Every leave the trust grants — defined once. CL, SL, EL, Maternity — one catalogue.
A single page to register every leave the school's appointment letter promises — Casual, Sick, Earned, Maternity, Paternity, Compensatory, On-Duty. Set paid versus unpaid, carry-forward caps, encashment, gender eligibility, notice period, document requirement, and which departments each leave applies to. Every downstream allocation, application and balance flows from this one catalogue.
How most Indian schools handle leave types today
The leave clause in the appointment letter says fifteen days of Casual Leave, ten days of Sick Leave and earned leave 'as per trust policy'. Nobody on the office staff has the trust circular handy. The Maternity Leave clause was added in 2018 by an addendum that nobody can find. The new joiner asks the head clerk how many casual leaves she has, the head clerk says 'I think 15', and the answer is wrong by two days because the joining was after October.
When the Hindi PGT applies for ten consecutive days of leave, the office stares at the application. Is this within her CL or her EL allowance? Does the trust allow CL and EL together for the same spell? Is encashment available at the end of the year, or only at exit? The head clerk shrugs, the principal calls the trust office, the trust office promises to reply by tomorrow, the teacher waits three days for an answer.
Most school ERPs offer one shared 'leave master' across all departments. The accountant gets the same Earned Leave allowance as the bus driver. There is no way to say 'maternity applies only to female staff' or 'On-Duty does not need approval'. The mismatch eventually shows up at exit — the encashment calculation is wrong, the F&F is delayed by three weeks, and the leaving teacher tells two other teachers in her WhatsApp group that the school's record-keeping is a mess.
How Inkwelly Leave Types works — one catalogue, every rule
Open Employee Attendance → Leave Types and you see the full list of leave types your trust offers — Casual Leave, Sick Leave, Earned Leave, Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, Compensatory Off, On-Duty, Loss of Pay, Bereavement Leave. Each row carries the rules in fields built specifically for Indian school leave policies: a name ('Casual Leave'), a shortName ('CL', unique per organisation), a sequence for display order, a description capturing the trust's exact policy language.
The rule fields are where most ERPs cut corners and Inkwelly does not. isPaid says whether this leave deducts salary or not — LOP gets false, every other typical school leave gets true. isCarryForward with maxCarryForward captures 'up to 30 unused EL days carry to next session'. isEncashable turns on encashment at exit (or at year-end, depending on trust policy) for Earned Leave only. requiresApproval — set to true for CL, EL, Maternity; set to false for On-Duty (where the principal already knows because she sent the staff member). requiresDocument — set to true for Sick Leave above three days (medical certificate) and Maternity (Form 21). minDaysNotice — 'fifteen days notice for EL', 'one day notice for CL', 'no notice for emergency SL'. maxConsecutive caps continuous days in one application — Casual Leave often capped at three, Earned Leave allowed up to thirty.
applicableGender is the field the typical generic ERP forgets. Maternity Leave is FEMALE only; Paternity Leave is MALE only; Bereavement Leave is null (everyone). The form for applying for leave only shows the leave types her gender qualifies for — a male teacher never sees Maternity in his dropdown, a female teacher never sees Paternity. applicableAfterMonths captures the probation rule — 'Earned Leave applies only after twelve months of confirmed service'. Until that threshold, the new joiner cannot apply for EL; the catalogue enforces it without anyone in the office having to remember.
Finally, isActive is the kill-switch. The trust withdraws Compensatory Off in 2026? Toggle isActive = false on the Comp-Off row. Existing balances stay intact, no new applications can be filed against it, every report continues to render the historical data correctly. Nothing breaks.
Leave types are then scoped to departments via the DepartmentLeaveType junction. Casual Leave, Sick Leave, Earned Leave applies to all departments. Compensatory Off applies only to Bus Crew and Security (who work on Sundays). Field Visit Leave applies only to the Sports Department. The dropdown that the teacher sees on her leave form only shows her department's eligible types — nothing irrelevant, no scope for ambiguity.
