Leave, balances and attendance for more than 1,300 outsourced employees in one system

Overview

The E-Zone leave management system tracks leave, balances and attendance for the outsourced employees on E-Zone HRM Limited's payroll, more than 1,300 people placed at a large client. Employees apply and see their balance, supervisors approve, and payroll gets a report of unpaid days. We built it from October 2025 and run it.

The challenge. Leave for a large, placed workforce has to follow rules: how much accrues, what carries forward, who is eligible for which leave, and what happens when the balance runs out. Without a system those rules live in spreadsheets and arguments.

What we built. A multi-employer Laravel application with three levels of access (employee, employer and cockpit), a balance engine with accrual and carry-forward, an action plan that explains a request before it is sent, attendance with shifts and holidays, and a small program that reads biometric devices in the office.

The result. As of 15 October 2026 the system holds 1,466 registered staff, 1,272 of them active, all on E-Zone's payroll, and has recorded 12,418 leave requests so far in 2026. Balances, approvals and unpaid-leave deductions follow one rule set.

The employee dashboard with standard balance, carry forward, pending requests, unpaid days and a leave breakdown by type

The employee dashboard on a phone

Feature list

The apply leave form showing each leave type's allowance, accrued, spent and remaining days, and an action plan that says the balance is sufficient

The leave type editor with eligibility, accrual, wait period, pro-rata calculation and carry-forward rules

The development journey

1. The balance engine (October 2025 to January 2026)

Challenge. Leave rules are easy to state and hard to calculate: pro-rating, carry-forward and adjustments.

Solution. A balance engine with accrual, carry-forward and manual adjustments, leave type eligibility and a request workflow with approvals and notifications.

2. A workforce, not a list (February to May 2026)

Challenge. The system had to work for a large placed workforce organised in units under line managers.

Solution. Organisation units, line managers, employee imports, eligibility by employment type, utilisation and balance reports and accrual settings in months.

3. Payroll and hardening (June to October 2026)

Challenge. Payroll needs unpaid days, and a multi-employer system must never show one employer another's data.

Solution. An LWP and salary-deduction report, a reversal notification, clear warnings when a request exceeds the balance, and fixes for a cross-tenant access gap and a balance race condition.

Every leave type has its own rules. An administrator sets who is eligible by gender and employment type, the maximum days a year, when earning starts, how long a new joiner waits before use, whether documents are required, whether leave may be spent in the year it is earned, how the year is calculated and whether it carries forward. Nothing is hard-coded to one policy.

Employees can read the policy for themselves. A policy page lists each leave type with its limits, how it is calculated, whether documents are needed and whether the employee is eligible, so questions go to the page before they go to HR.

The leave policy page showing annual, casual, sick, maternity and unpaid leave with limits, calculation and eligibility

Requests leave a trail. The employee sees each request with its supervisor and final approval status, and a notification when it is approved or reversed.

A list of recent requests with supervisor and final approval status

Notifications telling the employee that leave requests were finally approved

An approver sees the whole picture. The take-action page shows the request, the employee's tenure and salary exposure, the dates and a comparison with the other leave types before the approver decides. A request that falls to unpaid leave is flagged with a clear warning that salary will be deducted, and an approved request can be reversed.

The take-action page for a leave request, showing request context, leave type comparison and an unpaid leave warning

The employer sees the workforce at a glance. One employer dashboard shows registered staff, pending requests, who is out today and the active headcount, with leave trends and a split by leave type. An administrator can switch between employers.

The employer dashboard with registered staff, pending requests, staff on leave today and leave trends

Reports answer the questions payroll and managers ask. Nine reports sit under leave management:

• Leave requests: every request with its status, ready to approve or review.
• Employees on leave: who is out, and when they return.
• Leave by weekday: which days of the week absence clusters on.
• Leave balance report: each employee's allowance, accrued, spent and remaining days.
• Leave balance summary: the balances rolled up by unit.
• Attendance gap report: days with no attendance and no leave to explain them.
• Presence calendar: who is in and out across the month.
• Leave utilisation dashboard: days lost, requests, average duration, peak month and the weight of each leave type.
• Leave liability report: the value of leave owed.

The leave utilisation dashboard with total days lost, requests, average duration, peak month, monthly absence and weight by leave type

The system explains itself. A docs centre inside the portal holds an employee guide with step-by-step help on checking a balance and applying for leave, plus guides for the employer and cockpit panels.

The in-app docs centre with the employee leave application guide

What changed for E-Zone and its clients

Engineering by the numbers

From 16 October 2025 to 1 October 2026 the history records 127 commits after the first, adding about 51,500 lines of authored code and removing about 9,300. The effort is estimated at about 520 hours, or roughly 65 working days, with a range of about 280 to 1,330 hours. The estimate is derived from commit size, not time sheets.

What it adds up to

E-Zone now runs leave for a large placed workforce with rules the system enforces, a trail for every decision and a report payroll can use.