Leave category for casual employees showing - Leave balance, approved leave & available balance. When approving unpaid leave. This has recently appeared.

Welcome to the Community, Tiffiny.

I know that reviewing Leave Balance, Approved Leave, and Available Balance when approving unpaid leave for a casual employee can be confusing.

The leave approval screen in QuickBooks Online Payroll now displays a standard summary for all leave requests, whether paid or unpaid. This panel provides context for approvers and may also appear for unpaid leave.

Casual employees don’t accrue paid annual or personal/career's leave, so when a request is for unpaid leave, the figures shown are informational only. 

• Leave balance is typically zero for unpaid leave.
• Approved leave is future-dated unpaid leave that has already been approved.
• Available balance is the balance minus approved leave, which is often zero or negative for unpaid leave. 

Approving unpaid leave will not pay the employee and will not accrue or deduct from paid leave entitlements.
 

You can hide those fields for unpaid leave by turning off the tracking:

1. Select Payroll, then Payroll Settings.
2. Click Leave categories and turn off the Unpaid Leave/Leave Without Pay:
   Leave is paid: Off
   Accrues automatically: Off
   Track leave: Off (this removes the balance/approved/available display and keeps the category out of the Leave Balances Report)
   Can apply for leave even if the balance is insufficient: On (so unpaid leave can still be requested/approved)
3. Save the changes.

Make sure your employee details are correctly set up to avoid any unintended accruals. You can run the Leave Balances report to further verify the leave balances per employee.
 

Feel free to provide more details if you need further assistance. We're here to help.