Annual leave requests: required content, approval and a template

An annual leave request looks like a trivial formality, but it is the point where two sensitive things meet: the employee’s right to rest and the company’s need not to be left short-staffed. An unclear process — paper requests, approvals over WhatsApp, balances kept “from memory” — leads to confusion, lost days and, sometimes, pointless conflict. Here is what a leave request must contain, how it is approved properly and what happens to the days left untaken.

The legal framework: the right to leave is not up for negotiation

The right to paid annual leave is governed by the Labour Code (Codul Muncii, Legea nr. 53/2003), in the chapter on rest periods — in practice, articles 144–153. The essential points:

• The minimum duration is 20 working days per year (art. 145). The company may grant more, through the contract or the internal rules, but never less.
• The right to leave cannot be assigned, waived or limited. You cannot “sell” leave days for as long as the contract is active, and the employee cannot give them up even willingly.
• Leave is taken, as a rule, either in one block or split, provided that one of the parts is at least 10 consecutive working days.
• The period is set on the basis of an annual leave plan, usually drawn up by the end of the previous year — but the plan does not replace the request; the request remains the step through which the employee actually confirms the dates.

Important: public holidays and weekend days falling within the leave period are not deducted from the number of leave days taken. If an employee is on leave for 10 calendar days and a weekend or a public holiday falls within that interval, those days do not count as leave used.

Extra days for certain categories

The law provides additional leave days for certain categories of employees — for example people with disabilities, young people under 18 or those working in hard, dangerous or harmful conditions. The exact number of days and the specific categories are set by special laws, collective agreements or internal rules, so check the applicable rules as they stand at the date you draw up your internal leave policy.

What an annual leave request must contain

A properly completed request prevents blockages at approval or in the payroll calculation. The elements to keep in mind:

• The employee’s identification details — surname, first name, position, department.
• The period requested — start and end date, with the total number of working days.
• The type of leave — annual leave (so it is not confused with other absences: sick leave, unpaid leave, family events).
• The balance of days available at the date of the request (from the current year and, where applicable, carried over from the previous year).
• The person taking over the duties during the absence, if that matters for business continuity.
• Contact details during the leave, if the internal policy requires them (optional, not a legal obligation).
• The employee’s signature, then the approval of the employer or of the line manager.
• The date the request is submitted, useful for checking that notice was given.

Notice, the annual plan and the right to refuse

Ideally, a leave request is not submitted at the last minute: good practice — and often the internal rules — assume reasonable notice, so that the employer can organise the work and any cover. The annual leave plan, usually drawn up by the end of the previous year, sets indicative markers for each person; the actual request, submitted closer to the date, confirms and details those markers.

An essential distinction, often misunderstood: the employer cannot refuse to grant annual leave as such — it is a right guaranteed by law. What it can discuss and, within reasonable limits, adjust is when it is taken, if there are objective reasons (for example, team overlaps in critical periods). “You are not allowed to take leave this year” is not lawful; “we cannot approve exactly these dates, let us find another period nearby” is, as a rule, acceptable.

Untaken days: carry-over and cash compensation

• Carry-over is the usual solution: if the employee cannot take the leave, in whole or in part, for justified reasons, the employer has a legal obligation (art. 146(2) of the Codul Muncii) to grant the untaken leave within a period of 18 months, starting with the year following the one in which the right arose. This is a firm legal deadline, not a variable internal practice — once it expires, only the right to ask for the leave to be taken in kind is extinguished, not the right to cash compensation on termination of the contract (which is time-barred separately, after 3 years).
• Cash compensation for untaken days is allowed only on termination of the individual employment contract. For as long as the contract is active, leave cannot be “converted” into money — the employee has to actually take it.

For the company, this means that balances have to be tracked actively year by year, not simply calculated retrospectively when someone leaves — otherwise you risk large, unplanned compensation payments.

Annual leave request template

You can use the structure below as a starting point, adapted to the company’s internal format (on paper, by e-mail or as a digital form):

ANNUAL LEAVE REQUEST

To: [Company name / HR Department]

The undersigned [Surname First name], holding the position of [position],
in the [department] department, hereby request approval to
take annual leave for the following period:

From: [dd.mm.yyyy]
To: [dd.mm.yyyy]
Number of working days requested: [no.]

Balance of days available at the date of the request: [no.] days
(of which carried over from the previous year: [no.] days)

During my absence, my duties will be taken over by:
[Colleague name / "not applicable"]

Contact details during the leave (optional):
[phone / e-mail]

Date the request is submitted: [dd.mm.yyyy]

Employee signature: ___________________

Approved / Rejected (with reason): ___________________
Signature of line manager / HR: ___________________

Digitising the flow: from paper to approval in a few seconds

Requests on paper or by e-mail work at very small companies, but they quickly become hard to manage: requests lost in the inbox, balances calculated by hand in Excel, team overlaps spotted too late.

In Workly, the leave request is submitted directly from the application, reaches the right manager for approval automatically, and the balance of days updates in real time — including the carry-over of untaken days from the previous year, within the period allowed. Extra days for the categories entitled to them can be configured at internal policy level, without manual calculations.

And the question every employee asks constantly — “how many leave days do I have left?” — is answered by the internal assistant Modi, deterministic and with no external LLM: the balance shown comes straight from the account’s real data, not from an estimate generated by a language model.

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Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal or HR advice. Legislation may change, and internal rules differ from one company to another — always check the text of the Codul Muncii in force (legislatie.just.ro) or consult a specialist for your company’s specific situation.