HR & internal
Time off request
The cover question is what makes this better than an email — it's the thing a manager would have to ask before approving anyway.
- Questions
- 7
- Takes about
- 2.5 min
- Style
- One page
- Scoring
- None
Free, no card. It lands in your workspace as an editable draft.
Worth knowing
- The welcome screen and the intro text above the first question carry example turnaround times, policies and promises. Rewrite them as yours before you publish — they are the part respondents take literally.
What's in it
Request time off
Welcome screen
Give as much notice as you can; a fortnight for anything over three days · Arrange cover b…
Rich text
- 1
Your name*
Short text
- 2
What kind of leave?*
Annual leave · Sick leave · Parental leave · Unpaid · +1
Multiple choice
- 3
First day away*
Date
- 4
Last day away*
Date
- 5
How many working days is that?
Number
- 6
Who's covering?
Short text
- 7
Anything else your manager should know?
Long text
Sent for approval
Ending
How to use this template
Open it as a draft
Press "Use this template" and it lands in your workspace as an editable form with all 7 questions already in it. No card, and nothing is published until you say so.
Cut what you do not need
Every question you remove is one fewer reason to abandon the form. It takes about 2.5 minutes to fill in as it stands, and that is the number worth protecting.
Add from the question bank
Pick what you are missing from the questions below. Drag any of them in, change the wording, and use conditional logic so people only see the ones that apply to them.
Share it, or put it on your own site
Publish to get a link, or embed it in a page you already have. Answers arrive in your dashboard, and you can send them on to anywhere else with a webhook or an integration.
32 time off request form questions to choose from
Holiday requests are simple until two people ask for the same week. The form should capture the dates and the cover; the approval belongs wherever your team already works.
Ask about handover. It is the question that decides whether the time off is actually restful.
The request
- What is your name?
- Which team are you in?
- Who is your manager?
- What type of leave is this? (Holiday, sick, parental, unpaid, other)
- What is the first day you will be off?
- What is the last day?
- How many working days is that?
- Is any of it a half day?
Balance and entitlement
- How many days do you have left this year?
- Is any of this carried over from last year?
- Does this take you over your entitlement?
- Are you requesting unpaid leave?
- Is this part of a longer break?
- Have you already booked travel?
- Is the date flexible if there is a clash?
- Is there a reason it cannot move?
Cover and handover
- Who will cover your work?
- Have you agreed that with them?
- What is in progress that someone needs to pick up?
- Are there deadlines falling in this period?
- Are there meetings someone needs to attend?
- Where is the handover documentation?
- Who should people contact in your absence?
- Is there anything that only you can do?
While you are away
- Will you be contactable in an emergency?
- How, and at what number?
- Which time zone will you be in?
- Should we set an out-of-office for you?
- What should it say?
- Is there anyone who should know you are away?
- When will you be back at your desk?
- Anything else your manager should know?
Time Off Request form questions, answered
- What should a time off request form ask?
- Dates, type of leave, and who is covering. The cover question is what turns a request into something a manager can approve without a follow-up conversation.
- How do I route time off requests to the right manager?
- Ask which team they are in and send the notification based on that answer, so each manager only sees their own people's requests.
- Can employees see their remaining holiday in the form?
- Not automatically, because the form does not hold your HR records. Ask them to state it, or link to wherever the balance lives so it is one click away.
- Can I approve requests from the form?
- Push each submission into the tool your team already uses with a webhook or an integration. Approvals belong where managers already are rather than in a second inbox.
- Is this time off request form template free?
- Yes. Use it, publish it and collect answers on the free plan with no card. Paid plans add things like payments, scheduling, removing our badge and your own domain, but none of them are needed to run this form.
- Do I need an account to use it?
- You need one to edit and publish, because the form has to live somewhere and the answers have to come back to you. Signing up takes about a minute and does not ask for a card. The people filling your form in never need an account.
- Can I change the questions?
- All of them. The template is a starting point, not a fixed form: add, remove, reword and reorder anything, change the look, and use logic so people only see the questions that apply to them.
- Can I put it on my own website?
- Yes. Embed it in a page you already have, or share the link. On a paid plan you can serve it from your own domain so the address says your name rather than ours.
- Where do the answers go?
- Into your dashboard, where you can read, search and export them as CSV. You can also have each response emailed to you, pushed to another tool with a webhook, or sent to a connected integration.
- How long does this form take to fill in?
- About 2.5 minutes as it stands, across 7 questions. Every question you cut brings that down, and shorter forms get finished more often.
Worth reading next
- The forms your team needs and nobody builtMost small businesses run half their internal processes through email threads and memory. A form is usually a better answer than a system.
- How to Collect Files and Documents Through a FormCVs, photographs, certificates and signed documents: size limits, file types, security, and why a required upload loses people.