Every rule the appointment letter references, captured as a structured field
nameandshortName— 'Casual Leave' / 'CL', the latter unique per organisation so no two trusts collidesequence— display order on the form (CL, SL, EL, then statutory leaves, then specials — your trust's preferred order)description— the exact appointment-letter clause language, in Hindi or English, multi-language readyisPaid— paid leave (CL, SL, EL, Maternity) versus unpaid (Loss of Pay) — deducts salary at payroll automatically whenfalseisCarryForward+maxCarryForward— 'up to 30 unused EL days roll to next session', enforced at session boundary by the systemisEncashable— turn on encashment for Earned Leave only — picked up by the exit-formalities flow at F&F timerequiresApproval— set CL, EL, Maternity totrue; set On-Duty (already principal-sanctioned) tofalserequiresDocument— force a medical certificate upload for Sick Leave above three days, or Form 21 for MaternityminDaysNotice— 'fifteen days notice for EL', 'one day notice for CL', 'zero for emergency SL'maxConsecutive— cap continuous days per application — stops a casual-leave string from disguising an unauthorised long breakapplicableGender— MALE / FEMALE / OTHER / null — surfaces the right leave types only to the right staffapplicableAfterMonths— 'Earned Leave only after 12 months of confirmed service' — hides EL from new joiners on probationisActive— kill-switch when the trust withdraws or replaces a leave type — historical balances preserved, new applications blocked
Walkthrough — the four screens of building your trust's leave catalogue
Paid versus unpaid — captured at the leave type, not at the application
Loss of Pay is a leave type. Casual Leave is a leave type. The difference is one boolean. Set isPaid = false on Loss of Pay and Inkwelly's payroll engine automatically deducts a day's gross at the next salary run — no spreadsheet, no manual flag in the salary register, no 'I forgot to inform the accountant'. Set isPaid = true on every other leave (CL, SL, EL, Maternity, On-Duty, Comp-Off) and the salary continues uninterrupted while the leave balance is debited. Encashment at exit, year-end leave settlement, and provident-fund treatment all flow from this single field.
Maternity, Paternity and the gender field most ERPs forget
Maternity Leave is statutory under the Maternity Benefit Act 1961 — 26 weeks for the first two children. Paternity Leave is at trust discretion, typically 7 to 15 days. Inkwelly's applicableGender field on the leave type makes both correct by construction: Maternity is FEMALE only, so a male teacher's leave-application form never lists it; Paternity is MALE only, so a female teacher's form never lists it. Inappropriate applications are filtered at the source — the office never has to reject a 'wrong-gender' application, never has to explain it, never has to deal with the awkwardness of someone applying for a leave they could not possibly take.
Carry-forward, encashment, and the rules schools forget at exit
The Bombay Shops & Establishments Act and several state amendments require Earned Leave to be carry-forwarded up to a statutory cap (typically 45 days). Many schools cap it lower in their appointment letters — thirty days, fifteen days. Inkwelly's maxCarryForward field captures whichever cap your trust uses; at session boundary the system rolls forward exactly that number of days, no more. isEncashable further controls whether unused balance is paid out at year-end or at exit — typically true for EL only. The leave settlement at F&F becomes a one-screen calculation, not a three-day reconciliation.
Department-scoped — the bus driver and the principal don't share the same leave list
A Compensatory Off makes sense for Bus Crew and Security who work some Sundays — it does not make sense for the Mathematics PGT who has every Sunday off. Inkwelly's DepartmentLeaveType junction lets the trust decide which leaves apply where. Casual, Sick and Earned Leave usually apply to every department. Comp-Off applies only to weekend-working departments. Field Visit Leave applies only to PE / Sports. The leave-application dropdown is built per the staff member's department — she only sees what is relevant. Less confusion, fewer wrong applications, cleaner Leave Allocation downstream.
“Trust ka rule book mujhe har month dekhna padta tha. Ab CL, SL, EL sab system mein hai. Naya teacher join ho ya purana exit ho — calculation same hi nikalta hai har baar.”
Real-world leave types every Indian school needs to model
1. Casual Leave — short-notice, capped, paid. name = 'Casual Leave', shortName = 'CL', isPaid = true, isCarryForward = false (most trusts), requiresApproval = true, requiresDocument = false, minDaysNotice = 1, maxConsecutive = 3. Applicable to every department, no gender restriction. The most-used leave type in a typical school year.
2. Sick Leave — same-day, document-backed beyond three days. name = 'Sick Leave', shortName = 'SL', isPaid = true, requiresApproval = true, requiresDocument = true once duration exceeds three days, minDaysNotice = 0 (emergencies). Trust often offers ten to twelve days a year, non-carry-forward.
