AddSynapse Leave Calendar · free WordPress plugin
Employee leave calendar for WordPress: requests, approvals and balances
Employees request leave, managers approve or reject it, and every employee keeps a yearly balance. Only real working days are charged — on any working week and in any country.
The plugin is free. No account, key or payment is needed — install it on any site, including a local one. Write to us and we will send you the plugin.
Requires WordPress 6.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later · tested up to WordPress 7.1.
Only real working days are charged
All charged days come from a single calculation, so the number shown on a request always matches the days deducted from the balance.
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Each employee has their own working week
Tick the days they actually work — Monday to Friday, Sunday to Thursday, a six-day week, anything. There is no fixed weekend built in.
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Public holidays are never charged
Holidays live in calendars, so a company with people in several countries or regions can keep a set for each. A single-country company just uses the shared one.
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Days off are skipped
Days outside an employee's working week, and holidays in their calendar, are not deducted. They can fall inside a request, but they cannot start or end one.
A person on a Sunday-to-Thursday week in the Gulf and a person on a Monday-to-Friday week in Europe can take the same calendar week off — and each is charged their own five days.
Leave management, inside the WordPress you already have
For the people who ask for leave and for the people who approve it.
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Requests, approvals and balances
Leave requests with approve and reject for managers, a yearly entitlement per employee and an optional carry-over of last year's unused days, with an optional deadline. Optionally, a manager's own leave must be approved by somebody else.
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Team calendar: day, week, month and year
See who is away. The day view shows the whole stretch of each person's leave; the year view shows all twelve months with a number on each day. Public holidays carry their name, and full screen gives the grid the whole window.
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A page of their own for employees
The plugin creates a front-end page and sends employees there when they log in: their balance, their own leave, the request form, who else in their team is away, the year's public holidays and company shutdowns, and their account.
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A date picker that explains every day
Days outside the working week, public holidays, company shutdowns, short-staffed days and days already booked are shown before anything is submitted — and the working days being charged are counted as the dates are chosen.
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Public holidays for 15 countries
Worked out by the plugin for Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Ireland and the United Kingdom — or imported from an .ics or CSV file for anywhere else. Always previewed before anything is saved.
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E-mail for the whole cycle
Managers hear about a new request, the employee hears the decision, and whoever is now out of date hears when a request is withdrawn or removed. An optional daily note chases anything unanswered, and anyone can switch their own leave e-mail off.
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CSV import and export for payroll
A template to fill in, an import that is checked and previewed before a single record is written, and exports per request, per charged day (the shape a payroll system wants) and per person per month — or for one employee.
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A dashboard widget for managers
What is waiting, with approve and reject on the spot, who is off today, how many are off over the next seven days, and anyone past their entitlement. A count sits on the Leave menu, like the one on Comments.
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A history of every change
Every leave record created, edited, decided on or removed, with who did it and when — so a disputed balance can be traced to whoever changed it.
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Leave types you control
The starting leave types are created in the site's language. Every type can be edited, retired and brought back, and any type can require a written reason.
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Built for staff screens
A dedicated «Employee (leave)» role keeps people out of wp-admin. Staff screens list only the people who may ask for leave, with search, pages and bulk actions for entitlements and working weeks — they work at a hundred employees.
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Run the site as a leave app
«Site features» switches turn off the parts of WordPress a leave tool does not need — sign-ups, comments, posts, media, feeds, the toolbar — one at a time or all at once, every one reversible. The leave page can be drawn without the theme.
Warnings for the manager, never blocks
- Teams can have a minimum number of people who must stay present. When a request would go below it, the manager sees a warning.
- Closed periods — a stock take, a peak season, a shutdown — for the whole company or one team, optionally repeating every year.
- Both are advisory: the request is never blocked, the manager decides. A leave system that refuses to record something gets worked around; recording it with a note is better.
Up and running in four steps
No account, key or payment — install it on any WordPress site.
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Install the plugin
Upload the addsynapse-leave-calendar folder to /wp-content/plugins/, or install it from the Plugins screen.
Get the plugin -
Activate it
The database tables and the employee page are created on activation.
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Open Leave Calendar
In wp-admin, open the AddSynapse menu and choose Leave Calendar.
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Set up your company
Add your public holidays, set each employee's yearly entitlement and working week, and create teams if you need a minimum presence.
Want to look before you set it up? One button creates two demo employees with leave across this year and the next — no e-mail is sent — and another removes them again.
Shortcodes
The employee page is an ordinary WordPress page holding [asleave_portal]. Rename it, add it to a menu or restyle it; the sections are also available on their own:
[asleave_portal]everything, in tabs[asleave_my_leave]the balance and this year's leave[asleave_request_form]the request form with the date picker[asleave_team_absences]who else in the team is away[asleave_holidays]public holidays and company shutdowns
Your leave data stays on your site
The plugin keeps leave in its own database tables and never sends leave data anywhere.
- It stores WordPress user ids and the leave dates themselves — no other personal data.
- The «who is away» view shows colleagues' dates without the type of leave.
- It makes no outbound request of its own, except the optional AddSynapse account check — off by default, and it sends only this site's identifier, never requests, dates, balances or names.
- If AddSynapse is unreachable, nothing changes: every screen keeps working.
- Deleting the plugin removes its tables, the page it created, its options, its user meta and the role it added.
Frequently asked questions
- Does it cost anything?
- No. The plugin is free.
- How can I try it?
- Install and activate it on any site, including a local one. No account, key or payment is needed.
- Can employees in different countries use the same site?
- Yes. Give each employee their own working week and point them at a public-holiday calendar for their country or region. A person on a Sunday-to-Thursday week and a person on a Monday-to-Friday week can take the same calendar week off and each be charged their own five days.
- Does a closed period or a short-staffed day stop a request?
- No. Both produce a warning for the manager, who decides. The request is never blocked.
- Do employees need to use wp-admin?
- No. People in the «Employee (leave)» role are kept out of wp-admin and sent to their own leave page when they log in. Managers are unaffected.
- Does it send data to an external service?
- Only if you choose to connect an AddSynapse account, and even then only this site's identifier — never leave requests, dates, balances or employee names.
- What happens if AddSynapse is unreachable?
- Nothing changes. Every screen keeps working, and the plugin keeps the plan it was last told rather than demoting the site.
- What data does it store?
- WordPress user ids and leave dates, in its own database tables. Deleting the plugin removes those tables.
Leave requests, approvals and balances — in WordPress
Free. Only real working days are charged.