Personio logo Personio automation · runs daily

Auto-approve Personio time off requests by your rule

Every morning your Personio Inbox holds a handful of time off requests, and each one needs a look at the dates, the balance and who else is away before you click approve.

Cotlet does it in your own Personio account with list_approval_requests, get_approval_request and approve_request, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

Sign up free All Personio tools

Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Can Personio do this on its own?

Personio has no auto-approve switch tied to your own conditions (checked 16 Oct 2026). Admins set time off approval rules per time off type: a default rule and group rules by employee attribute, and a request with no applicable approval step is approved automatically. Those rules choose who approves, not whether a request fits the balance and the team calendar. The API index lists no approvals endpoint, and the beta MCP is mostly read-only.

How you do it in Personio today

  1. Approvers see approval tasks in the Inbox and in the Home widget; Personio delegates the task to a substitute when the approver is absent.
  2. Open the Inbox and click a time off request to see the date range, a calendar preview of overlaps with the team, the remaining balance after approval and the approval chain when there is more than one step.
  3. Approve or reject straight from the Inbox; a rejection takes an optional comment that the requester sees in their notification.
  4. An open-ended request is marked as such, and you add the end date yourself once you know when the employee returns.
  5. The same check repeats for every request, and requests sit unread until the approver opens the Inbox.

How to auto-approve Personio time off requests by your rule

Prompt

Go through my pending Personio time off requests. Approve vacation of 5 working days or fewer when no other team member is off on those days, reject nothing, and leave everything else for me with a one-line reason.
  1. 01

    Read the queue first

    Your agent lists everything waiting for you with list_approval_requests, filtered to time off, and pages through the cursor, so the whole Inbox is judged as one batch.

  2. 02

    Open each request

    get_approval_request brings the dates, the balance after approval and the team overlap that Personio shows on the request page, so the rule runs on the same numbers you would read.

  3. 03

    Apply your rule

    A request passes only if it fits the rule in your prompt, for example 5 working days or fewer, the balance stays at zero or above, and nobody from the same team is off on those days. The agent names the reason for every request it keeps.

  4. 04

    Skip what is not a plain request

    Open-ended time off, hourly time off and requests with a certificate attached are never approved by rule; they stay in the Inbox for you.

  5. 05

    Approve the matches

    approve_request runs for requests that pass, one call each. Right before the call the agent checks that the task is still pending, so a request a delegate already handled is logged and not touched twice.

What you get back

Example data

Pending time off requests: 9
Approved 5:
- Maja Kowalska, 3 days, balance after approval 15, no team overlap
- Tom Becker, 2 days, balance after approval 11, no team overlap
Left for you 4:
- Lena Ortiz: 8 days, over the 5-day rule
- Sam Okafor: open-ended
- Ana Lopez: overlaps with Jonas Weber on 21 Oct
- Pia Novak: 4 days, balance after approval -1

Other ways to ask

  • Every morning at 8, approve sick-day requests of up to 2 days and list everything else.
  • Approve vacation requests for the Marketing team only when at least three people stay in the office.
  • Show me the pending queue sorted by start date and mark the ones that overlap, but do not approve anything yet.
  • Also approve my team's employee data change requests that only touch the phone number.

What Personio allows, and what to know first

  • Personio sends a time off request to approval only when the requester has Propose permissions for that time off type; people with Edit permissions skip approval.
  • To approve or reject in the Inbox, a supervisor needs the Time off permission for the relevant type with Edit set to Reporting line, and an approver needs View permission for each relevant time off type.
  • When approval is delegated, the task shows in the inbox of both the original approver and the delegate until one of them reviews it, then it disappears from the other.
  • Time off approval rules are set per time off type and only an Administrator can create, edit or monitor them.
  • A rejection takes an optional comment, and the requester reads it in the Inbox notification about the rejection.

approve_request asks for your OK by default. To run it daily without you, switch confirmation off for that tool in your dashboard.

Sources: Personio Help: Approve an employee request · Personio Help: Overview of the Personio Inbox · Personio Help: Set up time off approval rules · Personio Help: Frequently Asked Questions, Time off and attendance

Call approve_request from a script

curl

curl -X POST https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/personio/requests/apr_41c7e2/approve \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"comment":"Approved, enjoy the break."}'

Example response

{
  "request_id": "apr_41c7e2",
  "status": "approved",
  "next_step": null,
  "approved_at": "2026-10-16T07:45:00Z"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the call is personio_write → approve_request. Example data.

Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron

Personio tools this automation uses

Cotlet Personio tools used to auto-approve Personio time off requests by your rule
Tool Parameters
list_approval_requests kind, cursor
get_approval_request request_id
approve_request request_id, comment
All 13 Personio tools with descriptions

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be an Administrator to run this?

No. The account needs to be an approver for the requests, with the permissions Personio lists for approving a time off request. Administrator rights are only needed to change approval rules.

Is it safe to connect Personio to Cotlet?

Yes. You sign in to Personio yourself, in your own Cloud Browser in the EU, and we never save your password. Your agents only get Personio once you enable it, every background request is listed, and the browser profile is stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, the cipher 1Password uses for its vaults. The AI model never sees a login, posts and messages wait for your OK, and Disable for agents cuts access in one click. Independent scanners grade cotlet.dev A+ on Qualys SSL Labs, securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory; live results are on https://cotlet.dev/security.

Give your agent access to Personio.

Free 7-day trial with 2,000 credits, no card needed. Cotlet is independent and not affiliated with Personio.

Sign up free