3. Earned Leave — the statutory anchor. name = 'Earned Leave', shortName = 'EL', isPaid = true, isCarryForward = true, maxCarryForward = 30, isEncashable = true, requiresApproval = true, applicableAfterMonths = 12, minDaysNotice = 15, maxConsecutive = 30. Earned at one day per month of confirmed service, encashable at exit — the leave-settlement F&F item.
4. Maternity Leave — statutory, gender-locked. name = 'Maternity Leave', shortName = 'MAT', isPaid = true, applicableGender = FEMALE, requiresApproval = true, requiresDocument = true (Form 21 / medical certificate), minDaysNotice = 30, maxConsecutive = 182. Statutory under the Maternity Benefit Act 1961 — 26 weeks for the first two children.
5. Paternity Leave — trust-discretionary, gender-locked. name = 'Paternity Leave', shortName = 'PAT', isPaid = true, applicableGender = MALE, requiresApproval = true, minDaysNotice = 7, maxConsecutive = 15. Modelled the same way as Maternity but with male restriction and trust-set duration.
6. On-Duty — the leave that isn't really leave. name = 'On-Duty', shortName = 'OD', isPaid = true, requiresApproval = false (the principal sent the staff member, no further approval needed), requiresDocument = false, minDaysNotice = 0. Used when a teacher attends a CBSE workshop, accompanies a sports team, or supervises an external examination. Counts as 'present' on the daily attendance and salary register.
7. Compensatory Off — weekend-working departments only. name = 'Compensatory Off', shortName = 'COF', isPaid = true, scoped via DepartmentLeaveType to Bus Crew and Security only. Earned implicitly when these departments work on a declared school holiday — the adjustments flow grants it back as a leave balance.
8. Loss of Pay — the only unpaid leave. name = 'Loss of Pay', shortName = 'LOP', isPaid = false. Not requested often, but used when the leave balance runs out and the staff member still needs time. Salary deducts proportionally at the next payroll run without anyone in the office having to flag it manually.
Common leave-type catalogue operations Inkwelly supports
- Add a new leave type the day the trust circulates an updated policy — takes about ninety seconds for the head clerk
- Deactivate a withdrawn leave type without losing historical balances — set
isActive = falseand existing data is preserved - Apply a leave type to a specific department only — Comp-Off for Bus Crew, Field Visit for Sports, etc.
- Restrict a leave type to a gender — Maternity for FEMALE, Paternity for MALE, neither sees the other in the form
- Hide Earned Leave from probationers via
applicableAfterMonths = 12— they cannot accidentally over-apply - Force document upload for Sick Leave above three days — medical certificate required by the application form
- Cap maximum consecutive days for Casual Leave at three — prevents stringing CLs into a long unauthorised break
- Set minimum notice period — fifteen days for EL, one day for CL, zero for emergency SL
- Mark a leave type encashable at exit — picked up by the F&F flow without manual configuration
- Reorder display sequence — your trust's preferred order on the leave-application form, not Inkwelly's default
See Leave Types live with your trust's appointment letter open
Bring your latest appointment-letter PDF and the last circular updating leave policy to a 25-minute demo. We will model your full catalogue — CL, SL, EL, Maternity, Paternity, Comp-Off and any specials — in front of you with the exact rules your trust uses.
Limits, safety and the small print
Edits to a leave type affect future allocations only, not historical balances. Once an EmployeeLeaveAllocation is created against a leave type, changing the leave type's totalLeavesPerYear or applicableAfterMonths does not retroactively recompute the existing allocation. To change a staff member's allocation, you edit the allocation directly. This protects historical leave balances from accidental drift when the trust updates policy mid-session.
shortName is unique per organisation, not per school. If your trust runs three campuses under one organisation, all three share the same shortName namespace. 'CL' means the same Casual Leave across all three campuses; you cannot have a different 'CL' at the senior school and the primary school. This is intentional — it keeps consolidated trust-level reports unambiguous.
Deactivation is reversible; deletion is not. Toggling isActive = false is the recommended way to retire a leave type — historical applications and balances stay queryable, the leave just disappears from the apply-leave dropdown. Hard deletion is available for leave types created in error before any allocation has been made; once any EmployeeLeaveAllocation references the row, the system blocks deletion.
requiresApproval = false does not mean unverified. Even auto-approved leaves like On-Duty are audit-logged with the staff member's employeeId, the start and end dates, the reason and the work mode. The Principal can still see every On-Duty application in the Leaves list at any time — the approval gate is skipped, but the visibility is not.
