How to Manage Resignation Requests in Horilla HRMS

Handling resignations without a structured process is one of those things that creates unnecessary friction for both HR and the employee. Emails get missed, approval decisions go unrecorded, and the timeline of events becomes unclear by the time the exit process begins. Horilla HRMS addresses this with a built-in Resignation Letters feature under the Offboarding module — a simple, trackable way for employees to submit resignation requests and for HR to review and act on them from a central list.

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Enabling the Resignation Request Feature

Before employees can submit resignation requests through the system, the feature needs to be switched on in settings. Go to Horilla > Settings > General Settings. On the General Settings page, scroll down to find the “Resignation Request” section. There is a single toggle labeled Resignation Request. Turn it on and save.

Once this is enabled, the resignation tab becomes visible on employee profiles, and the Resignation Letters section becomes active under Offboarding. Without this toggle switched on, employees will not see the option to submit a resignation at all.

How an Employee Submits a Resignation

When the Resignation Request feature is enabled, employees can raise their resignation directly from their own profile in the Horilla portal. This is the self-service side of the process.

The employee navigates to Employee > Profile. On the profile page,

there are multiple tabs running across  About, Work Type & Shift, Documents, Scheduled Interviews, Leave, Performance, Key Results, Asset, Attendance, Penalty Account, Payroll, Allowance & Deduction, Bonus Points, Resignation, and Projects. The employee clicks the Resignation tab.

Initially, this tab will show an empty state. The employee clicks the Create button at the top right of the tab. A form opens where they fill in the details of their resignation and submit it. This creates a resignation record that then appears in the HR-facing Resignation Letters view for review.

This approach keeps the submission process formal and traceable; rather than a resignation being communicated verbally or over email, it enters the system with a date stamp and a clear status from the moment it is submitted.

The HR View: Resignation Letters

From the HR side, all submitted resignation requests are visible under Horilla > Offboarding > Resignation Letters. The page heading is “Resignations” and shows a table with all current resignation records.

The table columns are:

• Employee — The employee’s name and ID. For example, Ali Abu (PEP1111), Amelia Cooper (PEP25), Angel Sanor (PEP118), and Adam Luis (PEP001).

• Title — The subject or title that the employee gave to their resignation request.

• Planned To Leave — The date the employee intends to leave the organization. This is a key field for HR to plan the notice period, handover, and FNF timeline.

• Status — The current state of the request: Requested, Approved, or Rejected. These three statuses are also shown as color-coded legend indicators at the top right — red for Rejected, green for Approved, and grey for Requested — making the list visually scannable at a glance.

• Description — Any notes or reasons the employee added when submitting the resignation.

• Options — Three icons: an email icon to send a communication related to the request, an edit icon to modify the record, and a delete icon to remove it.

• Actions — Two inline buttons: a green Approve button and a white Reject button. HR can approve or reject each resignation directly from the list without opening a separate record.

Filtering by Status

The Resignation Letters page supports status-based filtering. At the top right, clicking the Filter button reveals filter options, including a Status filter that shows Requested, Approved, and Rejected. This is useful when HR wants to focus only on pending requests that have not yet been acted on, or when reviewing the history of approved resignations for a specific period.

In the example shown, a filter for Status: Requested is applied, narrowing the view to show only the one pending request from Ali Abu.

Approving or Rejecting a Request

Once HR reviews a resignation request, acting on it is straightforward. Each row in the Resignations list has an Approve and a Reject button in the Actions column. Clicking Approve changes the status to Approved and signals that the resignation has been formally accepted. Clicking Reject changes it to Rejected — useful in cases where further discussion is needed before the resignation is accepted, or where the request was submitted in error.

The status change is recorded in the system, so there is always a clear history of when a resignation was submitted, what decision was made on it, and when.

What Happens After Approval

Once a resignation is approved in the Resignation Letters view, the employee’s exit process can be formally initiated through the Exit Process pipeline under Offboarding. The approved resignation serves as the trigger for the broader offboarding workflow — Notice Period, Exit Interview, Work Handover, FNF, Farewell, and Archival — which Horilla tracks through its pipeline view.

This connection between the Resignation Letters module and the Exit Process pipeline means nothing falls through the cracks. The resignation is documented, the decision is recorded, and the handoff to the exit pipeline is clean.

Managing resignation requests in Horilla HRMS is a two-part process: employees submit through their own profile under the Resignation tab, and HR reviews and acts on submissions through the Offboarding > Resignation Letters view. The entire flow — from submission to approval to exit pipeline — is handled within the system, replacing unstructured email chains with a traceable, status-tracked record.

The one important prerequisite is enabling the Resignation Request toggle in General Settings. Once that is on, the feature is available system-wide, and employees can begin using it immediately. For HR teams that want to bring more structure and accountability to how resignations are handled, this is one of the simpler but genuinely useful features Horilla offers.

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