that assumes one calendar gets balances wrong for anyone outside England and Wales. The GOV.UK bank holidays list gives separate dates for each part of the UK:
- England and Wales share one list.
- Scotland has a holiday for 2 January and St Andrew's Day, has no Easter Monday, and its summer bank holiday falls at the start of August rather than the end.
- Northern Ireland adds St Patrick's Day and the Battle of the Boyne (Orangemen's Day) to the holidays England and Wales have.
Some holidays move to a substitute day when they fall at a weekend, so the dates change each year. Northern Ireland's employment guidance is published on nidirect, which confirms the 5.6-week statutory minimum can include bank and public holidays. If you employ people in more than one nation, each person needs the right calendar.
What can SharePoint and Power Automate do on their own?
Quite a lot, as long as you build it. A do-it-yourself tracker usually has three parts:
- A list for requests. A SharePoint list holds each request: who, from, to, type and status. Microsoft's built-in list templates cover things like travel requests, recruitment and employee onboarding, so a leave list is usually designed by hand.
- A flow for approvals. Power Automate approvals can start when a new item is added to a list, and Microsoft names holiday requests as one of the common uses. Approvers can respond from Outlook, an adaptive card in Teams or the Power Automate action centre. The approvals connector is a standard connector, so an Office 365 licence that includes Power Automate is enough to create the flow.
- Leave requests in Microsoft Teams. The Approvals app in Microsoft Teams lets someone start an approval from a chat, a channel conversation or the app itself, without building a flow. Approvers get a notification and can review and act on the request.
That covers the request and the yes or no. It does not cover the questions HR is actually asked.
Where a list and a flow fall short
- Balances. A list records requests, not entitlements. Someone has to set each allowance, subtract what has been taken and booked, and explain the answer when asked.
- Pro-rata. Part-time patterns, mid-year starters, leavers and changes of hours all change an allowance. Each is a formula you write and test.
- Irregular hours. Accrual per pay period, from hours actually worked, needs hours data and rounding rules, not a simple days column.
- Bank holidays in each nation. You need a calendar per nation, updated every year, and a rule for whether bank holidays come out of the allowance.
- Carry-over. The statutory cap, the sickness and family leave exceptions and your own contract rules all have to be applied at year end.
- Who else is off. A manager can look across approved requests, but the person asking rarely sees, before they press send, that two colleagues are already away that week.
- Approvals that explain themselves. Power Automate keeps an approvals history, but linking each decision, and who made it, to the balance it changed is extra work.
- Records and privacy. Holiday records must be kept for at least six years, and GOV.UK's guidance on data protection and staff records says only appropriate staff should see staff records. In one shared list, that means careful permissions on every item.
- Upkeep. Rules change, and the person who built the flow may not be there next year.
None of this is impossible, but it is a small software project that needs an owner who stays.
What does a UK-ready annual leave tracker need?
- Allowances in days or hours, from each person's working pattern and contract.
- Pro-rata for part-time staff and anyone who starts, leaves or changes hours mid-year.
- Accrual for irregular-hours and part-year workers.
- The right bank holiday calendar for each nation, and your rule on whether bank holidays count.
- Carry-over that follows your contract and the statutory exceptions.
- A view of who else is off, before a request is sent.
- Approvals where managers already work, with a record of each decision.
- Balances anyone can have explained.
- Records you can produce when asked.
- Reports on holiday liability and absence, and an export for payroll.
How HRPoint tracks annual leave in SharePoint and Teams
HRPoint is our UK HR app for Microsoft 365. Leave, sickness, Statutory Sick Pay and right to work follow UK law, with Northern Ireland's differences, and the app runs on SharePoint in your own tenant and in Microsoft Teams. For annual leave, that means:
- Holiday worked out. Days or hours, pro-rata, irregular hours, each nation's bank holidays and carry-over.
- "Explain my balance" on every balance. Staff and managers can see how a figure was reached, instead of asking HR.
- Who else is off. Before a leave request is sent, HRPoint shows who else in the team is off.
- A decision record for every approval. Each approval step is recorded, and each person has one dated record, so history is never overwritten.
- The day at a glance. The first screen answers the day: who is out, your balance and your approvals.
- Reports and payroll export. Holiday liability, absence rate, headcount, turnover, starters and leavers, plus payroll export files for your provider.
Leave sits beside the rest of the employee record: sickness and family leave, right to work, and policies with acknowledgements. Your HR data stays in your Microsoft 365 tenant, and HRPoint needs no extra permissions to start.
Can staff request leave in Microsoft Teams?
Yes. For a simple yes or no, the Teams Approvals app or a Power Automate approval card does the job. With HRPoint, the request, the balance behind it and the view of who else is off are in one place. Staff use the Microsoft 365 account they already have, on a desk or on a phone, so there is no separate HR system to log in to.
Try it on your own leave rules
HRPoint has a 14-day trial of every feature that starts when set-up finishes, with no licence key and no form. Set it up with a few real working patterns, a part-time starter and someone in Scotland or Northern Ireland, then check the balances against your own figures. To talk through your leave rules first, book a free 30-minute call with APPS 365.
