Create Custom Leave Types

Go to Leave Management > Leave Types, click Add New Leave Type, enter a leave name and description, mark whether it's Is Paid and/or Is WFH, then click Submit.

Every company's leave structure looks slightly different, so Hoicko HRMS doesn't lock you into a fixed list of categories the way some rigid HR systems do. Instead, you define exactly the leave categories your organization needs, from the ground up. Common examples used by real teams on the platform include Medical Leave, Privilege Leave (PL), Casual Leave (CL), Sick Leave (SL), Maternity Leave (ML), Work From Home (WFH), Work From Home – Performance Based (WFH-PMS), Half Day, and Leave Without Pay (LWP) — but there's nothing stopping you from creating leave types specific to your company culture, like a "Volunteer Day" or "Wellness Leave" category.

Two settings on this form matter more than they might first appear: Is Paid and Is WFH. Getting these right up front means every downstream report—attendance, payroll export, employee leave status—automatically reflects the correct treatment of that leave type without you needing to manually flag exceptions later. It's much easier to set these correctly at creation time than to go back and re-tag historical leave records after the fact.

Step-by-step:

1. From the HRMS dashboard, click Leave Management to open leave policy management features.
2. Select Leave Types from the left-hand menu to view and manage all available leave categories currently configured for your company.
3. Click Add New Leave Type to start creating a new category.
4. Type the leave name in the Leave Name field—keep it short and recognizable, since this is what employees will see when submitting a request.
5. Add a short description so employees understand exactly when this leave type applies—this reduces incorrect leave type selection at the point of request.
6. Check Is Paid if this leave type should not deduct from salary — leave this unchecked for anything that should show up as an unpaid day in payroll.
7. Check Is WFH if this leave type represents remote work rather than a genuine absence, so it's tracked and reported separately from time off.
8. Click Submit to save the new leave type. It will immediately appear in your Leave Types list with its Paid status visible directly in the table.

FAQ

What's the difference between a Paid and an unpaid leave type? A Paid leave type doesn't affect the employee's salary calculation for that day — it's treated like a normal working day for payroll purposes. Leave types like LWP (Leave Without Pay) are left unchecked, so payroll processing correctly deducts the corresponding day from salary.

Can I edit a leave type after employees start using it?

Yes, existing leave types can be edited or deactivated from the same Leave Types table using the status toggle in each row, without affecting historical leave records already submitted under that type.

Is a public holiday a leave type?

Yes — many companies configure Public Holiday as its own leave type marked Is Paid, so it's tracked consistently alongside other leave categories in reporting rather than being treated as a separate, disconnected calendar feature.

Can I limit which leave types appear for certain departments?

Leave type visibility follows the Leave Policy assignment rather than the leave type itself—you control who can use a given leave type by controlling who's assigned the policy built on top of it, covered in the next article.