Permission gating. Editing the leave-type catalogue is restricted to roles with iam:school:manage-leave-types. By default this is the Principal and the Head Clerk — not the typical teacher and not the typical accountant. Audit log captures every edit with the actor and the IP. The catalogue is a high-trust surface and treated accordingly.
Multi-language ready. The name and description fields support Hindi, English, and the regional script. The leave-application form picks the regional script if the staff member's preferred language is set to Hindi — the head clerk sees 'Casual Leave', the rural-Bahraich PRT sees 'आकस्मिक अवकाश' on the same record.
किस मॉड्यूल का हिस्सा
1 moduleअक्सर पूछे गए सवाल
7 सवालHow many leave types should we set up for an average Indian school?
Most CBSE / ICSE / State Board schools end up with seven to ten active leave types: Casual Leave (CL), Sick Leave (SL), Earned Leave (EL), Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, On-Duty, Compensatory Off, Loss of Pay, and one or two trust-specific specials like Bereavement Leave or Study Leave. The exact list depends on what your appointment letter and the latest trust circular grants. Inkwelly ships with a default Indian-school template; the head clerk customises the rules per the trust's policy in roughly forty minutes during go-live.
Can the same leave type apply differently to teaching and non-teaching staff?
Yes — via the DepartmentLeaveType junction. A leave type is created once at the org level (shared name, paid flag, gender rule, etc.), then assigned to specific departments. Compensatory Off applies only to Bus Crew and Security (who work weekends). Field Visit Leave applies only to the Sports department. Casual, Sick and Earned Leave typically apply to every department. The leave-application dropdown is built per the staff member's department, so she only sees the leaves she's eligible for.
How do we handle Maternity Leave for our female teachers?
Create a 'Maternity Leave' row with `applicableGender = FEMALE`, `isPaid = true`, `requiresApproval = true`, `requiresDocument = true` (medical certificate / Form 21), `minDaysNotice = 30` and `maxConsecutive = 182` for the statutory 26 weeks under the Maternity Benefit Act 1961. The leave only appears on female staff's leave-application form. Allocation is automatic per the appointment-letter clause once the catalogue row exists. Encashment is typically not applicable for Maternity — leave `isEncashable = false`.
What happens to existing leave balances if we deactivate a leave type mid-session?
Historical balances and approved applications stay intact — they remain queryable in every report and in every staff member's leave history. New applications against the deactivated leave type are blocked from the leave-application form onwards. This is the recommended way to retire a leave type when the trust withdraws or restructures it: toggle `isActive = false`, the catalogue is updated, no historical data is lost. The kill-switch is reversible — toggle `isActive` back to true and the leave type returns.
Can the Earned Leave carry-forward cap differ between teaching and non-teaching staff?
Yes — model it as two separate leave types: 'Earned Leave (Teaching)' with `maxCarryForward = 30` scoped to teaching departments, 'Earned Leave (Non-Teaching)' with `maxCarryForward = 15` scoped to admin and support departments. Each lives as a separate row with its own rules. Trusts with simpler policies (uniform cap across all staff) usually keep one EL row; trusts with differentiated appointment letters maintain two. Both patterns work without compromise.
Does the system enforce the minimum-notice rule when teachers apply for leave?
Yes — the `minDaysNotice` value is enforced at the leave-application form. If EL has `minDaysNotice = 15` and the teacher tries to apply on 25 March for an absence starting 5 April, the form rejects the application before it submits. The principal can override notice rules for emergencies via the [adjustments](/modules/employees-attendance) flow, with the override audit-logged. Sick Leave is typically configured with `minDaysNotice = 0` to handle genuine emergencies without friction.
Can we change Earned Leave from non-encashable to encashable mid-year?
Yes — toggling `isEncashable` from `false` to `true` immediately activates encashment for all future exits and year-end settlements. The change does not retroactively encash leave balances that were already settled in prior sessions — those records remain at the rules under which they were processed. Schools that adopt encashment mid-policy-cycle make the change at session boundary, communicate it via a circular, and the system handles the rest.
आपको ये भी पसंद आ सकता है
3 लेखInkwelly आपके स्कूल पर — खुद देखें
30 मिनट का डेमो। आपके मौजूदा ERP को आपके साथ खोलकर, कॉल पर ही आपका डेटा Inkwelly में लोड करते हैं। कॉल ख़त्म होते-होते एक तय तारीख़ का गो-लाइव प्लान आपके हाथ में।