Three worked leave examples
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Seniority tiers, unlimited sick leave and sub-day leave, with the arithmetic worked through
Three short scenarios that show the leave model with concrete numbers, each building on the default policies from How leave works in SquadBear.
Seniority tiers
An accrual rule can rise with tenure. The default Vacation policy grants 26 days a year, rising to 30 after 5 years, configured as a tier at Workspace settings → Leave policies → [policy] → Accrual schedule. By default a tier counts calendar years from the Start date on the employee record - the accrual year minus that date's year.
Grant increases with on that card picks what the tiers count from, for the whole policy: Time here (the default), Career service - the person's Career service since date on their profile, which covers earlier employers and any statutory credit for education - or Age, from their date of birth. Radio buttons below it set whether a tier replaces the grant or adds to it; under adds to it the tiers do not accumulate, so someone past three tiers gets the highest one's bonus, not the sum of all three. If a person has no career-service date or date of birth on file, their tier counts from their employment start date instead.
Tomasz started at Northlake in 2019. In the 2026 accrual year his clock reads 7, past the 5-year tier, so his entitlement is 30 days rather than 26.
Unlimited sick leave
Sick leave defaults to a policy with 0 days annual accrual - the sentinel that means "not balance-tracked" rather than "no days available." There is no balance row, so nothing is checked and nothing is deducted. Approval is a separate setting - the seeded Sick leave policy sets Approval mode to Auto-approve, so a request is approved on submission.
The employee profile's Leave tab reads Unlimited for a leave type like this instead of a day count, with not balance-tracked beneath it. It carries no chip on My leave's balance strip and no balance suffix in the request form's type picker.
Marta takes 2 days of sick leave. Nothing is deducted anywhere, because there is no balance to deduct from - her profile's Leave tab still reads Unlimited afterward.
Sub-day leave
Sub-day leave applies to single-day requests only - start date equals end date. A partial amount on a range is rejected. The policy's Booking increment sets the smallest bookable slice: full days, half days, 2-hour blocks, or 1-hour blocks. A half day charges half that date's scheduled hours; an hourly increment charges exactly the hours requested, in whole multiples of the increment; more than that date's scheduled hours is rejected. The default Vacation policy allows half days; the default Unpaid leave policy books whole days only, so a sub-day request against it fails validation instead of rounding up.
Aleksandra books a half day of Vacation for a Friday scheduled at 8 hours. Her balance moves by 4 hours, not a full day, and the request reads "0.5 days" across the app. Picking Full day instead charges the full 8 hours.