Notifications

TeamHub keeps people informed about leave by email. Most notifications are sent automatically the moment something happens — a request is submitted, approved, or declined — while a few are sent on a schedule by overnight background jobs.

This page explains who receives what, and when, and which settings control it. It is written for employees who want to understand the emails they receive, and for administrators who need to configure them.

How Notifications Are Delivered

All TeamHub notifications are delivered by email. There are no SMS or in-app push notifications for leave events.

A few points worth knowing:

Every notification is a separate email to each recipient group. Employees, team leads and administrators each receive their own copy rather than being CC’d on a single message — so replying to a notification does not reach the other recipients.
Emails are sent through our delivery partner, Mailgun. If an address stops receiving TeamHub email entirely, it may have been suppressed — see Email Suppression.
Every email TeamHub sends is recorded, so support can confirm whether a message was generated and when.
Notifications are never sent for companies whose account is inactive.

Note

Employees created as virtual users (placeholders without a real mailbox, such as a shared resource or a contractor record) do not receive employee-facing notifications. Notifications to their team lead and administrators are unaffected.

When Leave Is Requested

When an employee submits a leave request:

Recipient	When they are notified
The team lead	Always. This is the core approval notification and cannot be switched off.
The employee	Only when the request was booked on their behalf by someone else, and the company has enabled email alerts for on-behalf requests.
The company-wide copy address	Only when the company has enabled admin alerts on new requests and a company-wide copy address has been set.
The team’s request address	Whenever the team has an address configured in its Email on Requests field.

If the team has a final approver as well as a team lead, the final approver is notified separately once the team lead has completed the first stage of review.

When Leave Is Approved

Approval is where the most people are notified. Up to four separate notifications are sent:

Recipient	When they are notified
The employee	Always, confirming the leave was approved and by whom.
The team lead	Only when the relevant company setting is enabled. This matters when the approval was performed by someone other than the lead — for example a final approver or an administrator.
The company-wide copy address	Whenever a company-wide copy address has been set. Typically used to feed a payroll or HR mailbox.
The team’s approval address	Whenever the team has an address configured in its Email on Approvals field.

Important

The team’s Email on Approvals field is only one of the four channels. If you are trying to work out why an unexpected mailbox is receiving approval emails, check the company-wide copy address and the team lead setting as well — they are configured in different places.

Two-stage approvals. Where a team has a final approver, the four notifications above are sent when the final approval completes. The employee can optionally be notified at the earlier, first-review stage too — this is a company setting, and that earlier email makes clear that the request still needs final approval.

Automatic approvals. Where leave is approved automatically by policy rather than by a person, only the team lead is notified. The employee, the company-wide copy address and the team approval address are not emailed.

When Leave Is Declined or Cancelled

Declined — the employee is notified, and the team’s Email on Declines address is notified if one is configured.
Cancellation requested — the approver is notified that a cancellation is awaiting their decision.
Cancellation approved — the employee is notified that the cancellation went through.
Cancellation rejected — the employee is notified that their leave still stands.

Note that declines and cancellations do not copy the company-wide address or the team lead. Only approvals fan out that widely.

Reminders for Requests Awaiting Approval

Leave requests sitting unapproved can be chased automatically. When the relevant company setting is enabled, an overnight job looks for requests still awaiting review and sends a reminder.

Reminders are sent according to a schedule of days waiting — by default a single reminder after 14 days. An administrator can configure a different schedule (for example, reminders at 7, 14 and 21 days). As a safety net, any request that has gone more than 30 days without a reminder is chased again regardless of the schedule.

An individual leave request can be excluded from reminders entirely if it is being handled outside the normal process.

Leave Balance and Forfeiture Reminders

Two optional, scheduled notifications encourage employees to use leave before they lose it. Both are off by default and are enabled per company.

Annual leave balance reminders

When enabled, employees with more than 10 days of annual leave outstanding receive a periodic prompt suggesting they book leave. Each employee receives this at most once a month.

One month before forfeiture

When enabled, employees are notified one month before their work anniversary — the point at which their leave cycle rolls over and unused leave may be lost. The email states the annual leave balance projected as at that anniversary date, and how much of it will carry over.

The carry-over figure quoted in this notification is currently fixed at 8 days. It is not read from the company’s leave type configuration, so it is only correct for companies whose policy matches that figure. Speak to support before enabling it.

The timing follows each employee’s own start-date anniversary, so different employees are notified on different dates through the year. Companies that forfeit leave on a shared company cycle date are not covered by this notification.

Both of these emails go to the employee, copied to the team lead and all company administrators, and to TeamHub support for monitoring.

Important

These reminders are the only advance warning of forfeiture that TeamHub sends. Companies using the anniversary-based extension and forfeiture policy described in Leave Extension and Forfeiture receive no automatic warning before leave is forfeited unless one of the two notifications above is switched on. If advance warning matters to you, raise it with support rather than assuming it is running.

Birthdays and Work Anniversaries

TeamHub sends automated birthday and work anniversary greetings. These can be switched off company-wide with the relevant company setting. See Birthdays.

Employees whose sick leave balance is reset at the end of a statutory cycle are also notified, with their team lead copied.

Calendar Updates

Separately from email, approved leave can be pushed into Google Calendar or Outlook / Microsoft 365 if the integration is configured. Approving leave creates the calendar entry; declining or cancelling it removes the entry again. See Calendars.

Calendar sync is independent of the email settings above — turning email notifications off does not stop calendar entries being written.

Frequently Asked Questions

An employee says they never received their approval email. Where do I start?: Check three things in order: that the address on their profile is correct, that they are not a virtual user, and that their address has not been suppressed (see Email Suppression). Support can confirm whether TeamHub generated the email at all.
Why is our payroll mailbox getting approval emails twice?: Almost certainly because the same address is set both as the company-wide copy address on the billing page and in a team’s Email on Approvals field. The two channels are independent and neither checks the other, so each sends its own copy.
Can we stop employees being emailed when their own leave is approved?: No. The employee confirmation is always sent for a real user and has no setting to disable it.
Can notifications go somewhere other than email — Slack, for example?: Not for leave events. Slack is used only for internal TeamHub system alerting, not for customer leave notifications.
We changed a team’s Email on Approvals address and nothing arrives now.: The field is not validated on save, so an invalid address is accepted without warning. Re-check it for typos and stray characters, then submit a test request.
Do notifications respect the employee’s language or timezone?: Notification text is English. Dates shown in notifications follow the company’s configured settings.